Born Then1991–1998
Life during the Collapse of the Soviet Union
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, prices were freed, savings were wiped out by hyperinflation and output fell by about 40 percent. Male life expectancy in Russia fell to about 58 by 1994, from stress, alcohol and collapsing health care.
Deaths: an estimated 2–3 million excess deaths in Russia in the 1990s, mostly working-age men.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from our model, estimated from the sources.
Around the same time
- Bracero program and Mexican migration to the United States 1942–2007
- Apartheid 1948–1994
- Division of Germany 1949–1990
- Japanese postwar economic boom 1955–1973
- Vietnam War 1955–1975
- Turkish labour migration to West Germany 1961–1973
- Korean economic miracle 1962–1996
- Vietnam War and the American draft 1964–1973
- Brazilian military dictatorship 1964–1985
- Colombian armed conflict 1964–2016
- Cultural Revolution 1966–1976
- Green Revolution in India 1966–1985
- Egypt's wars with Israel (1967–1973) 1967–1973
- Ujamaa villagization in Tanzania 1967–1977
- Bangladesh Liberation War 1971
- Martial law under Marcos 1972–1986
- Migration to the Gulf 1973–2025
- Cambodian genocide 1975–1979
- The Emergency in India 1975–1977
- Dirty War in Argentina 1976–1983
- Iranian Revolution 1978–1982
- China's reform and opening 1978–2015
- Soviet–Afghan War 1979–1989
- Iran–Iraq War 1980–1988
- One-child policy 1980–2015
- Ethiopian famine of 1983–85 1983–1985
- HIV/AIDS epidemic in southern and eastern Africa 1985–2015
- Collapse of the Soviet Union 1991–1998
- Rwandan genocide 1994
- 1997 Asian financial crisis 1997–1999