I only have my own life experience to reflect on, and while it does seem like society was freer in my youth (pre-9/11 U.S.), I was also a freer and wilder person back then. I see how the younger generations live, and how society has changed - and I get the feeling personal freedom and even cultural values are getting lost. But maybe it's just me, I'm getting older and don't have the youthful need to push the limits and experience that wild freedom so much anymore. Even if I had the drive, I think society is no longer as tolerant of the particular kind of wildness that I enjoyed as a youth.

It's not easy to separate personal experience from observations of social changes. I bet there is some truth in the author's feeling of that pre-collapse Soviet society, there was something special there that only existed at that time.