Editing Eastern Bloc (section)

==Legacy==
===Aftermath===
Writing in 2016, German historian [[Philipp Ther]] asserted that [[Neoliberalism|neoliberal]] policies of liberalization, deregulation, and [[privatization]] "had catastrophic effects on former Soviet Bloc countries", and that the imposition of [[Washington Consensus]]-inspired "[[Shock therapy (economics)|shock therapy]]" had little to do with future economic growth.<ref>{{cite book|last=Ther|first=Philipp|date=2016|title=Europe since 1989: A History|url=https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10812.html|publisher=[[Princeton University Press]]|isbn=9780691167374|access-date=13 March 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190402224229/https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10812.html|archive-date=2 April 2019|url-status=live}}</ref>

An estimated seven million premature deaths took place in the former USSR after it collapsed, with around four million in Russia alone.<ref>{{Cite journal|date=1 May 2017|title=The effect of rapid privatisation on mortality in mono-industrial towns in post-Soviet Russia: a retrospective cohort study|journal=The Lancet Public Health|language=en|volume=2|issue=5|pages=e231–e238|doi=10.1016/S2468-2667(17)30072-5|issn=2468-2667|doi-access=free|last1=Azarova|first1=Aytalina|last2=Irdam|first2=Darja|last3=Gugushvili|first3=Alexi|last4=Fazekas|first4=Mihaly|last5=Scheiring|first5=Gábor|last6=Horvat|first6=Pia|last7=Stefler|first7=Denes|last8=Kolesnikova|first8=Irina|last9=Popov|first9=Vladimir|last10=Szelenyi|first10=Ivan|last11=Stuckler|first11=David|last12=Marmot|first12=Michael|last13=Murphy|first13=Michael|last14=McKee|first14=Martin|last15=Bobak|first15=Martin|last16=King|first16=Lawrence|pmid=28626827|pmc=5459934}}</ref> Russia experienced the largest drop in life expectancy during peacetime in recorded history after the fall of the USSR.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Ciment|first=James|date=21 August 1999|title=Life expectancy of Russian men falls to 58|journal=BMJ: British Medical Journal|volume=319|issue=7208|page=468|doi=10.1136/bmj.319.7208.468a|issn=0959-8138|pmc=1116380|pmid=10454391}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Men|first1=Tamara|last2=Brennan|first2=Paul|last3=Boffetta|first3=Paolo|last4=Zaridze|first4=David|date=25 October 2003|title=Russian mortality trends for 1991–2001: analysis by cause and region|journal=BMJ: British Medical Journal|volume=327|issue=7421|page=964|doi=10.1136/bmj.327.7421.964|issn=0959-8138|pmid=14576248|pmc=259165}}</ref>
The scholars [[Kristen Ghodsee]] and Mitchell A. Orenstein have referred to this as the "mortality belt of the European former Soviet Union" and assert that it could have been avoided with the implementation of "an aggressive health policy intervention" which could have "prevented tens of thousands of excess deaths."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ghodsee |first1=Kristen |title=Taking Stock of Shock: Social Consequences of the 1989 Revolutions |last2=Orenstein |first2=Mitchell A. |date=2021 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=978-0197549247 |location=New York |pages=195–196 |doi=10.1093/oso/9780197549230.001.0001 |quote=In the mortality belt of the European former Soviet Union, an aggressive health policy intervention might have prevented tens of thousands of excess deaths, or at least generated a different perception of Western intentions. Instead, Western self-congratulatory triumphalism, the political priority to irreversibly destroy the communist system, and the desire to integrate East European economies into the capitalist world at any cost took precedence.}}</ref>

Poverty skyrocketed after the fall of the USSR; by the end of the 1990s, the number of people living below the international poverty line went from 3% in 1987–88 to 20%, or around 88 million people.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last=Izyumov|first=Alexei|date=2010|title=Human Costs of Post-communist Transition: Public Policies and Private Response|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41288494|journal=Review of Social Economy|volume=68|issue=1|pages=93–125|doi=10.1080/00346760902968421|jstor=41288494|s2cid=154520098|issn=0034-6764}}</ref> Only 4% of the region lived on $4 a day or less before the USSR dissolved, but by 1994, this number skyrocketed to 32%.<ref name=":0" /> In Russia, [[Boris Yeltsin]]'s [[IMF]]-backed rapid privatization and [[austerity]] policies resulted in unemployment rising to double digits and half the Russian population falling into destitution by the early to mid 1990s.<ref>{{cite book |last=Mattei|first=Clara E.|date=2022 |title=The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism|pages=301–303|url=https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo181707138.html|location= |publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]]|isbn=978-0-226-81839-9|quote="If, in 1987–1988, 2 percent of the Russian people lived in poverty (i.e., survived on less than $4 a day), by 1993–1995 the number reached 50 percent: in just seven years half the Russian population became destitute.}}</ref>

