For young democracies - like Russia in 1992 - it's possible to get captured by populists, who, instead of solving tough problems and laying out the groundwork for the subsequent development, promise some doubtful, in retrospect at least, things, point fingers towards convenient scapegoats etc. In this sense Russia was unlucky. Yes, people didn't know much, and were led to believe etc... so the guilt is spread of course, and many are involved. Everybody should have tried to do the best in their place, then the possibilities are larger - but in this case, it turned out to be not enough.

I'm not sure we now know a guaranteed way of how to deal with situations like that.