Today is Ukraine “independence day”. It’s definitely a day of independence from common sense and brains for that forlorn territory…

The author of the “Fainting Piglet” satirical cartoons made an impromptu film for the occasion, citing as her inspiration an article with statistics from Free Press.

Here is what the author of the series said on her Telegram channel:

I made the video in one day, so there are bugs in it. And it was also very difficult to write a song in Ukrainian when you don’t speak it. But the goal was not so much a video as an advertisement for a very useful article that I would like you to read. An article about the degradation of Ukraine since its separation from the USSR. It specifically shows the degradation from the moment of the collapse of the USSR until 2016, so that they would not start shouting “we are degrading because you are bombing us.” No, Ukraine started rolling towards its grave much earlier.

I am grateful to the people who write such articles. This makes it much easier for me to search for information. Today, the lands of Ukraine are actively sold to foreign corporations not in order for the Ukrainians to live happily on them. The West does not give a damn about the population of Nezalezhnaya and its ecology. Almost every one of us has relatives, loved ones, friends or acquaintances living in Ukraine, so we DO care, but for the West we are all second-class people for whom there is not pity. It is a shame that Ukraine has not caught up on this yet. Therefore, when she celebrates independence day from Russian protection, it is like a patient in the last stage of cancer would happily celebrate oncology day.

As an aside, we would like to note that back in 2014 we published on the pages of this blog an article Two Ukraines – with a Statistical and Historical View at Novorossia, where there was a comparison of some of the statistics for the Ukrainian SSR anno 1990 and and Ukraine of 2013.

Ukraine vs. the Ukrainian SSR: Shocking statistics of the pogrom

by Svyatoslav Knyazev

After the collapse of the Union, Nezalezhnaya [translator note: a by name for “independent [Ukriane]” in Ukrainian] had every chance to become one of the most successful countries in Europe

The escape of European Ukraine from the “totalitarian Soviet hell” is going according to plan. As of late, it is difficult to surprise anyone with an analysis of the collapse of the Ukrainian economy compared to the “pre-Maidan” year 2013. But the topic of socio-economic changes that have occurred in Ukraine in comparison to the Soviet period has been undeservedly forgotten. So more the pity! After all, the main “scapegoat” enemy of Kiev today, along with Russia, is its – Ukraine’s – communist past. A separate law is dedicated to the fight against the spiritual heritage of the USSR (even the Russian Federation is not awarded such an “honour”). All Soviet symbols are officially banned. As of August 2017, a total of 2,389 monuments objectionable to the Kiev regime were demolished in Ukraine, most of which glorified the achievements of the Soviet era.

It is very curious that they decided to start an active war with the “spirit” of the USSR almost 25 years after its collapse and more than 30 years after Mihail Gorbachev began dismantling the classical Soviet system, when only those who were either just under or well over 50 remembered the real manifestation of domestic socialism. Until a new “desovietized” generation grew up, the authorities of the “Nezalezhnaya” did not dare to conduct such experiments…

I was prompted to write this material by a small note about the statements of the Ukrainian economist Sergei Korablin. This Doctor of Economics, professor and former director of the Monetary Market Analysis and Forecasting Department of the Ukrainian National Bank estimated back in 2015 that Ukraine had set an absolute global anti-record, showing the worst n planet earth GDP dynamics, managing to bypass even Zimbabwe and the Central African Republic. Having become curious about what I had read, I decided to find out what Ukraine had actually lost by seceding from the USSR and abandoning everything Soviet. This was helped by open data from the State Statistics Service of “Nezalezhnaya” and Ukrainian experts.

Given the complete uselessness of nominal GDP dynamics in the context of what we are investigating, I decided to look for data on changes in the level of gross domestic product of Ukraine at purchasing power parity. It is clear that this indicator is speculative to a certain extent, but it allows one to at least start from something.

Wikipedia, with reference to IMF data and taking into account extrapolated values, claims that by 1991 the GDP (PPP) of the Ukrainian SSR reached about 505.5 billion dollars. The indicator of independent Ukraine in 2016 is approximately 353 billion. The drop is over 30%. This is indeed an absolute world record. Zimbabwe’s similar figures for comparison over the same period are only 2-3%…

However, given the fact that the very methodology of calculating GDP (PPP) leaves some room for manipulation, I decided to look at how specific socio-economic indicators, which can be, figuratively speaking, “touched with one’s hands”, changed in Ukraine compared to the Soviet times: from sausage production and pig population to the number of schools and hospitals.

So, only dry figures, some of which I directly borrowed from the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, and some from tables collected by VOX UKRAINE on the basis of data from the same State Statistics Service.

