In drei Jahrzehnten haben die baltischen Staaten deutlich gemacht, welchen Weg – der Europäische oder der Russisch – der richtige ist

What about the Tajik way?

GDP is a flawed measure. Use PPP to measure.

I guess on Reddit it’s not necessary to point out how far down Russia would be without oil, gas, gold, diamonds, coal etc. etc. that they simply extract and ship abroad? All of which Baltics do not have… On the other hand, without those natural resources there would be no Putin and no imperial ambitions, no wars with neighbors etc. Maybe they would even have a more or less democratic government. That damned resource curse…

Estonia is killing it

Surprised that Azerbaijan is so low when it is an oil economy, but it probably has a major wealth gap and apparently many were below the poverty line in 2012,

Meanwhile, tankies will keep insisting that Baltics are „shitholes“ and they no longer have any industry.

I don’t want to argue about the politics part but isn’t choosing 1995 just 4 years after dissolution of the Soviet Union, the structure in which their economies existed, a bit of a bad comparing point?

Or what exactly is meant with the „european or russian“ dichotomy?

How about Kazakhstan pretty sure it isn’t Russian or European or Chinese way.

Looking at Russia – let me guess – the price of oil from 1995 to 2025 increased by a factor of 6, right?

Okay, but what’s Kazakhstan doing right?

Yes but the GDP per Capita is not the best indicator. By that logic the Irish way would have been the best lol.

P.S: I love Ireland, one of the best lads in the world! BIG HEARTS!

For people it’s good going democracy way. Sure it’s flawed, but generally speaking, most of population is better off this way.
If you are a small group who wants to be rich and hold all the power, the soviet way is better, people don’t matter here that much.
Simple as that.
You are saying it like no one knows this.

Estonia has done an incredible job since breaking from Soviet rule—unlike Ukraine’s struggle. But the reality is bleak: Estonia feels like an innocent man on death row, working hard, keeping in shape, being the model citizen—yet execution still looms. They’ve done everything right, but without stronger backing, it’s still a no-win situation. Frankly, Estonia should be an American state. Get the protection and the possibility to bloom further. ( joking )

Now look at cost of living in each country to see how far money actually goes.

Comments didn’t surprise me at all. The domination of negative, cynical, and pretext-seeking reactions in this post about the improvement of the Baltics clearly indicates the rise of Euroscepticism and why „European solidarity“ is pretty much questionable.

Haters are gonna keep finding excuses to fling mud, such as population or the EU subsidizing, as if the Baltics were the only countries in the EU like that. Vatniks? I am not even tiring my fingers to take them seriously and slap them with counterarguments.

It’s shocking how bad ruzzia was already in 1995. It inherited all the natural resources and that overwhelming majority of assets on the Soviet Union. It did nothing with them, just enriched few individuals and concentrated the wealth with the few people who hold it to this date.

On top of it ruzzia has had decayed of artificially reducing and sabotaging opportunities in its “satellite” states and artificially creating hubs for education and production in its core major cities.

Despite this the Baltic countries were already neck and neck with GDP per capita in 1995. Ruzzia is really, really bad at generating any returns to its subjects.

Long live western Europe!

Capitalism will cause the death of us all but its okay because line went up a little bit (ignore how most of the wealth of post-soviet countries was stolen by western capitalists during the 1990s)

Armenia and Azerbaijan increasing their BNP/population by 20 times.

Not bad.

They also just signed a peace deal in order to cooperate in resisting Russian pressure.

I have to ask: does this data account for inflation? If the value of currency is halved, then nominal GDP doubles, but real GDP is the same. I highly doubt that countries like Georgia have managed to more than double their GDP/capita every 7 years or so.

For anyone who want to check other countries, or from a different period: [This is the source.](https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD)

You can add countries to the trend graph, or just download the total excel file.

GDP is one thing, but purchasing power is not so good. Estonia growth nicely, but still Tallinn is very expensive compared to even Moscow.