When it comes to restoration of capitalism, which is the distinctive feature of post-communist restorations, the token restoration of capitalism is a variety of rehabilitation that can draw on the survivals from its capitalist past (survivors infested with a capitalist economic culture) and construct continuity with this past by the restitution of property rights. However, the simple transfer of restoration success criteria and other conceptual templates from restoration ecology and cultural heritage management may expose my project to the reproach that it has an anti-revolutionary bias in general and an anti-socialist bias in particular.

Therefore, I prefer to assess rehabilitated and restored social systems by criteria tailored to their distinctive features. The most important consideration is that differently from ecosystems, the enfranchised constituent members of social macro-systems belong to the same biological species (Homo sapiens). Therefore, the evaluation of restoration success should be based on the philosophy of humanism, considering the increase of human wellbeing as the ultimate guideline for the assessment of the quality of social systems. This philosophy underlies the ideology of both great modern revolutions. The protagonists of both revolutions aspired to emancipate all of humankind, including its emancipation from material destitution, which implied hunger and premature death (cp. Fogel 2004). Very differently, pre-modern social upheavals, retrospectively described by some researchers as revolutions too, did not make any such humanist promises.

Indeed, the right to life precedes all other human rights in all ‘great’ ideological documents of modern revolutions, starting with the US Declaration of Independence (1776) and ending with the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), with avoidable death from hunger and illness being the most blatant violation of this most basic human right. John Komlos and Brian Snowdon (2005: 125) provide illumination on this point:

The extent to which a socio-economic system can provide an environment (broadly conceived) propitious to the growth of the human organism, for its healthy development, so that that organism can reach its biological growth potential, is arguably a useful indicator of the humanistic nature of that system. This perspective emphasizes that human beings are sentient, and that there is a human right to health.

While the French Revolution promised progress simpliciter, the Russian Revolution and its exported clones promised the acceleration of progress and a more equal distribution of its fruits. Communist revolutions were launched in the belief that the continuance of capitalism could bring only absolute and relative impoverishment to the toiling masses (according to the teachings of Karl Marx in Das Kapital), except their members, belonging to the ‘worker aristocracy’ in some of the strongest imperialist powers, prevailing in the fight over the world’s division into formal and informal empires (according to Vladimir Lenin’s amendments, see Lenin 2008 (1917)).

The existing socialist regimes promised high economic growth levels, allowing them to catch up to the most economically advanced countries in only a brief period of time and to create an economic foundation for a level of human flourishing without precedent in human history. In the third Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), adopted in October 1961 at its 22nd Congress, building communism was operationally defined as catching up to and overtaking the United States by 1970 or by 1980 at the very latest (Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 1961). The Soviet empire surely would not have dissolved had this promise been realised in 1990 or 2000.

The ultimate cause for the demise of communism was the failure to deliver on the promise to accelerate economic progress and the social development of countries where Communist parties had established their rule.Footnote 1 Measuring the performance of post-communist regimes by the same yardsticks that communist regimes applied to themselves allows us to find out whether the allegedly doomed capitalist system, after its restoration, was able to perform better on these promises. So, when assessing the success of modern social restorations by measuring and comparing the contribution of modern revolutions and modern restorations towards the increase of human wellbeing, I will only take modern revolutions on their own terms.

The promises of communism to accelerate economic growth in particular and increase human wellbeing explain why its ideas had especially strong appeal among impatient intellectuals of underdeveloped countries, looking for recipes on how to accelerate the economic and social development of their countries that were progressing too slowly (according to their perceptions) in the framework of capitalist institutions or due to the perceived surviving elements of feudalism. A modern restored regime can succeed in enduring longer than intermediate post-revolutionary and original systems only by displaying even more rapid growth. Therefore, capitalist restoration demonstrates its success not by close similarity between restored and original capitalism (their belonging to same variety) but by the capacity to achieve higher economic growth rates in comparison with both original and intermediate economic systems. This is the idea behind the criterion of restoration economic performance success:

  • CREPS (criterion of restoration economic performance success): Restored social system C is economically successful if the growth of the output per capita in C accelerates in comparison with intermediate system B or original system A.

Application of this criterion (the same holds for the next two) involves two tests: the outperforming intermediate system test (OIST) and the outperforming original system test (OOST). The acceleration of economic growth in the restored system in comparison with its immediate antecedent is necessary just to prove its economic superiority. Acceleration in comparison with the original system is necessary to prove that restoration is not just a return of the past system, which already succumbed to revolution once, but is the creation of its improved version. The economic success of restoration is complete if C accelerates in respect to both A and B. In the case of partial success, C accelerates only with respect to B or C. If C outperforms only B but not A, partial success of restoration can mean only its success as rehabilitation. For countries with no capitalist past, the application of CREPS is limited to OIST, which means that only the test of capitalist rehabilitation performance success can be done.

