--- abu hartal <abuhartal at hotmail.com> wrote: the Soviet Union imploded as
living standards plunged
--
They're back up though. Living standards, speaking in terms of pure ability to buy stuff, in Russia and Kazakhstan are currently their highest in history. That's possibly true in Ukraine also. Uzbekistan's doing well too. Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan are still in the shit, but they have to deal with the aftereffects of civil war and other factors.
This is pretty clear if you look not only at the statistics, but at the opinion polls as well.
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