Completion of Systemic Transformation Processes in Post-Communist Countries as a Condition for Successful Development of Economic Cooperation

The systemic changes that have taken place and are ongoing in post-communist countries have also changed the level and nature of mutual economic links that existed among them at the end of the 1980s. The scale of this change is illustrated not only in the dramatic decline in mutual trade but also in the evolution of the character of these links. However, the essence of the latter cannot be reduced to a simple statement that the present scale and nature of mutual economic links, which are voluntary, reflect the actual interest of the parties in maintaining these links, and not that they are enforced by the geopolitical situation of the Warsaw Pact countries, and of the Soviet Union's ambitions as a superpower. The present article provides evidence that the newly emerging shape of economic trade among the former members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance is also the consequence of new systemic conditions, including institutional solutions inside these countries, which differentiate the attractiveness of partners to as great an extent as do natural economic conditions, such as complementarity of resources and economic structures, or geographical proximity, ethnic ties, and common history. In other words, now and for the foreseeable future, it is not economic complementarity but complementarity of systemic solutions, including the degree of their advancement and quality of state-ofthe-art institutional solutions, that will decide the scale and nature of mutual economic links among the countries of the former socialist bloc, as well as the possible return of their previous level and significance.