The Collapse of the Soviet Union

It appears to be the judgement of history that the Soviet Union collapsed not from exterior forces, but from internal deterioration of its communist-based economy and social system. The books describing that process are legion and based in large part on speculation; the Soviet Union was notably unreliable in its accountings of economic and social indicators. It has now been roughly five years since the Soviet Union was replaced by a very loose confederation of independent states; Russia, just as it was during the days of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, remains the giant of the region. Theoretically, the new state of Russia is now "democratic" and "open" - and, as a consequence, there are available a number of indicators describing the status of the Russian economy and its society as a whole. It will be the purpose of this brief paper to recount a number of those indicators for the past five years, and to use those indicators to drawn some general conclusions about how Russia and its people have fared since the demise of the U.S.S.R.

Before presentation of those indicators, it should be noted at once that they are not the final word; "it's hard to read the Russian economy" (Rubin, 1995, p. 30). "There are more statistics available now," according to Valery Makerov, director of TsEMI (sic), a leading Russian economic and mathematical institute, "but their reliability is lower" because no one has yet devised an effective measuring tool for gauging the Russian ec

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4, p. 166). CONSUMER PRICE INDEX rose by an average of 33% throughout the year - which saw quarterly fluctuations of 10-80%, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports (Bergson, 1994, p. 56). 1993 GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT (GDP) declined by 12% from 1992 (Russia, 1995, n.p.). BUDGET DEFICITS accounted for 25% of that GDP (Dawisha & Parrott, 1994, p. 167). LABOR FORCE: 85 million - 83.9% in production and economic services, 16.1% in government (Russia, 1995, n.p.). UNEMPLOYMENT, according to Russian government reports, was only 1.5% (Bergson, 1994, p. 56). CONSUMER PRICE INDEX rose by an average of 21.25%, on a generally non-fluctuating quarterly basis, indicating a stabilizing trend over 1992 prices, according to IMF reports (Bergson, 1994, p. 56). 1994 GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT (see '93) declined by 15% from 1993 (Russia, 1995, n.p.). GDP was estimated by the World Bank at $721.2 Billion (Russia, 1995, n.p.). GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT/per capita was $2,650 according to UNICEF (Statistical profiles, 1996, n.p.); the CIA, using World Bank estimates, placed it at $4,820 - and also estimated that REAL PER CAPITA INCOME rose 18% over 1993 totals (Russia, 1995, n.p.). INFLATION averaged 10% - swinging from 5

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