Dissolution of The Soviet Union - Legacy

Legacy

According to a 2006 poll by VCIOM 66% of all Russians regretted the collapse of the Soviet Union. 50% of respondents in Ukraine in a similar poll held in February 2005 stated they regret the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

The final collapse of the USSR was one of the most sudden and dramatic territorial losses that has befallen any state in history. Between 1990 and 1992 the Kremlin had lost direct government control over about one-third of Soviet territory – most of it acquired in the period between 1700 and 1945 – which had about one-half of the Soviet population by the time of the dissolution.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, and the breakdown of economic ties which followed, led to a severe economic crisis and catastrophic fall in the standards of living in the 1990s in post-Soviet states and the former Eastern Bloc, which was even worse than the Great Depression. Even before Russia's financial crisis of 1998, Russia's GDP was half of what it had been in the early 1990s, and some populations are still poorer as of 2009 than they were in 1989, including Ukraine, Moldova, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.

The collapse of the Soviet Union hit the Cuban economy severely. The country lost approximately 80% of its imports, 80% of its exports and its Gross Domestic Product dropped by 34%. Food and medicine imports stopped or severely slowed. The largest immediate impact was the loss of nearly all of the petroleum imports by the USSR. The economy of North Korea, however, suffered even greater catastrophe. The collapse of the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies caused the total implosion of an economy already stagnant from poor planning and massive military spending. According to Angus Maddison, per capita GDP fell from USD$2,800 in 1988 to $1200 in 1998. Furthermore, natural disasters ruined harvests and the country suffered a catastrophic famine that killed between a few hundred thousand and 2 million people.