That might be what it writes in the link, it wasn't the case though, except if you mean after things stabilized 15 and 20 years later (and it's still bad in most places). Tons of conflict, forced migration, poverty, crime, sexual slavery, and so on...
How is that evident, though? It’s actually pretty clear that the quality of life has drastically improved in most of these countries. Of *course* you can always find some group who is suffering. But there is no way I would want to live in 1980s Poland, Estonia, etc vs 2020. For example:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS?location...
The continued existence of problems does not mean things have not worked. It’s important to look at whether those problems are improving over time.
And if we only focus ex-USSR countries, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia seem more like the exceptions than the rule. Basically every single country besides them did much worse than Russia (unless like it they had a large amount of natural resources)
I still personally think the (mostly) peaceful dissolution of the USSR was probably one the best things that happened in the past 100 years. But transition to capitalism was extremely mismanaged, even in the “successful” countries.
Depends on what you mean by better. For example they're much worse thrown in the rat race
What I'm most worried of now are old, historically rich countries in decline, like Italy and Spain.
Live in Poland, muggings aren't really a thing, and according to the "what worries the world" monthly polls of ipsos[0], poles are the nation that least worries about violence and crime (it was surprising for me to see the effect is that strong), with only 5% worrying about it.
Now though it's nothing like that. I'm originally from the UK and I feel much safer being here. Not only personal safety (I don't feel there's any 'bad parts' of the city you 'shouldn't go') but also private belongings. I've never heard of anyone in recent times being burgled or having their car broken into.
Because whose who installed them of course now knew where are someone with something worth protecting with a steel doors.
If you look at houses in Compton and see metal bars on the windows, you don't instantly think "man, they must have lots of expensive stuff to steal". Kind of the same deal here.
For once, I don't think that they would consider leaving all of their valuables in front of the front door where everything is visible. Unless installing the front door includes rummaging through the entire apartment, all while the person living there is just standing and smiling. Which, I assure you, isn't how it usually goes.
And I am not trying to make it as some attack on people living in the west, I am one of them now myself. It speaks more about how safe and comfortable the modern western life can be, compared to what it was in those eastern european countries back then, that we can afford to be so oblivious to our surroundings and so much less cautious.
I see oblivious and naive people everywhere all the time (eg phone scams)
> they were way more cautious and aware of their surroundings than modern people living in the west are
Thanks for assuming I'm just a stupid guy from the West.
> all of their valuables in front of the front door where everything is visible
Of course not, but there is a lot of things what can tell you there could be valuables there. Ruined flat in a commie block is one thing, but a freshly renovated flat in that commie block is another thing.
If you think a little you can, probably, understand why I know that.
Maybe it's worth taking their points seriously instead of arguing. Nobody has flimay wooden american-style doors in Russia, everyone installs steel doors, thats the norm.
That said, the former Soviet Republics that transitioned well are those that were smaller, already edging their way towards a market economy before the USSR collapse, and received substantial help from (and eventually joined) the EU (Baltics, Hungary, Poland, Czech Rep., Slovenia), and in the case of E.Germany, unification.
I don't think most of the others have fared that well. GDP/Capita is not a good measure because it doesn't take inequality into account.
Gorbachev wanted to keep USSR intact. He didn't want a post-USSR Russia. He initiated referendums to that end. But USSR was already on the train to dissolution and nothing was going to stop it.
Indeed. He didn't weigh in on the current debacle but he praised Putin's seizure of Crimea.
He was a product of his upbringing and honestly he always seemed like a weak player to me -- but really I have no idea how difficult it might have been to bring off the reforms he did under Andropov, Chernenko and then his own premiership.
(It wasn’t exclusively in the USSR sphere of influence, but it was in their sphere of influence.)
That’s how the USA imported the Yugo!
And the GDR still got the best deal of all of the ones you mentioned. But there's massive inequality, massive unemployment. (And as a result, extremism, political fatigue, corruption, etc)
to be convincing you have to point out things that the transitioners could have done that would have worked better, but even the best experts in the world did not know any better than what was tried, so that's going to be a tough case to make.
One day the real history of those times will be written, but this is not it. Economism is faith based, not a science.
---
<tangent> I've started to become increasingly jaded about economic indicators not only because of articles like this, but because of how they are used in general. We seek data on things like economies not because those numbers matter whatsoever, but because those numbers are supposed to reflect of an objective measurement of the quality of life of people living under that economy. In effect, it's an effort to create objective metrics to try to impartially answer subjective questions.
But it ultimately fails, because subjective determination is going to be based on a practically infinite number of metrics, many of which may be immeasurable. So why not simply ask the people? Should we not be aiming to maximize e.g. contentedness/capita instead of GDP/capita and just hoping it leads to the former, somehow? Of course that's a far harder metric to maximize, but that's the whole point. Just doing everything to maximize one metric's value and then waving a "Mission Accomplished" banner clearly is not getting the job done. </tangent>
Or when the govt sells off public assets ...
Haha what? There were 15 Soviet Republics. Can you name the "most" of them where the transition went well?
Central Asia has the same oligarchy as you would picture in Russia and probably much worse. All dictators only changing after the previous dies.
This is a cousin to both mansplaining and gaslighting, and if we want good, lively discussion on HN we should try to be careful to avoid it. The gp comment gave some very specific and relevant comments about economic upheavals in the late Gorbachev period and deserves better than a well-actually.
OP offered a link and an explanation for some of Russia's trouble: the formation of government-backed oligarchies that prevented a healthy market economy to develop. Not the entire picture, maybe a wrong conclusion, but a valid point nevertheless.
I don't know what you call it when a country loses 10% of it's population, like Ukraine did, but decimation is the dictionary definition.
10% is "one in every ten"
https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2022/03/16/the-transiti...
A lot of Russia's issues stem from the way the government sold off their state owned corporations, which created artificial monopoly/oligopoly owners overnight — often insiders/cronies to begin with. This can be contrasted with traditional market economies where large corporations start off as small companies and become dominant through innovation, growth, and generally meeting consumer demands.