Crime, alcohol use, drug use and suicides all skyrocketed after the fall of the Eastern Bloc.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> The GDP fell as much as 50% in some republics during the 1990s. By 2000, Russia's GDP was between 30 and 50% of its pre-collapse output.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web|title=End of the USSR: visualising how the former Soviet countries are doing, 20 years on {{!}} Russia |url=https://theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/aug/17/ussr-soviet-countries-data|access-date=21 January 2021|website=The Guardian |date=17 Aug 2011  |first1=Mark |last1=Rice-Oxley |first2=Ami |last2=Sedghi |first3=Jenny |last3=Ridley |first4=Sasha |last4=Magill |url-status=live |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20210128064905/https://amp.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/aug/17/ussr-soviet-countries-data |archive-date= Jan 28, 2021 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Great Depression {{!}} Definition, History, Dates, Causes, Effects, & Facts|url=https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Depression|access-date=21 January 2021|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=13 mind-blowing facts about Russia's economy|url=https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/russia-economy-facts-2019-4-1028116037|access-date=21 January 2021|website=markets.businessinsider.com|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=What Explains the Post-Soviet Russian Economic Collapse?|url=https://thewire.in/economy/post-soviet-russian-economic-collapse|access-date=21 January 2021|website=The Wire}}</ref>

In 2011, ''[[The Guardian]]'' published an analysis of the former Soviet countries twenty years after the fall of the USSR. They found that "GDP fell as much as 50 percent in the 1990s in some republics... as capital flight, industrial collapse, hyperinflation and tax avoidance took their toll", but that there was a rebound in the 2000s, and by 2010 "some economies were five times as big as they were in 1991." Life expectancy has grown since 1991 in some of the countries, but fallen in others; likewise, some held free and fair elections, while others remained authoritarian.<ref name=":2" />

[[File:Eastern Bloc Life-expectancy (1).png|thumb|Life expectancy of some Eastern Bloc countries, compared to Western Europe]]
However, the Central European states of the former Eastern Bloc–Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia–showed healthy increases in life expectancy from the 1990s onward, compared to nearly thirty years of stagnation under Communism.<ref>Hauck, Owen (2 February 2016) [https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/average-life-expectancy-post-communist-countries-progress-varies-25-years-after Average Life Expectancy in Post-Communist Countries—Progress Varies 25 Years after Communism]. Peterson Institute for International Economics. Retrieved 4 January 2021.</ref><ref>Gerr, Christopher J., Yulia Raskina & Daria Tsyplakova (28 October 2017)[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-017-1764-4 Convergence or Divergence? Life Expectancy Patterns in Post-communist Countries, 1959–2010] ''Social Indicators Research''. Retrieved 4 January 2021.</ref><ref>Safaei, Jalil (31 August 2011). [https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecri/2012/137412/ Post-Communist Health Transitions in Central and Eastern Europe]. ''Economics Research International''. Retrieved 4 January 2021</ref><ref>Mackenbach, Johan. [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234823288_Political_conditions_and_life_expectancy_in_Europe_1900-2008 Political conditions and life expectancy in Europe, 1900-2008]. ''Social Science and Medicine''. December 2012</ref><ref>Leon, David A. [https://blog.oup.com/2011/04/life-expectancy/ "Trends in European Life Expectancy: a Salutary View"]. OUPblog, Oxford University Press, 23 April 2013. Retrieved 12 March 2021.</ref> Bulgaria and Romania followed this trend after the introduction of more serious economic reforms in the late 1990s.<ref>C Dolea, E Nolte, M McKee. [https://jech.bmj.com/content/56/6/444 Changing life expectancy in Romania after the transition] ''Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health''. Retrieved 4 January 2021.</ref><ref>
Chavez, Lesly Allyn (June 2014). [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335675821_The_Effects_of_Communism_on_Romania's_Population The Effects of Communism on Romania's Population]. Retrieved 4 January 2021]</ref> By the turn of the century, most of their economies had strong growth rates, boosted by the [[enlargement of the European Union]] in [[2004 enlargement of the European Union|2004]] and [[2007 enlargement of the European Union|2007]] which saw Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, the Baltic States, Romania and Bulgaria admitted to the European Union. This led to significant improvements in living standards, quality of life, human health and economic performance in the post-Communist Central European states, relative to the late Communist and early post-Communist periods.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/26/this-is-the-golden-age-eastern-europes-extraordinary-30-year-revival {{"'}}This is the golden age': Eastern Europe's extraordinary 30-year revival"]. ''The Guardian''. 26 October 2019.</ref> Certain former Eastern Bloc countries have even become wealthier than certain Western European ones in the decades since 1989. In 2006, the Czech Republic was reported to have become wealthier than [[Portugal]], something also reported to be true of Poland in 2019.<ref>"[https://euobserver.com/economic/20701 Czech republic leapfrogs Portugal in wealth terms]" ''EU Observer''.</ref><ref>"[https://polandin.com/46809897/poland-became-richer-than-portugal-in-2019-imf Poland became richer than Portugal in 2019: IMF] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210128205419/https://polandin.com/46809897/poland-became-richer-than-portugal-in-2019-imf |date=28 January 2021 }}"</ref>

