Muskovy needs to get the Japan/Germany treatment - entirely demilitarized and culturally rewritten from the ground up over three consecutive generations until they’re more associated with absolute pacifism a Muskovite version of anime than anything else. The rest of the RF needs to be culturally rewritten until they don’t even remember what the word “Russian” means other than synonymous with “Nazi”.

That is not what happened to Germany and Japan, that’s what happened to Iraq and Afganistan. The slate was absolutley not wiped clean in Germany or Japan, as much of the institutions, leadership, and even military leadership remained in place. The US was much more interested in getting these particular powers up and running as quickly and strongly as possible so that they could help deter the USSR. The cultural development of those nations was influenced by enjoying great economic support from the US, but they are respectively responsible for their own development.

Compare this to Iraq, which was a relatively modern and stable state kept under control by a despot who had ups and downs in his relationship with the US. That government and society was eradicated, and the Iraqis are still picking up the pieces. I would not say that they benefitted. The same was attempted in Afganistan, but as they don’t depend as much on formal and informal infrastructure to mainstain their society (which is fundamentally different than how Americans or Europeans would structure or define a society), the Taliban was able to utilize its relationships throughout the country to essentially get it back to how it was before. This is the consequence of a slate wipe and an attempted slate wipe.

If the US did to Russia what they did to Iraq, I think that would cause a more dangerous situation than what exists now. Russian society was already wiped out in living memory and we are living through the consequences of that now. As for a better solution, in war all we can hope for is the least bad thing.

Was Russia actually torn down and rebuilt as the USSR? By some accounts the USSR was a grand experiment in building a better world (with seriously flawed execution), and by others it was just a continuation of the Russian empire with a new set of despots at the top. I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle, but it’s damned hard to draw any conclusions when almost everyone who talks about the USSR seems to either have too limited a perspective to see the big picture, or to have a vested interest in pushing a certain narrative.