It depends on how well informed they actually are. Imagine only being able to get ABCNNBCBS on your teevee, and not having a shortwave set to listen to elsewhere... Even today, I would imagine there are limits to how well the average Russian is informed, but I would bet those so inclined have found means to determine when the government is really telling whoppers compared to ordinary every day lies.
@Smokin Joe I dunno about today,but I spent a couple of weeks in Russia right after the "collapse of communism". I spent this time visiting and talking with Russian "e-mail friends". One was a woman in her mid-30's whose father was an official "Hero of the Soviet Union" during WW-2,and working as a professor at some university in Moscow.
He was never around their luxurious (compared to the typical "Soviet Apartment") when I was there,and the reason was unspoken. Maybe he refused to be exposed to an American gangster,or maybe he was still afraid of what might happen to him if he was known to have been associating with an American. Don't know,don't really care.
What I do know is that both his daughter and his granddaughter had NO misgivings about either freedom or capitalism. I also know that their apartment was maybe 3 times the size of any other Russian apartment I visited,and they even had modern (Swedish) appliances from the GUM Department store,not the typical "Soviet" stuff seen in any other apartment I visited. Both the daughter and the granddaughter were pretty informed about life in the west,wanted more of it,and weren't hesitant about saying so.
The next time I visited I went to a Providence named "Yoshkar-Ola" and visited with a married couple who were both professors at the local college. The man's father had been a Colonel in the KGB,and he told me tales of how his father had the phones in his own apartment tapped to make sure there was no "wrong doing or wrong thinking and speaking" going on there that would get them into trouble. He taught electrical engineering. He also told me about how made his own radio and used to go up on the roof and listen to "Radio Free Europe" on his radio when his father wasn't home because he liked western rock music. In other words,he was both the son of a KGB Colonel,and a rebel.
His wife was a linguist that wrote and spoke several languages,including the almost extinct "Mari" language. The Mari were the original people that dominated that area until the Communists took over and moved everybody into the cities and made the cities all industrial areas. She was half-Mari.
I really freaked out when she sent me emails with photos of the Mari people. Would you believe birch-bark canoes,feathers in their hair,big "blade" noses,teepees, dark red skin?
The only people still speaking the Mari Language were a few Mari in Yoskhar-Ola,and a tribe in the remote parts of another European country whose name I can't remember at the moment,who were nomadic and herded reindeer. She would go there every summer and teach them how to read and write in Mari. She was one of the few people in the world that could read and speak the language.
She insisted the museum would be the first place we would visit when I got there,and I freaked out looking at the photos and the artifacts. As I have mentioned here before,I am 1/4 Tuscarora Indian,and my grandmother was full-blooded. I turned to her and said "Shit,you ain't nothing but an American Indian! Hello,CUZ!",which got a big laugh from her.
BTW,the Mari Museum is on the web now. I can't remember the URL,but you can just type "Mari Museum" into your search engine and find it. LOTS of photos and lots of info if that sort of thing interests you.
And all this was within 2 years of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Just imagine how informed the Russian people are today. Also,consider the fact that to the typical Soviet Citizen that had damn little privacy or consumer convenience items,the one thing they all had was pride in their personal accomplishments and knowledge,and being called "ignorant" was the biggest insult possible.
I only met one Russian citizen that was hostile to me in two trips there,and it was a old man still wearing his WW-2 medals on his cheap suit on the Moscow Subway. He ranted for a few minutes to me in Russian,and you could have heard a pin drop in that subway car. Being rude was in the same category to Russian as being ignorant/uninformed,and he was being rude in public. He received absolutely zero support from the other riders.
I did ALMOST have a little dust up with some newly rich Russian asshat in a new Mercedes that damn near ran over the daughter of the woman I was with when he ran a red light. I screamed a few obscenities at him and threw something that hit his car,and he stopped right in the middle of the intersection and jumped out of his car. I guess his plan was to scream at or threaten me,but since I was running right at him,he decided to get back in his car and haul ass. Probably a good thing for both of us. I wouldn't have fared well in a Moscow lockup.
The Russian people know more about what is going on that our media is willing to admit.