REGIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL STRUCTURES AT THE TRANSITIONAL STAGE OF SOCIOECONOMIC MODERNIZATION OF THE BLACK SEA-CASPIAN STATES

(Conference overview. The international conference “Problems and Prospects for Cooperation between the Southeast European Countries within the BSEC and GUUAM,” Donetsk, September 2004)

Rustem ZHANGUZHIN

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Rustem Zhanguzhin, D.Sc. (Philos.), the Central Asia and the Caucasus journal in Ukraine

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Prerequisites for Regional Integration in the Post-Socialist Space

The new challenges that emerged in the early 1990s brought forth the idea of an expanding, internally complex, multi-tier, and closely interconnected “new European architecture.” It envisions the creation of subsystemic regional structures to fit the parameters of Western Europe’s eastern borders. Originally, the formation of these structures was directly linked to the EU, proceeding under its supervision and with its assistance, thus ensuring the synchronization, symmetry, and effectiveness of economic and political reforms, as well as a deepening of relations between them and the EU institutions already in place.

There are two main trends affecting the formation of such structures (groups) in Eastern Europe. On the one hand, systemic transformations in these countries triggered the evolution of liberal-democratic values as the raison d’être of civil society and free market economics. This process resulted in the relative isolation of these countries and the disintegration of certain multinational state formations. But at the same time, such factors as national security, the need to protect their internal markets, and the old contradictions between these states, which re-emerged during the transition period, necessitated their movement toward regional integration. On the other hand, there is a pronounced trend toward deepening cooperation with neighboring countries, close and distant. Thus, when the Warsaw Pact Organization and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) had already been dissolved, while accession to NATO and the EU was still a remote prospect, the post-socialist countries of Eastern Europe made a………………..

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