The majority of former socialist countries in Eastern Europe experienced an economic decline longer and deeper than the United States’s Great Depression of the 1930s. This was a devastating upheaval in the lives of about 420 million people, or about nine percent of the world’s population in 1989. Whether measured by the fall in economic output, the explosion of hyperinflation, the collapse of birth rates, the sudden growth of inequality and violent crime, or the massive increases in unemployment, displacement, and excess deaths linked to the neoliberal policies, the human collateral damage of the creation of market economies was unprecedented in peacetime. But even as populations struggled to survive the chaos and social pains of this transition, Western economists, international experts, and local elites conspired to downplay the deleterious effects and convince people that it wasn’t actually happening.
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Kristen R. Ghodsee is Chair and Professor of Russian and East European Studies and a member of the graduate group in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of twelve books, which have been cumulatively translated into 19 languages. Her most recent monograph is Everyday Utopia: What 2000 Years of Bold Experiences Can Teach Us about the Good Life with Simon & Schuster. In addition to her academic work, she has written for articles for outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Die Tageszeitung, and Le Monde Diplomatique.