Per capita income in the Soviet Union as a share of Western European income 1950-2000

The dissolution of the Soviet Union saw a drastic fall in income rates across the region. In 1950, after the economic recovery period that followed the Second World War, income per capita in the Soviet Union was around half of Western Europe's rate. These figures did increase in the subsequent decades, before falling throughout the 1970s and 1980s, yet, in the final years of the communist system in Europe, income per capita was still around half of Western Europe's rate (albeit slightly lower than in1950).

By 2000, however, these figures had dropped below a quarter of Western Europe's income per capita. Most of this downturn occurred before 1996, and the economic situation in Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic states began to improve in the final years of the century. It would take another few years before the economic situation of the other former-Soviet states would also begin to stabilize.