Even at the time, the 1990s was seen as pretty disastrous, even if there was an element of hope among certain parts of the population (usually younger, more professional classes in Moscow or St. Petersburg) that there were opportunities for things to get better.

The Soviet economy, for all of its many faults, didn't really go into freefall until 1989, so the collapse then led immediately into a continuing collapse in the 1990s. What changed with things like price liberalization is that goods were in shops - just few could afford them (and with rampant inflation, ever fewer), where in the late Soviet period people had money, but no goods in shops.

Added to this, the 1990s saw extreme political turbulence even beyond the last Soviet years. Life expectancies likewise fell through the floor, and the population contracted.

Some further answers I've written that might be of interest on the topic:

• Why was Poland's transition to capitalism so much more effective than Russia's in the 90s?

• The population of the Soviet Union grew rapidly from 1950 until 1990. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the population of the former Soviet states stagnated and began to decline. Was the collapse of the union so serious that it caused that decline or is there something I'm missing?

• In the 1990s Ukraine is reported to have lost 50-60% of its GDP. How is such a thing possible?

• What was life like in the former Soviet Socialist Republics after the fall of the USSR? How did people survive in places like Kazakhstan when the supply lines collapsed? How did the transfer of governance proceed? What were those months like for ordinary citizens?