POLITICS-RUSSIA/CIS: Post-Soviet Integration Remains A Distant Dream

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW, Nov 30 2001 (IPS) - Former Soviet leaders, who gathered in Russian capital to mark the 10th anniversary of the Commonwealth of Independent States, CIS, have all long pledged to prioritise multilateral integration.

Yet the path from rosy plans on paper to reality seems to be taking longer than expected and the proposed economic commonwealth has yet to materialise.

On Friday Russian President, Vladimir Putin, in his capacity as head of the CIS Council, hailed his counterparts for their willingness to travel to Russia for the organisation’s celebration despite “urgent” problems back home.

CIS head of states discussed a report on commonwealth’s activities within the past decade as well as plans until 2005. A concrete blueprint of multilateral activities was not on the summit agenda. However, post-Soviet leaders also discussed security issues, including on the going crisis in Afghanistan.

The territory of the former Soviet Union has been the hotspot of a number of bloody conflicts. Tajikistan is still recuperating from the shock of recent civil war, which claimed tens of thousands of lives.

On Thursday, Putin and Tajik President, Emomali Rakhmonov, reportedly discussed the anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan, which borders Tajikistan.

In the aftermath of the Soviet collapse in 1991, former Soviet republics were heralding their economic integration and creating new divisions instead. The CIS – whose creation in 1991 sealed the fate of the collapsing Soviet Union – still loosely groups 12 ex-Soviet republics, with the exception of the Baltic states.

Ukrainian President, Leonid Kuchma, told the journalists this week that he favoured closer post-Soviet economic integration, notably between Ukraine and Russia.Ties between Russia and Ukraine – the second largest former Soviet republic of 50 million people, which used to be the Soviet Union’s wheatbasket and produced up to a third of Soviet weapons – has been viewed as crucial in terms of post-Soviet economic integration.

Member states experience a sort of fatigue relative to CIS integration, Nazarbayev told journalists at the summit. He said CIS countries have yet to form a “sufficiently strong alliance” on a new basis..

Nazarbayev argued that former Soviet states have more reasons for integration as compared to the European Union. He said bilateral meetings in Moscow had yielded some concrete results and Kazakhstan and Russia may sign a treaty on delimitation of 7,500-kilometer border between two nations.

Russian and Kazakh leaders also achieved “serious progress” on delimitation of the Northern Caspian. An agreement between Russia and Kazakhstan is to become an important step towards the Caspian settlement, Putin’s foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhodko was quoted as saying.

During the meetings the CIS premiers also agreed to strengthen “anti-terrorist” cooperation, including joint military manoeuvers.

Economists say that industrial output in the CIS has halved over the last decade of its bumpy transition to a market economy from Soviet-era centralised planning.

The Russian government has said it is confident that with the participation of the CIS the world economy will grow by at least two percent by the year 2005.

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov suggested discuss a plan of creating the CIS free trade zone, which would help boost economic links between the former Soviet states. The forming of a free trade zone within the CIS has been on the organisation’s agenda for quite some time now but the discussion has brought few practical results so far.

Analysts say there are few economic dividends for Russia in developing closer ties with its mainly impoverished CIS partners, which owe Russia billions of U.S. dollars for oil and gas supplies. In fact some even argue that the CIS free trade zone could cost Russia up to seven billion U.S. dollars a year.

Kazakh Prime Minister, Kasymzhomart Tokayev, indicated at the summit that CIS states were contemplating a common currency in the future although he conceded the task could take some time to materialise.

During the past decade, trade turnover between CIS states dropped by 300 percent and the post-Soviet trade is now dominated by commodities which amount to some 50 percent of the total trade turnover, he said.

Russia has remained something of a big brother to many of the other former Soviet republics, notably in Central Asia where Moscow controls access to Soviet-built pipelines to export oil and gas.

The CIS has been criticised of being strong in paperwork and weak in enforcement. Between December 1991 and June 2001 the CIS approved 1,139 different documents, of which some 84 percent were ratified. However, this huge bulk of paperwork resulted in few practical changes in everyday life of CIS citizens.

The post-Soviet leaders have been keen to dismiss criticism that their much-heralded cooperation lacks substance. The CIS summit is a productive forum of friendly countries’ leaders and not just “presidents’ club,” said Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Russia and former Soviet republic of Belarus signed separate treaties pledging even closer ties – they have vowed agreed to move towards establishing a union state including the two former Soviet republics.

The authoritarian Lukashenko – who swept to his second presidential victory in September 2001 on his promises of reuniting with Russia – has pushed for uniting his nation of 10 million people with Russia’s 146 million people.

In December 1998 Russia and Belarus signed agreements to introduce a single currency and harmonise taxes by 1999. In December 1999 the two nations at last signed a major union treaty at a Kremlin ceremony.

Lukashenko told the summit that the materialisation of a “union state” was still a distant dream. “It is still unclear how to form a joint parliament or draft a common constitution,” he said. Lukashenko also dismissed rumors stating that relations between Belarus and Russia had grown colder recently.

Yet despite official pronouncements, the summit was nearly spoiled by a scandal as Georgia alleged that earlier this week Russian warplanes had violated Georgia’s airspace and bombed unpopulated areas of the Pankisi Gorge. Russian Defense Ministry retorted that these claims were “false” and Georgian President, Eduard Shevardnadze, attended the summit after all.

The fortunes of Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze, favored by the West for his role in pulling down the Berlin Wall during his time as Soviet foreign minister, have been somewhat mixed. Since Shevardnadze’s comeback as a Georgian leader in 1992, his economic record has been marred by deteriorating standards of living in the former Soviet republic of 5.5 million people.

Georgia and Ukraine play a leading role in GUUAM – a regional group widely seen as a potential counterweight to Moscow’s influence among former Soviet states. The group includes Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.

Apparently the summit ended with a myriad of official pledges and pronouncements and virtually no practical agreements were reached.