Taking Stock of Shock

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Using an interdisciplinary approach, this book evaluates the social consequences of the post-1989 transition from state socialism to free market capitalism in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Blending ethnographic accounts with economic, demographic, and public opinion data, the authors provide insight into the emergence of new, unequal social orders. It examines the contrasting narratives on transition promoted by Western institutions and their critics—one of qualified success and another of epic catastrophe—showing that data can support both perspectives for different countries and regions. While some citizens experienced significant improvements in living standards and life satisfaction, allowing them to catch up with the West after a brief recession, others faced demographic and social collapses due to rising economic precarity, the degradation of social welfare from privatization, and increasing gender, class, and regional disparities tied to neoliberal reforms. Transition recessions in many countries lasted decades, surpassing the severity of the US Great Depression. Some nations have yet to return to pre-1989 levels of economic production or mortality, with significant population losses projected. Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this work presents a comprehensive array of data from various social science fields to offer a nuanced perspective on the successes and failures of the transition, ch