 After the fall of Soviet Union in the 1990s, growth plummeted, living standards declined, drug use, homelessness and poverty skyrocketed and suicides increased dramatically.Growth did not begin to return to pre-reform era levels for approximately 15 years.From the end of the World War II to the mid-1970s, the economy of the Eastern Bloc steadily increased at the same rate as the economy in Western Europe, with the least none-reforming Stalinist nations of the Eastern Bloc having a stronger economy then the reformist-Stalinist states.