Eurasian Economic Union: Russia's new USSR?

What future will the Eurasian Economic Union have? Will EEU members use the experience of the Soviet Union or of the European Union? Will they integrate on fundamentally new principles of cooperation? Pravda.Ru editor-in-chief Inna Novikova discussed the topic with the chief of the laboratory of market economy of the Economic Department of the Moscow State University, Andrei Kolganov.


After all the situations that our old time European countries have been through, one should pay special attention to Eurasian partners. The prospects of Russian integration have been recently discussed at a government meeting in Kazakhstan. Why prospects, if Russia and Eurasia have long been integrated?"


The break-up of the USSR was a disaster to all of its former members


"The level of integration in the Eurasian Union is lower than that in the European Union. A lot was destroyed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A lot was lost, and Russia reoriented her foreign economic ties to European, American and African countries. The decision about the Eurasian integration was supposed to stop these destructive processes. One has to understand the direction, in which partners will be developing, and what tools can be used to support this integration."

"The Soviet Union had a strong economy that embraced all of its republics. Were all those ties lost during the 1990s?

"Not all of them. But it is definitely hard to restore the things that we used to have 25 years ago. Most importantly, deep integration on Eurasian space will become possible when joint investment projects start materializing."
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