In 2016, the [[Right-libertarianism|libertarian]] think tank [[Cato Institute]] stated that the analyses done of post-communist countries in the 1990s were "premature" and "that early and rapid reformers by far outperformed gradual reformers" on [[Lists of countries by GDP per capita|GDP per capita]], the [[United Nations Human Development Index]], [[political freedom]], and developed better institutions. The institute also stated that the process of privatization in Russia was "deeply flawed" due to Russia's reforms being "far ''less'' rapid" than those of Central Europe and the [[Baltic states]].<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Havrylyshyn |first1=Oleh |last2=Meng |first2=Xiaofan |last3=Tupy |first3=Marian L. |date=July 12, 2016 |title=25 Years of Reforms in Ex-Communist Countries |url=https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/25-years-reforms-ex-communist-countries-fast-extensive-reforms-led-higher-growth#introduction |access-date=2023-07-07 |website=[[Cato Institute]]}}</ref>

It has been argued by several scholars that the cessation of the Socialist Bloc and the end of [[communism]] as a global hegemonic force allowed [[neoliberal]] [[capitalism]] to become the dominant global system, which has resulted in surging [[economic inequality]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Ghodsee |first=Kristen |author-link=Kristen Ghodsee |date=2018 |title=[[Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism]] |url= |location= |publisher=[[Vintage Books]] |pages=3–4 |isbn=978-1568588902|quote=Without the looming threat of a rival superpower, the last thirty years of global neoliberalism have witnessed a rapid shriveling of social programs that protect citizens from cyclical instability and financial crises and reduce the vast inequality of economic outcomes between those at the top and bottom of the income distribution.}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Greene|first1=Julie|authorlink1= Julie Greene |date=April 2020|title=Bookends to a Gentler Capitalism: Complicating the Notion of First and Second Gilded Ages|url=|journal=[[The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era]] |volume=19 |issue=2 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|pages=197–205|doi=10.1017/S1537781419000628|pmc= |pmid= |access-date=}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Bartel |first=Fritz |date=2022 |title=The Triumph of Broken Promises: The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism |url=https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674976788 |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |isbn=9780674976788 |pages=5–6}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Gerstle |first=Gary |author-link=Gary Gerstle |date=2022 |title=The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era |url=https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-neoliberal-order-9780197519646?cc=us&lang=en& |location= |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |pages=10–12, 149 |isbn=978-0-19-751964-6|quote=The collapse of communism, then, opened the entire world to capitalist penetration, shrank the imaginative and ideological space in which opposition to capitalist thought and practices might incubate, and impelled those who remained leftists to redefine their radicalism in alternative terms, which turned out to be those that capitalist systems could more, rather than less, easily manage. This was the moment when neoliberalism in the United States went from being a political movement to a political order.}}</ref>

