I was inspired by This r/askreddit post about how older Russian viewed the USSR and a pattern of "the 90's were so bad that it made people look back on the USSR as 'the good old days'" pops up a lot. My question is, how bad was it? I know there was corruption and poverty, but how much, why, and what's the timeline of events?
There's a lot to say on this topic. While you await new answers, you might want to check out this answer I wrote about how the Soviet economy unraveled in the early 1990s, and this answer about the collapse in living standards and demographic decline. For good measure here is a (long) answer explaining why political and economic reforms under Yeltsin didn't work out as planned, with a bonus comparison to the situation in the 1990s in Poland.