The strange and alarming population trends that have gripped the former Soviet Union since the fall of communism in 1989--many fewer babies being born, many more people dying--have been widely reported in recent months.

But the demographic calamity covers a much broader region than the reports would have one believe.

Statistics from official agencies not just in Russia but in Eastern Europe paint a portrait of a vast and diverse region seized by a common convulsion.

From Leipzig to Vladivostok, birth and marriage rates are plummeting and death rates are soaring. No one--East or West--predicted such violent tremors. Yet the trends are no statistical fluke; when birth and death registration is nearly complete--as it is in all those countries--population data can be easily checked for internal inconsistencies.

There is nothing intrinsically worrisome about declining population growth, or even declining population. West Germany, after all, did rather well in the 1970s and ’80s.

But sudden, precipitous changes in the birth and death rates are compelling indicators of societies in extreme distress--societies unable to cope with health problems that were once routine.

From 1989 to the first half of 1993, according to official data, the birth rate fell more than 20 percent in Poland, around 25 percent in Bulgaria, 30 percent in Estonia and Romania, 35 percent in Russia and more than 60 percent in Eastern Germany--which, if present rates continue, can expect an average of less than one birth per woman per lifetime.

In the past, such abrupt shocks were observed in industrial societies only in wartime.

Perhaps even more alarming is the pervasive surge in mortality in the former Soviet bloc. Even sturdy age groups have been stricken, even in relatively well-off areas.

From 1989 to 1991, the death rate rose nearly 20 percent for Eastern German women in their late 30s, and nearly 30 percent for men of the same age.

Infant mortality is reported rising not only in Russia but also in Bulgaria, Latvia, Moldova, Romania and Ukraine. In 1992 and 1993, eastern Germany buried two people for every baby born.

The post-Communist population crisis is puzzling--and all the more disturbing--in that it does not seem to be associated with any particular social conditions, economic policies or political arrangements.

A leap in death rates may be all too understandable in Russia--where the medical system has broken down, antique diseases such as diphtheria are out of control and dozens of homeless vagrants die in train stations every month.

But how to explain the leap in Eastern Germany, where unification has led to major improvements in living standards and medical care?

Or in Poland, where the falling birth rate and rising death rate have coincided with “shock therapy” market reforms and the transition to democratic pluralism?

Uncertain though the causes may still be, it is all too apparent that the adjustment to life after communism is proving traumatic.

Is it entirely coincidental that every Communist regime with falling death rates is still in power--China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam--while virtually every Communist government that collapsed is reporting sharp deterioration in health?

A significant exception is the Czech Republic, where post-Communist demographic shocks have been mildest and liberalization appears to be moving forward most smoothly.

Whatever the cause, the demographic shocks warrant concern, and not only on humanitarian grounds. In the modern world, where health progress is all but taken for granted, significant and general increases in mortality always betoken social instability, governmental fragility or both.

A debilitated labor force augurs poorly for the transition to an affluent market economy.

And it’s particularly ominous that three of the countries in demographic crisis--Russia, Ukraine and Belarus--have nuclear weapons. For that reason if no other, policy makers in Washington would be well-advised to pay close attention to the population trends of the post-Communist regions.

Demography may not be destiny, but until stability is achieved and the post-Communist landscape becomes familiar to Western eyes, mundane tallies of births, marriages and deaths can help us make sense of this troubled, confusing and potentially explosive expanse of the globe. 

Nicholas Eberstadt is a visiting scholar at AEI. This article originally appeared in the New York Times.