 By way of a domestic comparison, the post-Soviet economic decline was about half as severe as the economic catastrophe borne out of the immediate consequence of World War I, the fall of Tsarism, and the Russian Civil War.Following the economic collapse of the early 1990s, Russia suffered from a sharp increase in the rates of poverty and economic inequality.Estimates by the World Bank based on both macroeconomic data and surveys of household incomes and expenditures indicate that whereas 1.5% of the population was living in poverty (defined as income below the equivalent of $25 per month) in the late Soviet era, by mid-1993 between 39% and 49% of the population was living in poverty.