Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic - Economy

Economy

In the Soviet system, all local proceeds were initially appropriated into the federal budget at Moscow, and some of them were then invested back in the local economies. Thus, investment figures do not represent actual income; rather, they resemble the spending side of the national budget. By 1947, the private sector had entirely disappeared, accompanied by a rapid industrialization that occurred soon after Soviet reoccupation. Soviet planners expanded oil shale mining and processing in the late 1940s, taking over that industry in northeast section of Estonia. In the 1970s, the Soviet economy experienced stagnation, exacerbated by the growth of a shadow economy.

National income per capita was higher in Estonia than elsewhere in the USSR (44% above the Soviet average in 1968). Official Estonian sources maintain that Soviet rule had significantly slowed Estonia's economic growth, resulting in a wide wealth gap in comparison with its neighboring countries (e.g., Finland, Sweden). For example, Estonian economy and standard of living exceeded that in Finland prior to World War II. Despite Soviet and Russian claims of improvements in standards, even three decades after World War II Estonia was rife with housing and food shortages. Eastern Bloc economies experienced an inefficiency of systems without competition or market-clearing prices that became costly and unsustainable and they lagged significantly behind their western European counterparts in terms of per capita Gross Domestic Product. Estonia's 1990 per capita GDP was $10,733 compared to $26,100 for Finland. Estonian sources estimate the economic damage directly attributable to the second Soviet occupation (from 1945 to 1991) to lie in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars. Similarly, the damage to Estonian ecology were estimated at around 4 billion USD.