• Electricity. In 1991, the Ukrainian SSR produced 279 billion kWh. In 2016, this figure reached only 164.6 billion. The result is a drop of 1.7 times at once.
• Ferrous metal production. 1991 — 32.8 million tons. 2016 — 13.3 million. The drop in production is 2.46 times.
• Ammonia production. 1991 — 4642 thousand tons. 2016 — 1678 thousand tons. The drop is 2.76 times.
• Cement production. 1991 — 21.7 million tons. 2016 — 9 million. The drop is 2.4 times.
• Production of refrigerators. 1991 — 803 thousand pieces. 2016 — 103 thousand. The drop is almost 8 times.
• Cloth. 1991 — 1030 million square meters. 2016 — 91 million. The drop is more than 11 times.
• Footwear. 177 million couples in 1991 and 24.1 million in 2016. The drop is 7.3 times.
• Sausages (which the Rukhovites and other “nezalezhnyks” did not want to share with Moscow). 1991 — 852 thousand tons. 2016 — 239 thousand tons. The drop is 3.5 times.
• Sugar — 4786 thousand tons against 1997 thousand tons. The drop is almost 2.4 times.
• Compared to Soviet times, coal production decreased by 3.26 times, steel by 2.44 times, tractors by 66 times, passenger cars by 27 times, trucks by 17 times.
• The number of cattle decreased from 24,623 thousand in 1991 to 3,750 thousand in 2016 – a 6.5—fold drop.
• The number of pigs (the national gastronomic pride of Ukraine) — fell from 19426 thousand heads to 7079 thousand — a drop of 2.7 times.
• The number of sheep and goats — from 8,418 thousand to 1,325 thousand — fell 6.3 times.
• If in 1990 17447 thousand square meters of housing were constructed, then in 2016 – 9367 thousand. The drop is a drop of almost 2 times.
• In 1990-1991, 3.9 thousand hospitals worked in the Ukrainian SSR. In 2016, there were only 1.7 thousand of them left. The drop is almost 2.3 times.
• In 1991, there were 700,000 hospital beds in Ukraine. In 2016, there were only 315 thousand of them left. The drop is 2.2 times.
• In 1991, 21.9 thousand schools were operating in the Ukrainian SSR. In 2016, there were only 16.9 thousand of them left. The drop is almost 1.3 times.
• In 1991, the number of kindergartens was 24.5 thousand, and in 2016 – 14.9 thousand. The drop is more than 1.6 times.
• In 1990, 170 million books were published in the “totalitarian Ukrainian SSR”, in 2016, in the “European Ukraine” – 49 million…
• The number of theatres decreased from 125 to 112, libraries — from 25.6 thousand to 17 thousand.

Ukraine inherited from the USSR the world’s largest Black Sea shipping industry, which brought a net profit of hundreds of millions of dollars, but already in the 1990s it was completely gone.

In Ukraine, almost completely destroyed the once one of the most powerful shipbuilding in the world (as of 1991, the Ukrainian SSR was one of the few places in the world where aircraft carriers were built), aircraft construction (from 250 units per year to almost zero), rocket engineering (enterprises in this industry have either closed, or are idle, or make small auxiliary jobs for Western corporations).

The only thing that Nezalezhnaya can boast of is a certain increase in indicators in crop production and related industries. The production of cereals and potatoes has increased by about two times compared to 1991, and vegetable oil by four times…

The scale of deindustrialization in relative terms is impressive. In 1991, mechanical engineering and machine building accounted for 33% of the industrial production of the Ukrainian SSR, today we are talking about approximately 12%…

Against the background of the crisis-level socio-economic processes, compared with 1990, crime has approximately doubled, while the birth rate has almost halved. The population decreased from about 52 million at the time of independence to 42.5 million in 2017 (and this is excluding migrants who left Ukraine without official notification of moving to permanent residence). In terms of the rate of population extinction, Ukraine ranks first in the world, leaving even poor African countries far behind.

Some may object: but didn’t similar processes take place in Russia? They did. And they they still do. There is an own kind of “optimization” of healthcare and education, there is poverty of the population, there is a collapse of the real sector, there is crime. But not on this scale. And most importantly, after the “Wild ’90s”, the country, albeit with a great creaking, with reservations, still began to climb out of the hole into which it fell thanks to its “reformers”.

By the way, for comparison: the average pension in Russia and Ukraine (if converted into dollars) in 2016 amounted to 170 and 70 dollars, respectively. When it comes to the average salary, the ratio is about $550 versus $150. It is clear that any comparison is rather conditional, but these figures also say something.

Taking into account the state of industry, science and infrastructure, some experts included the Ukrainian SSR at the time of its withdrawal from the Union in the top ten most developed countries in the world, and today it is hovering in the 130th place in the list of countries in terms of GDP per capita, somewhere between Papua New Guinea and the Congo (again, compare the indicators in Ukraine — $2.2 thousand and in Russia — $8.9 thousand)…

In general, decommunization in Ukraine is in full swing. Together with the monuments to Lenin, Petrovsky, Shchors and Kovpak, the Kiev regime is dismantling the remnants of the industrial state created by Soviet figures.

Decommunization will soon reach a new level. There is nothing left to heat the thermal power plants with (the Pennsylvania coal is something from the category of jokes), there is no money for the maintenance of nuclear power plants, pension and educational reforms adopted recently are burying the pitiful remnants of the social and pedagogical systems created in Soviet Ukraine. The dismantling of the free medicine inherited from the USSR is coming to an end. But this is not the main thing…

The main thing is that there is no visa. The last one who will leave the “European power” will not even need to turn off the light behind him — there will probably be no longer any light there by that time…