[grakasja]

The old Marxists would say it's because Russia doesn't have an empire (outside the meager pickings of own immediate periphery) providing a trading network, access to cheap foreign labor and resources etc. as a buffer to its own domestic economy. Not sure how statistically verifiable that is, since the classical Marxian economic model doesn't seem to apply cleanly to the modern US or China.

Random anecdote, Russians arguably produce the world's best gaming mods. Their unpaid amateur programmers put out content that rivals or exceeds the quality of Western games, if you like doomer-y 90s vibes. An example would be Fonline 2236 (some Russian guy hacked Fallout 1 and 2 into a free, working MMO) or the Skyrim mod for DayZ, which I think is dead now and I needed a translator app to play before the current war started but was the best online RPG experience I've had since Ultima Online.