The economy completely collapsed after the transition from a socialist to a capitalist economy.
As you can see, moving from socialism to capitalism caused a total collapse of the Russian economy. If capitalism is always superior to socialism as far as generating wealth is concerned, then why did the move to capitalism collapse the economy.
Ukraine is an example of the utter failure of neoliberalism. Ukraine has been following a radical neoliberal project ever since 1991. The Ukrainian governments have been following the US Republican Party model – steal from the poor and give to the rich – for 23 years now. The result? The economy is nearly collapsed, a few oligarchs are multimillionaires if not billionaires and the social structure of society has almost completely fallen apart due to massive cut in social spending. The cuts in social spending have been so severe that many social programs do not even exist anymore.
The truth is that the vast majority of Ukrainians had it a lot better under Communism in 1990 than they have under radical capitalism since then. The Ukrainian economy has still not yet caught up to the size it developed under Communism. This is particularly true in the East where nostalgia for Communism is very high.
