User:Heidelbergensis/Consequences of the dissolution of the Soviet Union
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
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
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]
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
Gender inequality
Crime
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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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]