When selecting criteria of rehabilitation and restoration performance success, an important consideration is the availability of time series of the cross-country and cross-time comparable datasets, encompassing as many countries under rehabilitation or restoration as possible. For the assessment of restoration economic performance success, Maddison Project Database data on the historical GDPpc at purchasing power parity (PPP) provide appropriate information (MPD 2013, 2018, 2020). However, GDP only allows a comparison of the productive capacity of societies. The relationship between production and human wellbeing is mediated by distribution, which may be more or less equal, and provides governments with ample possibilities to divert the use of output for aims that otherwise counteract growth in human wellbeing (e.g. military buildup).

After much pondering, I selected human body height and life expectancy at birth as two direct measures of human wellbeing, which combine all three advantages: validity, comparability (cross-country and cross-time) and availability of data.Footnote 2 These indicators are used measuring the health and somatic performance success of social rehabilitations and social restorations. Both for CRHPS and CRSPS, the reservations hold that the performance success of a restoration can be only partial by C outperforming only B or A. For countries with no capitalist past, only comparison of the post-communist and communist period makes sense testing only for rehabilitation success.

  • CRHPS (criterion of restoration health performance success): Restored social system C is health successful if the increase of life expectancy in C accelerates in comparison with intermediate system B or original system A.

  • CRSPS (criterion of restoration somatic performance success): Restored social system C is somatically successful if the increase of mean human body height in C accelerates in comparison with intermediate system B or original system A.

Life expectancy discloses the extent to which a specific socio-economic system is able to satisfy basic needs, which are crucial for maintaining health. These are adequate nutrition, basic education, clean water supply, basic housing and healthcare needs. ‘Physical stature is an important complement, illuminating the extent to which a socio-economic or political system provides an environment—broadly conceived—propitious to the physical growth and longevity of human organisms, so that they can reach their biological growth potential’ (Komlos and Snowdon 2005: 125).

There is an important difference between the two measures. Life expectancy discloses how well human basic needs were satisfied during the lives of individuals during all the biological phases of their lives. However, the bodies of humans grow most intensely during childhood. The most rapid growth takes place during the first 3 years of life, after which it slows down and briefly accelerates during adolescence (in the 13th–15th years of life). Growth is completed between 20 and 25, with height increases between 18 and the year of the end of growth (this varies individually) being insignificant (Bogin 2001). Thus, human height mainly indicates the biological living standard for children during a particular historical period—how good it was to be a child (and to lesser extent, an adolescent) at that time.

The difference in mean heights of consecutive generations indicates how much biological standards of living increased or declined. If fully grown adults are on average taller than their parents or grandparents, this indicates that as children they had a better childhood. There are individual caps on stature growth, depending on one’s genetic background. How much of this growth potential is realised depends on the social environment of growth: Are children undernourished or malnourished (their diet lacks the proteins, vitamins and minerals which are essential for normal growth)? Do they frequently suffer from diseases? Must they engage in physically exerting labour from their early years (instead of playing or going to school)? If so, children do not grow to the full extent that their genetic endowments allow. Therefore, some authors propose an even more specific interpretation of stature, arguing that it is an indicator of the nutrition-exertion-climate-disease environments of children (NECDEC; see Grubb and Hansen 2002).

The discovery of this indicator led to the rise and development of anthropometric history (Baten 2017; Bogin 2001; Fogel 2004; Komlos 1995a, b; Steckel 1995, 2013). The distinctive feature of anthropometric history is ‘historicisation’ of the observed variation in anthropometric data of specific human populations. More specifically, anthropometric historians do not accept explanations of variation in mean height in these populations based on stable (on the historical time scale, which is different from that of evolutionary biology) differences in the genomes of the human population before testing the causal arguments explaining this variation based on the features of their social environment.

Height is the most useful variable for cross-time comparisons of the biological standards of living of children, when the composition of a population is not significantly affected by immigration. If the identity of a population’s genome can be assumed, then increases or decreases of mean height indicate improvement or deterioration of the social environment in which children grow. Its application for cross-country comparisons is more problematic because differences in the mean height of populations in different countries can be explained by genomic differences. To control for these differences, it is advisable to limit the scope of cross-country comparisons to populations with similar genetic endowments.

The advantage of this indicator is that reliable data on its value exists for many countries. This applies only to the male population because the main source of this data is conscript measurements.Footnote 3 Therefore, its application will be limited to males. This book offers one of the few attempts at systematic use of this promising indicator for the comparative exploration of the consequences of post-communist transformation on human wellbeing (see also Komlos and Kriwy 2002; Costa-i-Font and Kossarova 2014).

