End of the USSR: visualising how the former Soviet countries are doing, 20 years on

They were three days that shook the world - and shook the Soviet Union so hard that it fell apart.

But for better or worse? Twenty years on from the Soviet coup that ultimately ended Mikhail Gorbachev's political career and gave birth to 15 new states, The Guardian was keen to explore just how well those 15 former Soviet republics had performed as independent countries. Our data team mined statistics from sources ranging from the World Bank, the UNHCR, the UN Crime Trends Survey and the Happy Planet Index to compare the performance of the countries. And we combed through the OSCE's reports on every election in each country since 1991 to see where democracy was taking hold -and where it was not wanted.

full story