The Eurasian Customs Union: the main trends of trade and economic relations in 2011-2014

The collapse of the Soviet Union became a starting point for appearing of two opposite processes on the post-Soviet territory: disintegration and integration. Russia tried to overcome the crisis of the transition period together with the other post-Soviet states and became one of the centers of attraction. The difficulties of the political dialogue and world experience of integration made the CIS-states to establish economic ties which could be the launching pad for expanding cooperation in future. Therefore the most active supporters of reintegration were the states, economically connected with the Russian Federation in the Soviet period and having no political claims to it. The revival of the economic relations in 2010-2012 was changed by the recession that demonstrated the exhaustion of extensive methods of interaction of the countries. The economic systems of these states had serious quantitative and qualitative differences and pointing out the need to intensify cooperation. Global shifts also influenced the negative trends in the union; these negative trends in world economy make the Eurasian Customs Union participants implement more pragmatic trade activity.