Russia and Ukraine

[Jehanne]

laissez-faire economics certainly never prevailed in its logical extreme anywhere in the world.

We'll just have to disagree. In the early decades of the United States, the economy was very much laissez-faire. Only much later did government regulation and oversight, antitrust, etc., come into play. In fact, some United States historians have described the early US economy as a time when "hustlers hustled".