Impacts of USSR Dissolution

Economic shock therapy

The rapid introduction of free market economics: massive cuts to government spending, new taxes and the lifting of price controls, causing economic hardship

Shock therapy in Russia

Prices rose 20x by the end of 1992 and the government defaulted on its debts in August 1998, causing an economic crisis

1998 Russian Financial Crisis

Shares lost 75% of their value between January and August 1998, inflation hit 84%, the economy shrank by 5.3%, and interest rates on bonds hit 200%

Balcerowicz Plan (Poland)

Unemployment reached 20% with 1.1 million government workers losing their jobs; workers had to upgrade skills for a competitive workforce

Polish recovery statistics

500 new businesses were set up by the end of 1992, and the annual growth rate was over 5% until the end of the decade

Privatisation vouchers

144 million "privatisation vouchers" distributed from December 1992 to July 1994; wealthy individuals purchased many, so even though nearly 70% of Russian assets were privatised by mid-1994, most citizens owned no shares

Loans-for-shares and oligarchy

Inflation meant the government couldn't repay its loans, so assets were transferred to banks as securities; as Yeltsin's approval fell to 5% in 1995, he sold Russian assets cheaply to emerging oligarchs in exchange for re-election support

Asset firesale examples

A 38% stake in Norilsk Nickel sold for US $170 million and a 51% stake in Sidanko oil for US $130 million

December 1995 regional elections

The Communist Party got 22% of the vote as a backlash against privatisation

Wealth inequality by 1996

The top 5% had US $100 billion of personal savings in Russia; the bottom 70% had just US $4.5 billion

Credit Suisse 2013 finding

35% of the entire wealth of Russia was concentrated in the hands of 110 oligarchs

Round Table talks (Poland)

6 February to 5 April 1989 - Solidarity was legalised and elections called for June, with 35% of Sejm seats contested by non-communist candidates

Solidarity's electoral victory

Took 160 of the 161 available seats in the Sejm; Lech Walesa was elected President of Poland in November 1990

Yeltsin's authoritarianism

Given the right to rule by presidential decree; after this was repealed in March 1993, he declared a state of emergency, dissolved parliament and abolished the Constitution by Decree No. 1400

1993 constitutional crisis

Parliament voted 636-2 to remove Yeltsin as President; he escalated into armed conflict, ordering troops and tanks to storm the parliament on 4 October 1993, killing 500 people

Romania's failed transition

Absence of new leaders committed to liberal democracy meant the same communist leaders continued to rule - first president Ion Iliescu had been an active member of Ceausescu's government; privatisation was highly corrupt, no justice for victims of Ceausescu's 25-year reign of terror, living standards remained low

Violence in Romania's transition

Ceausescu's security forces killed 97 protestors on 17 December 1989; clashes after Ceausescu escaped in a helicopter on 21 December resulted in 1,000 deaths

'Grabification'

Nickname for the privatisation scheme, whose inequality caused resentment towards Russia's emerging wealthy class

Russian social statistics after 1991

People below the poverty line rose from 2 to 74 million (1989-1998); alcohol consumption doubled; heroin use rose by 900% (1994-2004); the 1994 suicide rate was double that of 1986; male life expectancy dropped 10 years post-1991

Poland's social/political shift

Solidarity Party (popular movement) came to power in the first democratic elections in 1989

Romanian orphan crisis

Western impression of Romania shaped by 170,000 children in orphanages, a result of the 1966 Decree 770 banning abortion and contraception

Cultural impact: new states

The creation of 15 new states

Cultural impact: education

Student populations in Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus almost doubled by 2009

Cultural impact: Western culture

Spread of Western fashion, films, music and magazines such as Vogue and Cosmopolitan

Cultural impact: music

Raves as early as 1991 (Gagarin Party in Moscow); new pop genres of popsa, shitrock and Russian chanson; chanson reflected the growing criminal underworld, shifting from its original focus on political prisoners

Mumiy Troll lyric

1997 hit 'Run away': "all the gangsters are sleeping … run away!"

Literature after communism

Writers like Viktor Pelevin saw the rise of individualism, being "flagrantly apolitical" (The Guardian)