In 2011 I spent a month in Latvia and while no one ever outright said that they wished the USSR had not fallen, I heard a lot of stories about how things got a lot worse in the short term and had only recently recovered. They were mostly centered around how Latvia’s economy was very intertwined with things on the east side of the border and trade became much more complicated (and supplying make-work Soviet factories was suddenly not viable).

I suspect the fact that I spent the entire time with ethnic Russians played a role in this, as it sounded like the Latvians had been second-class citizens in their own country.