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User:Heidelbergensis/Consequences of the dissolution of the Soviet Union

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Animated map showing independent states and territorial changes, and eventually the dissolution of the Soviet Union in chronological order
A homeless shack in Ivanovo, Russia. Since the fall of the USSR in 1991, the problem of homelessness in Russia has sharpened dramatically. By 2002, 10% of all Russian children were living on the streets.[1]

The dissolution of the Soviet Union, followed by a transition to capitalism, along with decommunization, had both immediate and long-term consequences in not only the countries involved, but also in countries closely dependent on the Soviet Union, such as Cuba and North Korea. The transition period is usually considered to be achieved at a "very high human cost"; leading to a drastic decline in living standards, significant drops in life expectancy, a severe economic crisis worse than the Great Depression, millions of excess deaths, a deterioration in social services, unprecedented increases in poverty, inequality, and other forms of deprivation, and in other social issues such as homelessness, crime, and substance addiction, and also a "highly anomalous peacetime population crisis". Numerous military conflicts and ethnic clashes unfolded during and after the dissolution, provoking humanitarian crises and leaving many internally displaced.

With the dissolution, the Communist movement around the world has declined, and United States became the world's sole superpower. The end of the Soviet Union is also often considered the end of "Russian colonialism and imperialism".[2] Citizens of the former USSR are often polled regarding the public opinion towards the fall of the USSR and its consequences, and a majority of respondents in many of these countries, most notably Russians, regret the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and state that it did more harm than good.

Economic crisis

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Russians protest the economic depression caused by the post-Soviet transition to capitalism: "Jail the redhead!", 1998.

The breakdown of economic ties that followed the Soviet collapse, and subsequent economic policies such as the shock therapy led to a severe economic crisis[3] in post-Soviet states and also the former Eastern Bloc,[4] which was even worse than the Great Depression.[5][6]

The transition, on economic terms, was "a complete disaster."[7] In Russia, between 1991 and 1998, the GDP regressed each year, and by 1997, it was half of what it was before the transition.[8] The crisis culminated in 1998; Russian stock market crashed, value of the Russian ruble fell sharply, and it became impossible for Russia to pay its foreign debt. The government eventually stopped the sale of the ruble on the international market.[7] Similar processes were observed in other post-Soviet countries: By 1998, the GDP of an average former Eastern Bloc country fell by 30%.[9]

The economic crisis saw a massive increase in poverty and economic inequality throughout the region. Before the start of reforms in 1987 and 1988, there were 14 million people in Eastern Europe, or 3.1% of the population, living below $2.15 a day. During the 1990s, this increased to 88 million people or 20% of the population.[10] By 1999, around 191 million people in the former USSR and Eastern Europe countries were living on less than $5.50 a day,[11] and at $4.30, the poverty rates in Commonwealth of Independent States increased from 5.6% to 59.6%.[10] According to the World Bank, poverty headcount and total number of the poor in Eastern Europe before and after the transition to capitalism was 4% and 12.6 million, and then 45% and 168 million, respectively.[12] In Russia, in 1998, as much as 90% of the population was living below the local poverty line.[7] On the other hand, the richest portions of the society significantly increased their wealth both in amount and portion;[13][14] as the Gini index has risen in each one of the countries involved,[10] by an average of 9 points for all former socialist countries.[15]

For most postcommunist countries, the transitional recession lasted throughout the 1990s, and for others, it is considered to be still continuing. The average postcommunist country only returned to 1989 levels of GDP in 2005,[16] while for some other post-Soviet countries, over 50 years will be needed before their GDP reaches pre-transition levels.[17][18]

Death toll

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See also: Russian Cross, Demographic crisis of Russia, and Demographics of Ukraine

What we are arguing is that the transition to market economies [in the region] is the biggest … killer we have seen in the 20th century, if you take out famines and wars. The sudden shock and what it did to the system … has effectively meant that five million [Russian men’s] lives have been lost in the 1990s.

