GDP per capita in select regions of Europe 1989-1998

In the decade that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communist systems in Eastern Europe, economic conditions across the region generally got worse before they improved. GDP per capita had been declining throughout most of the 1980s but fell dramatically as communism ended. In Central and Eastern Europe, economic recovery began in the early 1990s, whereas this process did not start until 1996 in the former-Soviet states. As a result, GDP per capita in Central and Eastern Europe had almost returned to its 1989 level within a decade, whereas GDP per capita in the former-Soviet states had dropped by 45 percent between 1989 and 1998. This transitionary period in the continent's east did have a knock-on effect on the continent's West. However, growth did continue. Additionally, GDP per capita was 2.2 times larger in the West than in the Soviet Union in 1989, but by 1998 it was 4.6 times larger.