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In 1950, at the end of the recovery period that followed the Second World War, GDP per capita across the Eastern Bloc varied greatly by country. Czechoslovakia, the most industrialized country in the Bloc after East Germany, had a GDP per capita that was 69 percent of the rate across Western European** countries. In contrast, Romania's GDP per capita was less than a quarter of the Western European average in 1950.

1950-1989

Generally speaking, Eastern European economies grew faster and made gains on those of the west (not including Mediterranean region) in the 1950s and 1960s, however, a series of recessions and increasing debts meant that this gap widened in the 1970s and 1980s. By 1989, as communism in Europe came to an end, the difference between overall GDP per capita in the Eastern and Western Blocs returned to a similar rate as in 1950, although it varied by country. The Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, three of the larger economies of those given, had a lower share of western GDP per capita in 1989 than in 1950, while the smaller economies of the Balkans saw an increase.

1989-2000

Between 1989 and 2000, the European Union's GDP per capita grew faster than in the former Eastern Bloc countries. However, the end of communism did negatively impact EU economies in the early 1990s. Poland was the only Eastern Bloc country to make gains on the west in these years, although this was more to do with its poor economy in the 1980s. The former-Soviet states, in particular, saw GDP per capita drop below one-quarter of the European Union's rate over this decade, as post-Soviet economic recovery did not realistically begin until the late 1990s.