WIthout regard for Salye's report being part of political struggle at the time, you don't get the context.
In 1992 (the year in question), the Soviet command economy was undergoing transformation transforming into the market one. The food market was yet non existent, but the food supply chains (Gossnab) were already destroyed. At the same time, the soviet currency had no real value (just paper) and the onlyway to obtain any kind of goods was through barter. Can you imagine an economy size of Russian functioning through barter? It was fucking nightmare, and through this big cities had BIG problems with food supplies. So basicly if you didn't barter for food (however discounted), the alternative was famine in urban areas.
E.g. check out this NY article to get the idea of the scale of the problem - [
www.nytimes.com]
I was 10 years old at the time, and I was stealing bread from stores, because I wanted to fucking eat. When Russians say 90s were fucked up, it's not a figure of words, they mean it.
So when someone says "oh in 90s after the fall of the USSR Russians were ok, and now we don't like them", the only answer a Russian may have for that someone is "fuck you".