ABSTRACT
The depression has deepened and is already much worse with respect to output reduction than the Great Depression in the West; living standards have fallen sharply; officially registered foreign trade has been greatly reduced; the foreign debt is increasing; and income distribution has become very unequal. Many Russians are apprehensive that lower incomes will accompany reform. Interpreting GNP simply as a yardstick of economic output or income or material living standards, as opposed to an indicator of human welfare, does not avoid difficulties. It is at least as hard to assess the standard of living in the former Soviet Union as in Western market economies. In the Russian case, basically unrelated events such as trade disruptions, civil unrest among the former republics, and falling world oil prices also influence living standards, making the marginal impact of economic reform even harder to disentangle.
