Short answers, pulled from the story.
Shock therapy in economics is a set of policies implemented simultaneously to liberalize an economy, including ending price controls, privatizing state-owned industries, stopping government subsidies, and applying tight monetary and fiscal policies. Proponents argue it can end economic crises quickly; critics argue it deepens social suffering and inequality.
The term was popularized by Naomi Klein in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine. Jeffrey Sachs, the Harvard economist most associated with implementing such policies, has said he never chose the term and that it was "overlaid by journalism and public discussion" onto his work.
Bolivia passed Decree 21060 on the 29th of August 1985, just three weeks after the inauguration of President Víctor Paz Estenssoro. The decree ended price controls, floated the peso, laid off two-thirds of employees at state oil and tin companies, and stopped foreign debt payments. Bolivia became the first country to halt hyperinflation in a democracy without violating civil rights.
Shock therapy in Russia produced what Isabella Weber of the University of Massachusetts called a rise in mortality beyond any previous peacetime experience of an industrialized country. Poverty rose from roughly 2% of the population in 1987-1988 to 50% by 1993-1995, and the average real income for 99% of Russians was lower in 2015 than in 1991.
Poland's Balcerowicz Plan, signed into law on the 31st of December 1989, stopped hyperinflation, ended food shortages, and restored goods to shop shelves. GDP fell by 9.78% in 1990 and 7.02% in 1991, and unemployment peaked at 20.7% in February 2003, but by 2008 Poland's GNP was 77% higher than in 1989 and Poland grew throughout the 2009 European recession.
The first recognized instance of shock therapy was the neoliberal reforms of Chile following the military coup led by Augusto Pinochet. The reforms were based on economic ideas centered on the University of Chicago, and the economists who implemented them became known as the Chicago Boys. West Germany's 1948 currency reform and price liberalization under Ludwig Erhard is also cited as an early precedent.