The fall of communism was one of the largest drops in quality of life and lifespan ever recorded, IIRC.
https://www.rferl.org/a/life-expectancy-cis-report/24946030....
To put it into perspective, after ww2, the russian population recovered in a few years. The russian population today is still below their 1990 levels. In terms of population, life expectancy, quality of life, etc, ww2 (as horrible as it was ) was an insignificant blip. The fall of the soviet union has been a generational catastrophe for russia. A funk they seem unable to get out of demographically, economically, politically, etc.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/population
In the US, our population has grown 50% since 1990 ( almost 150 more people ). The russian population has dropped 5% since 1990. After ww2, russia had major population growth like the US. After germany and japan lost ww2, their population, economy, etc improved drastically. For some reason, losing a hot war ( japan, germany ) turned out to be much better than losing a cold war ( russia ).
Think about it, we are nearly 2 generations into the post-soviet world and russia still hasn't recovered their population. After ww2, russia almost doubled their population in 2 generations. Losing the cold war appears to have demoralized the russian elite and people far more than losing ww2 did to germany and japan. Why? Who knows.
There’s also the matter of scoping WW2: I would argue that WW2’s direct effects on thousands of millions of people deserve more weight than the fall of communism, which affected hundreds of millions. If we don’t take this type of scoping into effect I could claim that one person’s cancer diagnosis was a worse quality of life drop than WW2, and the discussion gets a little absurd.
Because the soviet union was russia. Russia is the successor state of the soviet union. Which country would you use? Moldova? Estonia?
> If you scoped broader to include the other post-Soviet counties you’d include all the countries where life expectancy has significantly increased since then.
Even russia's life expectancy improved after the initial disastrous decline. My point was that overall population hasn't recovered since the soviet collapse. This is true for ukraine, moldova, russia, estonia, most former ex-soviet nations. The only one to buck the trend are muslim ex-soviet nations.
> I would argue that WW2’s direct effects on thousands of millions of people deserve more weight than the fall of communism, which affected hundreds of millions.
WW2 didn't affect 'thousands of millions'. The world population in 1940 was around 2 billion. Also we are talking about the effects of the fall of the soviet union. Why I limited it to russia/soviet union.
> If we don’t take this type of scoping into effect I could claim that one person’s cancer diagnosis was a worse quality of life drop than WW2, and the discussion gets a little absurd.
Maybe it's a language issue. You don't seem to have a solid grasp of the english language. My point was that the fall of the soviet was worse FOR RUSSIA than ww2 was FOR RUSSIA. I'm not saying that the fall of the soviet union was worse overall than ww2. That's another discussion. So no. One person's cancer diagnosis isn't worse than ww2. One person's cancer diagnosis is worse than that person's diagnosis of ankle sprain. You see. You have one person and two bad events. You have one russia and two bad events. You compare the bad events on the one person or one russia.
You are being very disingenious here. I can't for the life of me understand why.
Then, Communism fell... corrupt entities took over many of the countries, only looking to enrich themselves, and as the international solidarity system failed against "cheaper" products there was no hope to keep the often horribly outdated factories alive, and at the same time Western societies hungry for more labor force (and way more attractive currencies) began to "brain drain" the former Communist countries.
Today, the people may have rights on paper, but in practice they're worthless (either due to corruption or because the state is too poor), and society is crumbling apart from decades of looting and corrupt elites on one side and young generations moving abroad because they can't see any way that their country escapes the death spiral. Many people struggle with survival every day. So yes, in conclusion it's warranted to say that the fall of Communism led to a massive drop in quality of life.
TikTok and the "gangsta" life style are just the cherries on the cake.
Real-socialism/communism failed for good reasons and deservedly. I shed no tears for that period.
My point is that what came after tended to be even worse - the post-downfall period, the breakdown of intra- and inter-block trade, the looting by criminals and corrupt (former) elites and other destruction and the resulting brain drain had consequences that have held or taken the affected countries back in development for decades.
Of course the elites were corrupt. But there was a marked difference in corruption when there still was some sort of government that held them a bit accountable, or when the government essentially vanished and the criminals became the government. Russia is the easiest example (because it's best documented, information on the Balkans is pretty scarce): Your average Russian "elite" back in the USSR era, he maybe had a couple villas and Western cars, that's it. Your average Russian "oligarch" (or to put it better, kleptocrat) today? Buys a soccer club for billions of euros, has multiple luxury yachts and stashed away many billions of dollars more. Hell, the billionaire Russian oligarchs alone have a net worth of over 500 billion dollars [1] despite the war, and that doesn't include the millionaire mini-oligarchs. Imagine where Russia would be, had that wealth remained in the hands of the nation, and its leaders invested it into education, social cohesion and modern industry?!
[1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russian-billionaires-...
What locations are you talking about? Even from the article above in a remote poor town in Albania that sounds pretty bad, their society is definitely not crumbling and while poor, not struggling to survive every day.
Albania's average wage is about 600-700 USD per month depending on whom you ask. Croatia's is a bit higher, around 1100... but the prices even for everyday staple foods are higher than in Germany. It's all shiny and nice in the tourism areas, but outside of them life can suck pretty hard.
What's more, how many people did Soviet 'communism' itself crush? What was the life span of a Ukrainian farmer in Soviet Russia? Did that go up after the fall of communism? I can't see any decrease in quality that can be directly and singularly tied to the fall of the USSR, except for perhaps the dictators at the top of the heap. Arguably, those same class of dictators are responsible for repressing quality of life even after the dissolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Soviet_conflicts
And on top of that go over what every post soviet republic went through after USSR collapsed. Those countries were under dysfunctional system for 70 years and suddenly they're being thrown in a 180 turn economy without any institutions. Also keep in mind that majority of republics were left on their own and had to become satellites of Russia if they wanted to survive.
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.CHAP.1.HTM#:~:text=In....
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/ALB/albania/life-expec...
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/...
It also doesn't reflect changes in life expectancy during COVID, showing a consistent 0.08% increase every year. Seems less statistics and more projections.