—Omar Noman[19]

The excess deaths as a part of the increase in mortality rates, including infant mortality, and drops in life expectancy in the aftermath of the fall, caused by the post-Soviet economic crisis, and their total number, is often considered to be the "death toll" of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. From 1990 to 1995, an extra 7 million premature deaths occurred in post-Soviet states, 4 million of them Russia alone.[20] In Russia, between 1992 and 2001, 2.5 to 3 million Russian adults died in middle age in the period than would have been expected based on 1991 mortality.[21] In a 2001 study by the economist Steven Rosefielde, he calculated that there were 3.4 million Russian premature deaths from 1990 to 1998.[22] A higher estimate calculates the excess deaths in Russia as more than 7 million, a figure that is more than three times the death toll the World War I inflicted on the Russian Empire.[23] Mortality among Russian men rose by 60% since 1991, equivalent to more than 700,000 additional deaths annually[9] and four to five times higher than European average.[24] The main cause of this increasing mortality and thereby excess deaths was the "rise in self-destructive behaviour".[19] The next biggest factor was the major cutbacks in health spending; healthcare expenditures declined in the course of the 1990s in all of the post-Soviet countries by an average of 30%, and in Russia, by 1997, 11% of patients could not afford medical treatment and 41% of patients could not afford necessary drugs.[10]

Natural population growth of Ukraine since 1950. The demographic crisis, called the Russian Cross and caused by the dissolution, is visible in the graph.
  Birth rate
  Death rate
  Natural growth rate

The high number of excess deaths, combined with drops in birth rates,[25] have caused a "highly anomalous peacetime population crisis" in post-Soviet countries. Since the dissolution, the population of Russia has been shrinking, with its mortality levels "nothing short of catastrophic", and its human resources "appearing to be dangerously eroding". Since 1992, about 12.5 million more, or one third more Russians have been buried than born, the second worst surfeit of deaths over births since World War II, topped only by the Great Leap Forward era in China.[23] This trend is named the "Russian Cross". Similar population crises have occurred in Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine,[26][27][28] and also in some non-Soviet post-Socialist states like Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia.[25]

The dissolution also caused drops in life expectancy in many of the countries involved. In Armenia, Belarus, Latvia and Lithuania, and also in Bulgaria and Romania, life expectancy significantly dropped between 1991 and 1999.[19] In Russia, male life expectancy fell as low as 58 by 2001;[21] and by 2009 overall life expectancy at age 15 was lower than Bangladesh, East Timor, Eritrea, Madagascar, Niger, and Yemen, while adult male life expectancy was lower than Sudan, Rwanda, and Botswana.[23] Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus reached the life expectancies they had pre-transition only in 2013.[29] In Russia, due to the drops in male life expectancy after the dissolution, difference in life expectancy between men and women is the greatest in the world, and the gender imbalance remains to this day as there are 0.859 males to every female.[30]

Other social issues

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Gender inequality

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Crime

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In the course of transition, homicide rates increased most significantly in post-Soviet countries. Between 1993 and 1995, homicide rates increased 3.3 times in Russia, 2.4 times in Kazakhstan, and 2.1–2.2 times in Ukraine and Belarus.[10]

Suicide

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Male suicide rates per 100,000 males. Post-Soviet countries have the highest suicide rates in the world.
See also: Suicide in Russia, Suicide in Lithuania, and Suicide in Ukraine

By 1999, suicide rates have climbed by 60% in Russia, 80% in Lithuania, and 95% in Latvia, since the dissolution.[19] Similar trends followed in other post-Soviet countries. Today, after 3 decades, countries of the former Soviet Bloc still have some of the highest suicide rates in the world.[31]

Homelessness

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Substance addiction

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Public opinion

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See also: Nostalgia for the Soviet Union

