Toward the Great Ocean 4: Turn to the East. Preliminary results and new objectives

M. : Международный Дискуссионный клуб "Валдай", 2016.

Bordachev T., Skriba A., Karaganov S. A., Barabanov O. N., Likhacheva A., Lukin A., Makarov I. A., Pyatachkova A., Sokolova A., Suslov D., Kazakova A. V.

Russia’s entire history is in its geography and no matter how huge its territory, it is still a kind of an “inbetween” space. 

Today’s Russia has all but completed its turn toward Asia. However, it remains to be seen how far-reaching and successful it will be, and in what specific areas it will evolve and what will be its content, benefits, and costs. 

Russia, remaining the country of the European civilization, is moving in the new world to a natural status of the great Eurasian Atlantic-Pacific power. The turn means not a "reversal" from Europe, but a pragmatic orientation to new opportunities, the adequate desire to fit with the modern world.

Main directions and dimensions of such turn refer to the establishment of new internal conditions (organizational and legal) for the accelerated development of Siberia and the Far East, qualitative strengthening of the Russian presence in the Asia-Pacific region, and the gradual build-up of trade, economic and political ties with Asian countries, formation of the new Eurasian space for common development.

Keywords: Евразия, Eurasia, Eurasian Economic Union, Сибирь и Дальний Восток, Евразийский экономический союз (ЕАЭС)