In terms of absolute power, contemporary Russia would probably beat USSR at its height due to the technological advances of the past 20+ years.

In terms of relative power, while Russia is on a rise now, it still doesn´t reach the levels of USSR. Once Soviet Union closed the gap on the number of nuclear bombs (during the 1950s), it was truly a superpower on par with USA, very well geared for a specific predicted scenario of WWIII - a scenario in which the superpowers would refrain from using strategic nuclear devices due to the potentially devastating effects of full blown nuclear exchange and the conflict would take form of a conventional war in Europe with an occassional tactical nuke here and there. Soviet Union therefore developed massive conventional capabilities and instructed their Eastern European proxies (who´s territory would have been used as a buffer zone) to do so as well. Fortunately, we never had to find out who would have come out victorious from this clash.

Absolutely if you go by it's own contemporary terms. At the end of WW2 the only two things that kept the Soviet Union from simply walking over the remains of Europe were the fact that the US had- by far- the largest blue water naval presence in the world and a very respectable air force.

Well that and simple logistics. In terms of force projection, even over land, the Soviets may have been outclassed by the US and western allies, but still possessed a highly capable ground force. For most of the cold war the Soviets simply had a larger ground army than the US could deal with, even if you factored in all of NATO and Warsaw bloc countries. What stopped the soviets was simple deterrent- Europe would be a quagmire, and by the 1950's both countries possessed nuclear capabilities on a scale that guaranteed mutual destruction if they were ever used.