Outside the USSR

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North Korea

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See also: Arduous March

Cuba

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See also: Special Period

Other

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References

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  1. ^ "An epidemic of street kids overwhelms Russian cities". The Globe And Mail. 16 April 2002. Archived from the original on 8 May 2022. {{cite news}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 8 May 2021 suggested (help)
  2. ^ Van Herpen, Marcel H. (2015). Putin's Wars: The Rise of Russia's New Imperialism. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 2. ISBN 9781442253599.
  3. ^ William, Moskoff (18 September 1992). "Impoverishment and Protest in the Perestroika Years" (PDF). Conclusion. The National Council for Soviet and East European Research: 42.
  4. ^ "Child poverty soars in eastern Europe", BBC News, October 11, 2000
  5. ^ "What Can Transition Economies Learn from the First Ten Years? A New World Bank Report", Transition Newsletter, World Bank, K-A.kg
  6. ^ "Who Lost Russia?", The New York Times, October 8, 2000
  7. ^ a b c Akşin, Sina (May 2014). "Yüzyılın Sonu: Kapitalizmin Büyük Taaruzu, Sosyalizmin Bunalımı (1985-2000)". In Berktay, Ali (ed.). Kısa 20. Yüzyıl Tarihi (in Turkish) (6 ed.). Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları (published November 2018). pp. 459–461. ISBN 978-605-332-151-4.
  8. ^ "Who Lost Russia?", The New York Times, October 8, 2000
  9. ^ a b Popov, Vladimir; Kwame Sundaram, Jomo (10 June 2017). "What Explains the Post-Soviet Russian Economic Collapse?". The Wire.
  10. ^ a b c d e Izyumov, Alexei. "Human Costs of Post-communist Transition: Public Policies and Private Response". Review of Social Economy. 68 (1). Taylor & Francis, Ltd: 93–125. doi:10.1080/00346760902968421. ISSN 0034-6764. JSTOR 41288494.
  11. ^ Ghodsee, Kristen; Orenstein, Mitchell A. (2021). Taking Stock of Shock: Social Consequences of the 1989 Revolutions. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 43. doi:10.1093/oso/9780197549230.001.0001. ISBN 978-0197549247.
  12. ^ Milanovic, Branko (28 February 1998). "Income, inequality, and poverty during the transition from planned to market economy". World Bank. 1 (17419).
  13. ^ Ruccio, David F. (27 October 2017). "How the USSR Radically Reduced Inequality, Even Among its Adversaries". Socialist Economist.
  14. ^ Bukowski, Pawel; Novokmet, Filip (2 December 2019). "Within a single generation, Poland has gone from one of the most egalitarian countries in Europe to one of the most unequal". London School of Economics.
  15. ^ Scheidel, Walter (2017). The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century. Princeton University Press. p. 222. ISBN 978-0691165028.
  16. ^ Appel, Hillary; Orenstein, Mitchell A. (2018). From Triumph to Crisis: Neoliberal Economic Reform in Postcommunist Countries. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108381413. ISBN 9781108381413.
  17. ^ Ghodsee, Kristen (2017). Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Communism. Duke University Press. pp. 63–64. ISBN 978-0822369493.
  18. ^ Milanović, Branko (2015). "After the Wall Fell: The Poor Balance Sheet of the Transition to Capitalism". Challenge. 58 (2): 135–138. doi:10.1080/05775132.2015.1012402. S2CID 153398717.
  19. ^ a b c d Ciment, James (21 August 1999). "Life expectancy of Russian men falls to 58". 7208 (319): 468. doi:10.1136/bmj.319.7208.468a. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  20. ^ Azarova, Aytalina; Irdam, Darja; Gugushvili, Alexi; et al. (May 2017). "The effect of rapid privatisation on mortality in mono-industrial towns in post-Soviet Russia: a retrospective cohort study". The Lancet Public Health. 2 (5). ScienceDirect: e231–e238. doi:10.1016/S2468-2667(17)30072-5.
  21. ^ a b Men, Tamara; Brennan, Paul; Boffetta, Paolo; et al. (25 October 2003). "Russian mortality trends for 1991-2001: analysis by cause and region". 327 (7421). doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7421.964. PMID 14576248. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  22. ^ Rosefielde, Steven (2001). "Premature Deaths: Russia's Radical Economic Transition in Soviet Perspective". Europe-Asia Studies. 53 (8): 1159–1176. doi:10.1080/09668130120093174. S2CID 145733112.
  23. ^ a b c Eberstadt, Nicholas. "The Dying Bear: Russia's Demographic Disaster" (PDF). Foreign Affairs. 90 (6): 95–100, 101–104, 105–108. JSTOR 23039632.
  24. ^ "Heart disease kills 1.3 million annually in Russia — chief cardiologist". RIA Novosti. 14 February 2007. Retrieved 2007-12-27.
  25. ^ a b See, e.g., Korotayev A., Khaltourina D. Russian Demographic Crisis in Cross-National Perspective. Russia and Globalization: Identity, Security, and Society in an Era of Change. Ed. by D. W. Blum. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. P. 37-78; Khaltourina, D. A., & Korotayev, A. V. 'Potential for alcohol policy to decrease the mortality crisis in Russia', Evaluation & the Health Professions, vol. 31, no. 3, Sep 2008. pp. 272–281.
  26. ^ Ukrainian death rates 1950-2008 Demoscope Retrieved on 12-14-09
  27. ^ Ukrainian birth rates 1950-2008 Demoscope Retrieved on 12-14-09, 2009
  28. ^ State Statistics Committee of Ukraine Retrieved on 12-14-09
  29. ^ Cornia, Giovanni Andrea. "The mortality crisis in transition economies". doi:10.15185/izawol.298. Archived from the original on 13 June 2021.
  30. ^ The World Factbook. "Russia". Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Retrieved 2007-12-26.
  31. ^ "BBC NEWS - In Depth - More killed by suicide than war". bc.co.uk. 2004-09-08. Retrieved 19 March 2017.
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