Shock Therapy — Hyperinflation and Mass Impoverishment

On the advice of Western economists and the IMF, Yeltsin's government freed almost all prices overnight on 2 January 1992 while cutting state subsidies and spending — "shock therapy" intended to jump-start a market economy. Inflation hit roughly 2,500% in 1992 alone, wiping out the life savings of ordinary Russians; the World Bank estimated the share of Russians living in poverty rose from about 2% in the late Soviet period to nearly a third by the mid-1990s, alongside a sharp fall in male life expectancy.