Differently from CRES, three criteria of performance success allow continuous monitoring of the economic, health and somatic performance of restoration by comparing the period extending from the most recent moment of systemic change, inaugurating C, with increasingly longer periods of similar duration in the history of B and A. Early economic success of the post-communist restoration of capitalism during this period, delimited by the start of market reforms in 1989–1991 and the Great Recession in 2008–2011, can be assessed by comparing economic growth rates during this period with those during late socialism, which is known as the ‘stagnation era’ in fSU republics. I will call this comparison by application of the OIST the ‘assessment in the first retrospective’. It is supplemented by the assessment in the second retrospective, where the early restoration period is compared with the late period in the history of the original system, applying the OOST.

In addition to the assessment of early success by using the OOST and OIST, I provide assessment of actual success, comparing the performance of restored capitalism during the complete period of post-communist restoration with the last three decades of state socialism (1960–1989; OIST). The publication of data takes due time. Basing my assessment of economic success on the Maddison Project Database (MPD), I had to stop at 2018, as this is the last year in its most recent release (MPD 2020), and the time series of height data in the NCD-RisC (2020) closes with 2019. When looking at somatic success, there is the additional complication that it takes time for humans to grow up. So by now, only relatively few post-communist individuals who have grown up entirely under restored capitalism (born in 1990–2001) could be compared with the last individuals who grew up under socialism. However, because of the happy coincidence of the 100th anniversary of the independence of the Baltic states (2018) correlating with the terminal dates for which data is available, limitation of the assessment of the actual performance success of the Baltic restorations to the 1990–2018 (or 1990–2019) period cannot impair its salience.

Performance success of the capitalist restoration in the Baltic and East European countries can continue to be monitored until 2040, when the duration of the restored capitalist system (1989–2040) will have outlasted that of the complete totalitarian era (1940–1989). Its starting point was the infamous Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed on 23 August 1939, which destroyed the cordon sanitaire encapsulating Stalinist socialism within Soviet borders according to the peace treaties of 1920–1921 and exposed East European countries to the export of the Russian Revolution. So the upcoming 100th anniversary of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (in 2039) seems to be a most appropriate timepoint for the assessment of the ultimate performance success of the Baltic restorations. The latter date can be conveniently rounded to 2040, pandering to the mental habit demonstrated by social scientists to structure their data by decades.

Besides the symbolism of this date, there are important substantive reasons for the ultimate application of the OIST when measuring the economic and social progressiveness of capitalist restoration by its outperformance of the whole totalitarian era instead of only the state socialist system in the strict sense (1940–1941, 1944–1990). Even though 1938 was not the last year of the capitalist economic system or state independence in the Baltic countries,Footnote 4 the war years (1939–1945) stand in greater continuity with the socialist transformations from 1945 than with the preceding period. The operation of a market economy in the Baltic countries under Nazi occupation remained suspended, subordinating it to all-encompassing state regulation.

There is another important reason to close the time window on the original system in the cross-time comparison with 1938, even though the Baltic countries did survive as independent states during the subsequent one and a half years. This applies in particular to the assessment of the economic performance success, guided by CREPS. In 1939, the Baltic economies were severely affected by the outbreak of WWII, interrupting their trade with the United Kingdom. War-related difficulties led to contraction of their economies, continuing in the next year. Therefore, 1938 is the top year of their economic performance during the interwar period. An additional complication applies to Lithuania: its borders changed twice in 1939. In March 1939, it lost the Klaipėda (Memel) region to Nazi Germany but was granted the Vilnius region by the USSR in October of the same year. Thus, statistical data for this year is either only fragmentary or difficult to interpret.

Therefore, for application of the OOST to establish early (as of 2007–2008) and actual (as of 2018–2019) performance success of capitalist restoration, GDP growth and life expectancy rates during the early and actual restoration periods are compared with those in 1913–1938, which is another self-contained period in Baltic economic history. I would claim that this exercise also has added theoretical value, stretching the concepts of economic, health and somatic progress to their limits. Mainstream economics still assumes that there are no limits to economic growth; thus, there are no reasons to expect the acceleration of economic growth under restored capitalism. However, the increase of life expectancy and human height has a genetic ceiling, although all former attempts to specify these in numeric values were falsified by actual somatic and health progress (Oeppen and Vaupel 2002). An important finding arising from the application of the OOST to life expectancy and height increase data to country population including all post-socialist countries (see Norkus 2023) is that in most East European countries, growth rates were highest in 1913–1938, which was marked by comparatively slow economic growth.

