A Russian strongman would screw up it. The problem wasn't the drinking, it was a industry that couldn't produce a decent car. I belive they made two-stroke engines and to put that into less technical terms, they made cars using as much gasoline as a 50's US car with as much confort as the most extreme enviromentaly friendly cars today.
I know some would say that they could sell rockets (they did and it didn't help, not big enough industry) or raw material. But that just the problem, it would require a large restructuring of the economy. The economy did to some degree restructure and it was a painful process.
I assume this Russian strongman would avoid it but I don't think he could have fixed the underlying problems in a sensible way.
But the troubles doesn't stop there. The strongman with the cult of personality can't have a free press for example (and the press of the era was something special.) And that is a bad idea.
And I haven't even mentioned the biggest fear, that the strongman taking military action to regain Soviet territory lost in the breakup or going after minorites. That would be a bad thing.
However, the post-communist Soviet did see a similar man stepping up to the plate. Turkmenbashi. I even think the meaning is the same, the father of the country.
Edit: What would Daddy Russia be in Russian?
