Why cant Russia ever be a 1st world nation?

It can be and maybe one day it will- it's somewhat on the way now.

In the past, Russia was effectively a first-world nation and its people had a similar standard of living to the rest of Europe. This didn't really hold out past the 20th century, and a lot of that was due to substantial mismanagement and economic stagnation, particularly under the Brezhnev regime in the 1960's and beyond, and his successors. Technological development was also impaired by policies that inhibited and in some cases outright banned forms of scientific research (it got to the point that you had to get approval to buy a photocopier). So it failed to keep up.

Since the fall of the USSR, Russia has now had problems from the other side- while unrestrained communism led it into stagnation, entrenched capitalism and corruption have now impaired development after that, although standards of living have improved under Putin.

Russia is a first world nation. Vladimir Putin is the most influential leader in the world which is why the U.S. wants to crush him. After spending 60 years destroying the Communist economy and 25 years of economic recovery, the U.S. wants to destroy Russian capitalism. The U.S. has some sort of phobia about China and Russia.

By definition, the West is the first world and the East is the second. To make Russia first world, you'd have to dig it up and move it.

Because they had such a long cold war. Communism...oppression etc. Only since about 1992 or so have they felt some true freedom.

They love their authoritarians. Ever since the days of the czar.

They could have moved from dictatorship to democracy after the fall of communism, but they (or their leaders) decided to go another direction.