Generally, countries where the socialist period coincided with phases of health and demographic transitions, characterised by the rapid increase of life expectancy, cannot be expected to surpass this achievement if the genetic potential of further increases of life expectancy and height were nearly exhausted by the time of the reversal to capitalism. On the other hand, there was also broad variation among socialist countries in their economic and human development progress. Restored capitalism countries with growth rates only slightly surpassing the weak growth rates of the socialist era may fail to reduce the economic and human development lag behind advanced capitalist countries with no socialist detour in their histories. However, the reduction of this lag cannot be overlooked in a meaningful theoretical articulation of the idea of what makes a restoration successful. To recall, the promise of ‘really existing socialism’ was to catch up and overtake advanced capitalist countries. After failing to deliver on this promise, economically and socially successful restorations can at least be expected to reduce this lag.

This is the rationale behind the supplementation of the tests based on general criteria of economic and human development performance success (CREPS, CRHPS, CRSPS) by a further three special tests. While the general tests apply to all modern restorations (including the 1815–1848 period), the special tests are more tightly anchored in world historical time and apply only to former communist countries. They are motivated by the observation that some former communist countries (with weak growth performance under state socialism and original capitalism) would remain backward even when passing both the OIST and OOST according to the CREPS, CRHPS and CRSPS.

  • AST (American standard test): Post-socialist restoration of capitalism is economically successful if at the end of the restoration period (2040–2050), the GDPpc of the formerly poor communist country is at least 55% of the US value, and the GDPpc of the formerly communist middle-income country is at least 70% of the US value.Footnote 5

The use of the United States as a benchmark country is validated by the application of long-term comparisons in my project, encompassing nearly the whole twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. While the economic fortunes of other advanced countries did change significantly during the twentieth century, the status of the United States as a world economic champion has remained stable during the last century and will most probably remain so into the twenty-first century (OECD 2018). Substantively, the AST identifies the economic success of restoration with being able to escape the middle-income trap (MIT). The increase or decrease of the output per capita lag behind the United States is a proper indicator to monitor the economic success of restoration continuously during its complete period. No decrease in the GDPpc lag behind the United States indicates the economic failure of restoration, while a reduced lag means that the country is on the track to success, which in the case of ultimate success culminates in crossing the threshold separating middle-income and high-income countries.

The numerical threshold values are drawn from present discussions (Glawe and Wagner 2016; Im and Rosenblatt 2015; Eichengreen et al. 2012, 2014) on the middle-income trap (MIT), which looms as a threat for countries after they escape from the poverty (or simply Malthusian) trap (Oded 2011). Ye and Robertson (2016) specify the middle-income range as lying between 8% and 36% of US GDPpc, Bulman et al. (2017) suggest 10–50% of the US level range and Woo (2012) defines middle-income countries as those with GDPpc between 20% and 55% of US per capita income. A lower threshold value (55%) applies to countries with a GDPpc value around 20% of that in the United States by 1989. A 70% value applies to countries that were middle-income countries by this time and connects to the long-term economic and social development plans of new EU members. This suggests that mean EU economic and social indicator values would be reached already by 2030. In recent decades, GDPpc in the EU was at 70% of the US level, and there is no compelling evidence to expect that the EU lag behind the United States will decrease or increase. Thus, convergence with the EU mean by 2040 or 2050 is a sufficient condition to assess the capitalist restoration as ultimately economically successful.

  • JST (Japanese standard test): Post-communist restoration of capitalism is health successful if during the restoration period (1990–2040 or 1990–2050), the life expectancy gap separating the population of a former communist country from that of Japan at the start of this period will decrease by its end.Footnote 6

Japan has been the established world champion in life expectancy among both males and females since the early 1980s and will preserve this leading position until the end of the present century, according to UN DESA (2019) projections. There is no difference in the availability or quality of male and female life expectancy data. Therefore, the JST can be used on both male and female subpopulations and on the total population encompassing both sexes.

  • DST (Dutch standard test): Post-communist restoration of capitalism is somatically successful if during the restoration period (1990–2040 or 1990–2050), the male mean height gap separating the population of a former communist country from that of the Netherlands at the start of the period decreases.Footnote 7

In this criterion, the mean height of Dutch males is used as a benchmark, as since 1985–1986 males from the Netherlands remain world height champions, rising to this position from being only 12th in the ranking in 1914 (Roser et al. 2019). A high ‘height genes’ concentration alone does not explain why they are height champions. Their position is rather a reflection of improvement and then stable high levels of the wellbeing of children and juveniles. Thus, a decrease of the ‘height gap’ behind the Netherlands would be a reliable indicator of progress in this area. The application of this test is limited to male height data because of the unreliability of female height data.