INTEGRATION PROSPECTS IN CENTRAL ASIA

Abstract

For many centuries, the Central Asian region was a connecting link between the East and the West. But in the 15th century, with the advance of water transport, the overland Great Silk Road from Europe to Asia lost its initial significance: the development of shipping put Central Asia (CA) in a difficult position. Its peoples had no outlet to the sea and were obliged to develop on their own.

Today Central Asia has regained its importance and is not only an East-West corridor, but also a promising developing partner for many countries of the world. This is borne out, among other things, by the active policy of CA states oriented toward close regional cooperation and multilateral international relations. All of this promotes socioeconomic and political development and helps to raise living standards in the countries of the region.

Why have the Central Asian countries chosen integration as a top priority of their development? What has influenced their choice and what kind of results are they reaping today along this road? Many analysts, politicians and economists are currently concerned with these questions, and this article is an attempt to provide some of the answers. 

 In most sources, the year 1991 is defined as a turning-point for Central Asia, because that was when its development for the first time passed into the hands of national (instead of Soviet) regional  leaders. However, this did not make things easier for the CA countries, but only added new problems to those inherited from the Soviet past.

After the breakup of the U.S.S.R., the newly independent CA states were faced with even greater difficulties compared to their political and economic dependence on the Soviet Center in Moscow, from which, as it seemed to them at the time, they had to “distance” themselves as soon as possible so as to gain economic independence and political sovereignty. The highly integrated structure of the U.S.S.R. was to some extent useful to the CA republics in economic, social and political terms, although in Soviet times they were not independent because the whole system was oriented toward the Center (Moscow). The development and distribution of the productive forces, the structure of industry, social policy, the production infrastructure and regional development were geared, in the first place, to meet all-Union demands and only then to meet the interests of the Central Asian republics.

The common political and economic space of the disintegrated Soviet Union could not be destroyed right away: this was fraught with disastrous consequences for the newly independent states. Linked together by economic relations, infrastructure communications, social policy and political goals, the CA republics gaining independence were badly in need of a resumption of former relations, because otherwise no sector of their economy could function properly. The new sovereign countries found themselves in a state of total socioeconomic decline. They turned out to be unprepared to pursue their own sovereign policy or to engage in economic relations.