Editing Economic depression (section)

===Post-communism depression===
The economic crisis in the 1990s that struck former members of the [[Soviet Union]] was almost twice as intense as the Great Depression in the countries of [[Western Europe]] and the United States in the 1930s.<ref>{{cite web |title=What Can Transition Economies Learn from the First Ten Years? A New World Bank Report in Transition Newsletter |url=http://worldbank.org/transitionnewsletter/janfeb2002 |archive-url=http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20130609102438/http://worldbank.org/transitionnewsletter/janfeb2002 |url-status=dead |archive-date=9 June 2013 |publisher=World Bank }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.k-a.kg/?nid=5&value=6 |title=Kalikova & Associates – Law Firm |language=ru |publisher=K-a.kg |access-date=7 September 2012 |url-status=live |archive-url=http://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/20120907055134/http://www.k-a.kg/?nid=5&value=6 |archive-date=7 September 2012 }}</ref><ref name=Russia>[https://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/08/books/who-lost-russia.html Who Lost Russia?], ''The New York Times'', 8 October 2000</ref> Average [[Standard of living|standards of living]] registered a catastrophic fall in the early 1990s in many parts of the former [[Eastern Bloc]], most notably in [[post-Soviet states]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/966616.stm |title=Child poverty soars in eastern Europe |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040718232818/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/966616.stm |archive-date=18 July 2004 |url-status=live|publisher=BBC News |date=11 October 2000}}</ref> Even before [[1998 Russian financial crisis|Russia's financial crisis of 1998]], Russia's GDP was half of what it had been in the early 1990s.<ref name=Russia/> Some populations are still poorer today than they were in 1989 (e.g. [[Ukraine]], [[Moldova]], [[Serbia]], [[Soviet Central Asia|Central Asia]], [[Caucasus]]).{{citation needed|date=August 2012}} The collapse of the Soviet planned economy and the [[Shock therapy (economics)|transition to a market economy]] resulted in catastrophic declines in GDP of about 45% from 1990 to 1996<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.citymayors.com/society/easteurope_cities.html |title=Poverty, crime and migration are acute issues as Eastern European cities continue to grow |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100102083735/http://citymayors.com/society/easteurope_cities.html |archive-date=2 January 2010 |type=A report by UN-Habitat |date=11 January 2005}}</ref> and poverty in the region had increased more than tenfold.<ref>{{Citation |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/12/world/study-finds-poverty-deepening-in-former-communist-countries.html |title=Study Finds Poverty Deepening in Former Communist Countries |newspaper=The New York Times |date=12 October 2000 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170205184219/http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/12/world/study-finds-poverty-deepening-in-former-communist-countries.html |archive-date=5 February 2017 }}</ref>

Finnish economists refer to the [[Early 1990s depression in Finland|Finnish economic decline]] during and after the [[breakup of the Soviet Union]] (1989–1994) as a great depression (''suuri lama''). However, the depression was multicausal, with its severity compounded by a coincidence of multiple sudden external shocks, including loss of Soviet trade, the [[savings and loan crisis]] and [[early 1990s recession]] in the West, with the internal overheating that had been brewing throughout the 1980s. Liberalization had resulted in the so-called "casino economy". Persistent structural and monetary policy problems had not been solved, leaving the economy vulnerable to even mild external shocks. The depression had lasting effects: the Finnish markka was floated and was eventually replaced by the euro in 1999, ending decades of government control of the economy, but also high, persistent unemployment. Employment has never returned even close to the pre-crisis level.{{cn|date=November 2022}}