The Transition Economies

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, fifteen nations emerged to join the international economy. The Soviet Union had been a military power and one of the major producers of the world economy, and the successor states were expected to follow in its geopolitical footsteps. Four of the new nations (Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine) were nuclear powers. Each nation inherited the trained labor and production facilities left on its territory by the Soviet Union’s demise. While a transition period was expected before the sum of the parts once again equaled -- and then surpassed -- the whole, this period was expected to be short