Perhaps too much focus on anecdotes in this very interesting article, but the big takeaway is that the sanctions may well have provided both an ideological boost and an economic wake-up to Russia, not the least thanks to trade with India, Iran and China.
Sanctions against an entire population are unethical and counter-productive, unless your goal is militarization and war. See Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, but also Germany after Europe's Great War. This is so consistent that we can only conclude that such is indeed the goal of the Western military-capitalist complex.
Of course, such population-wide sanctions should not be confused with boycott against a governing elite that oppresses part of the population it governs, which combined with support for the oppressed can be effective. As seen during abolition movements, in apartheid South Africa, and as could work with Israel if Western powers had the political will to.
Harper's Magazine – Behind the New Iron Curtain, by Marzio G. Mian
Caviar, counterculture, and the cult of Stalin reborn
