I can throw a dart on an italian map and the nearby houses will have indoor plumbing if there's some resident. can you do the same in russia today?

> And who do you think paid

state resources are always a fraction of the gdp trough whatever form of taxation. larger industrial base means proportional less burden on the society. that is why for example urss imploded, taxation was too high and spent too wastefully on military budget to be sustainable long term, while usa could spend that money on the defense budget, infrastructure, et etc, while still being sutainable from the economy, because the industrial base was so much larger.