Bit of a long explanation, but a friend of mine was watching a video and offhandedly it mentioned the USSR. The claim is that the Russian SSR used all the other SSRs as raw material sources, they would all get shipped to Russia and made into stuff and then sold to the satellites. It's unclear if the guy meant Comecon in general or just within the USSR.
I figured here would be a great place to ask. Is there any merit in this claim? I know that during the breakup, much of the light and heavy industry was destroyed but i don't know where exactly it was.
From what I understand in many ways the USSR subsidized satellite states for geopolitical reasons. The other soviet republics did provide access to certain important resources, but just as often the USSR provided them with key natural resources like oil and steel, ect. Hence why North Korea and Cuba, and a few other countries experienced such deep recessions when the USSR collapsed and was no longer able to send them cheap oil.
It would be great if you could link the video. I very much doubt all raw materials were sent to the Russian SSR. That would be wasteful. Soviet defense doctrine would certainly not allow overly centralized production of strategically important goods.
There is also the question of what is meant by raw. Let's take iron as an example. Would the mines in the Ukrainian SSR really send iron ore all the way to Magnitogorsk? Or would it send fines, pellets or sponge? Would they send all of it?
More than likely what your friend has found is a piece of nationalist chauvinist propaganda. Perhaps this is a question to ask the Prime Numbers channel on YouTube.