the economy of the Soviet Union was by some measures the second largest in the world after the United States. This economy was beset by economic stagnation, an inflationary spiral, shortages of consumer goods, and fiscal mismanagement. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economic integration of the Soviet republics was dissolved and overall industrial activity declined substantially. A lasting legacy of Communism in Soviet Union remains in the physical infrastructure created during decades of combined industrial production practices, and widespread environmental destruction. The transition to capitalist market economies in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc was accompanied by Washington Consensus-inspired "shock therapy", advocated by Western institutions and economists with the intent to replace state socialism with capitalism and integrate these countries into the capitalist western world. Following a transition to free-market capitalism there has been a steep fall in the standard of living. Post-Communist Russia experienced rising economic inequality and poverty a surge in excess mortality amongst men, and a decline in life expectancy, which was accompanied by the entrenchment of a newly established business oligarchy. By contrast, the Central European states of the former Eastern Bloc–Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia–showed healthy increases in life expectancy from the 1990s onward, compared to nearly thirty years of stagnation under socialism. Bulgaria and Romania followed this trend after the introduction of more serious economic reforms in the late 1990s. The average post-Communist country had returned to 1989 levels of per-capita GDP by 2005, and as of 2015, some countries were still behind that. These economic developments led to increased nationalist sentiment and nostalgia for the Communist era. Many social democratic parties, particularly after the Cold War, adopted neoliberal market policies including privatisation, deregulation and financialisation. They abandoned their pursuit of moderate socialism in favour of economic liberalism. By the 1980s, with the rise of conservative neoliberal politicians such as Ronald Reagan in the United States, Margaret Thatcher in Britain, Brian Mulroney in Canada and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, the Western welfare state was dismantled from within, but state support for the corporate sector was maintained. In the United Kingdom, Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock expelled some Trotskyist members and refused to support the 1984–1985 miners' strike over pit closures. In 1989, the 18th Congress of the SI adopted a new Declaration of Principles, stating: "Democratic socialism is an international movement for freedom, social justice, and solidarity. Its