I personally shut down all of my social media accounts a few years ago. Haven't missed it for a moment.

as grey and dull as everyday communist life

That’s the author’s opinion, and he compiled an image with assorted everyday printed matter to illustrate his – subjective – point, see figure 1. I can totally see what he’s getting at.

this is objectively a great typeface

I beg to differ. Considering that Zhurnalnaya Roublennaya was made long after Futura and Erbar-Grotesk and many other geometric sans serifs, it’s remarkably unbalanced and wonky. Looking at the glyph set reproduced above, I can make out various issues and questionable details. For example, r and L are too wide and cause gaps in words, the descender in g is oddly flat and doesn’t harmonize with the curvature of the a’s top, joints in b and d are dark and would benefit from more optical correction, the t with full ascender but vestigial hook looks naïve at best, the wide M with splayed legs and high vertex is an oddity that sticks out like a sore thumb (see “KÜMME”), the S topples over, etc.

Now some of these oddities can be charming, especially nowadays when much of the visual culture is perceived as slick and too perfect. That’s why a digital interpretation like GT Eesti was made and found its users. GT Eesti embraced Zhurnalnaya Roublennaya’s quirks, but if you look closely, many were crucially toned down: t doesn’t have a full ascender, r isn’t as wide, S doesn’t tilt forward as much, etc.

Your font looks incredible but is basically unusable in any user-grade software. All the fancier letters are locked away by stylistic sets which just won't appear, even though they're supposedly all available in high upper ranges.  Try and you just get a block.

Could you publish a version without the stylistic sets?

It shows a few more characters, but note that the r in Paranoid doesn’t match Gadget.