No doubt they were expecting meaningful economic growth. They got it.
Their economy has increased in size by roughly five fold since they switched to Capitalism, with zero population growth. They've gone from a GDP per capita of sub $2,000 to nearly $10,000 in that time. And it appears likely set to continue growing nicely in the coming decade. I'd be willing to bet that in another ~15 years they'll get to near $20,000 per capita, generally something closer to where Slovenia, Slovakia and Czech are today.
AFAIK the same living standards the most advanced 2nd world countries (SI, CZ, SK, DDR) had in 1989 they reached at around 2005, so it's like almost 20 years wasted on reaching the same quality of life, and that only on average. Before those societies were much more equal, e.g. income difference was around 5x from highest level to lowest level, nowadays it's 1000000x (fueled often by corruption and dysfunctional Rechtstaat), so on average majority of the population likely had their living standards decline (in terms of debt, mortgages that didn't exist before etc.). So just looking at GDP and nominal value might not tell the whole story as inflation was about the same. It's probably like laughing at Russia and how much do they spend on army, but ignoring the costs might be 10x lower than in the US. We in Western Europe tend to have pretty biased optics when ignoring local realities.
Their economy has increased in size by roughly five fold since they switched to Capitalism, with zero population growth. They've gone from a GDP per capita of sub $2,000 to nearly $10,000 in that time. And it appears likely set to continue growing nicely in the coming decade. I'd be willing to bet that in another ~15 years they'll get to near $20,000 per capita, generally something closer to where Slovenia, Slovakia and Czech are today.