ABSTRACT
In the societies of the post-socialist Europe and former USSR, the new century ushered in determined efforts to recover from the multiplicity of the 1990s shocks. The prevailing feeling was all about moving forward faster and steadier towards new economy, new social institutions. This chapter offers a brief macroeconomic overview of the former socialist economies covering the period of roughly 2000 to early 2017. The Russian crisis of 1998 was severe, deep, and for many, unexpected, despite the 1997 Asian crisis before. Between 2008 and the end of 2009, Estonia, Ukraine, Armenia, Lithuania, and Latvia experienced the sharpest declines in income per capita. Inflationary pressures emanated from the structural component in the smaller economies, dependent on labor migrant remittance flows and from spillovers in resumed commodity price growth. Proliferation of low-capitalized private banks engaged in the "loans for shares" credits of privatization schemes only added fuel to the fire of post-socialist transition vulnerabilities.