A 2009 [[Pew Research Center]] poll showed that 72% of Hungarians, 62% of both Ukrainians and Bulgarians, 48% of both Lithuanians and Slovaks, 45% of Russians, 39% of Czechs, and 35% of Poles felt that their lives were worse off after 1989, when free markets were made dominant.<ref>{{Cite news |date=2 November 2009 |title=End of Communism Cheered but Now with More Reservations |language=en-US |work=Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project |url=http://www.pewglobal.org/2009/11/02/end-of-communism-cheered-but-now-with-more-reservations/ |url-status=live |access-date=14 May 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180519112519/http://www.pewglobal.org/2009/11/02/end-of-communism-cheered-but-now-with-more-reservations/ |archive-date=19 May 2018}}</ref> A follow-up poll by Pew Research Center in 2011 showed that 45% of Lithuanians, 42% of Russians, and 34% of Ukrainians approved of the change to a market economy.<ref>{{Cite news |date=5 December 2011 |title=Confidence in Democracy and Capitalism Wanes in Former Soviet Union |language=en-US |work=Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project |url=http://www.pewglobal.org/2011/12/05/confidence-in-democracy-and-capitalism-wanes-in-former-soviet-union/ |url-status=live |access-date=14 May 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180520020300/http://www.pewglobal.org/2011/12/05/confidence-in-democracy-and-capitalism-wanes-in-former-soviet-union/ |archive-date=20 May 2018}}</ref> Writing in 2018, the scholars [[Kristen R. Ghodsee]] and [[Scott Sehon]] assert that "subsequent polls and qualitative research across Russia and eastern Europe confirm the persistence of these sentiments as popular discontent with the failed promises of free-market prosperity has grown, especially among older people".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Ghodsee |first1=Kristen R. |author-link=Kristen R. Ghodsee |last2=Sehon |first2=Scott |author-link2=Scott Sehon |date=22 March 2018 |title=Anti-anti-communism |url=https://aeon.co/essays/the-merits-of-taking-an-anti-anti-communism-stance |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180925141956/https://aeon.co/essays/the-merits-of-taking-an-anti-anti-communism-stance |archive-date=25 September 2018 |access-date=26 September 2018 |website=[[Aeon (digital magazine)|Aeon]]}}</ref>

In 2019, a Pew Research Survey on European public opinion asked citizens of Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary and the former East Germany two questions: whether they approved of the change to a multi-party democracy, and whether they approved of the change to a market economy. The change to a multi-party democracy was approved by 85% of Poles and East Germans, 82% of Czechs, 74% of Slovaks, 72% of Hungarians, 70% of Lithuanians, 54% of Bulgarians, 51% of Ukrainians and 43% of Russians. The transition to a market economy was approved by 85% of Poles, 83% of East Germans, 76% of Czechs, 71% of Slovaks, 70% of Hungarians, 69% of Lithuanians, 55% of Bulgarians, 47% of Ukrainians, and 38% of Russians.<ref>{{Cite news |date=15 October 2019 |title=European Public Opinion Three Decades After the Fall of Communism |work=Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/10/15/european-public-opinion-three-decades-after-the-fall-of-communism/ |access-date=25 September 2020}}</ref>

===List of existing communist states===
{{see also|People's Republic}}
[[File:Communist States.svg|thumb|300px|A map of [[communist state]]s after 1993]]

Since 1993, the following countries have remained communist states:
{|class="wikitable sortable"
!Country
!Local name
!Since
!Ruling party
|-
|China{{NoteTag|[[Hong Kong]] and [[Macau]] are administered under the "[[One country, two systems]]" principle.}}
|In [[Standard Chinese|Chinese]]: 中华人民共和国<br />In [[Pinyin]]: ''Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó''
|1 October 1949
|[[Chinese Communist Party]]
|-
|Cuba
|In [[Spanish language|Spanish]]: ''República de Cuba''
|1 July 1961
|[[Communist Party of Cuba]]
|-
|{{no wrap|Laos}}
|In [[Lao language|Lao]]: ''Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao''
|2 December 1975
|{{no wrap|[[Lao People's Revolutionary Party]]}}
|-
|Vietnam
|{{no wrap|In [[Vietnamese language|Vietnamese]]: ''Cộng hòa xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam''}}
|{{no wrap|2 September 1945 ([[North Vietnam]])<br>30 April 1975 ([[Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam|South Vietnam]])<br>2 July 1976 ([[Reunification Day|unified]])}}
|[[Communist Party of Vietnam]]
|-
|}