Russia was known as the Soviet Union during that time. After the Revolution in 1917, soviets (workers' councils) were to be the basis for a post-capitalist Russia. As many critical intellectuals (e.g. Noam Chomsky, Murray Bookchin, Hannah Arendt before in her book, "On Revolution") have pointed out, the Bolsheviks, who assumed the role of vanguard during the revolution, soon stripped the soviets of power, consolidating it in the Bolshevik Party and the state.
Under popular pressure, the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.
Although the Soviet Union had supposedly been socialist/communist, it really functioned like a state capitalist society with centralized planning instead of using market distribution of goods and services common in capitalist societies. After 1991, there was a mad rush to introduce markets into the former Soviet society and to privatize goods and services (converting them from public or state property into commodities that could be bought and sold on the market). This empowered an oligarchic class similar to the way the previous so-called socialist/communist arrangements of the Soviet Union had empowered Party leaders and bureaucrats over workers and the rest of the population.
For a philosophically-oriented critique of the Soviet Union from a Marxian perspective equally critical of capitalism, see:
Marcuse, Herbert. (1958). Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis. New York: Random House.
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