After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia was voluntarily deemed the sole successor state to the USSR. Is there any historical consensus as to whether this was good for the modern nation of Russia, or did the obligations outweigh the benefits?

Well, it's not so much that it was deemed the successor nation of the USSR, but that it was the successor nation of the USSR. The USSR was formed out of the collapsed Russian empire, when the Bolsheviks took over Moscow and St.Petersburg and then formed the USSR after the Russian civil war. Russians always formed the de facto leadership of the Soviet Union, as much as Stalin was Georgian and several other examples. Therefore, when the USSR collapsed (or, better put, was destroyed by its own political elite) the Russian federation was the successor state.