Authors of the monograph are the prominent Russian officials and scientists: Prof. Dr. E.S. Stroev, Chairman of the Russian Federation Federal Assembly Federation Council (the Russian Senate), Prof. Dr. M.I. Krotov, Secretary General of the IPA CIS Council, and Univ.

1 The CIS in the World Economy.- 1.1 The CIS and Its Economic Potential.- 1.2 Natural Resources and Production Potential of the CIS Countries.- 1.3 Industry in the CIS Countries in the Twentieth Century.- 1.4 The CIS in World Economic Relationships.- Field of Debate.- 2 General Goals of Economic Reforms.- 2.1 Towards Sustainable Development in Society.- 2.2 Structural Economic Reforms. The Liberal Model.- 2.3 Institutional Reforms.- Field of Debate.- 3 Denationalisation, Privatisation and Economic Security in the CIS Countries.- 3.1 Denationalisation: Rational Level.- 3.2 Advantages and Disadvantages of Privatisation.- 3.3 Development of Small-Scale Business.- 3.4 Economic Security and Choice of Future Strategy for Reforms.- Field of Debate.- 4 Forming Market Infrastructure.- 4.1 Commercial Infrastructure.- 4.2 Industrial and Environmental Infrastructure.- 4.3 Public Social Protection.- Field of Debate.- 5 Towards a New Structure of Public Economy.- 5.1 Science-Technology Core of Structural Reforms.- 5.2 Development of High-Technology Industries.- 5.3 The Fuel-Energy and Raw-Materials Complex.- Field of Debate.- 6 Changes in the Agroindustrial Sector.- 6.1 The CIS Agroindustrial Complex Towards the End of the Twentieth Century.- 6.2 Agrarian Reforms.- 6.3 Development of Processing Industries of Agroindustrial Complex and Food Safety in the CIS.- Field of Debate.- 7 Macro-Economic Policies in CIS Member States.- 7.1 Budgetary Policy.- 7.2 Credit and Monetary Policy.- 7.3 Investment Policy.- 7.4 Role of Foreign Investment.- 7.5 Tax Policy.- Field of Debate.- 8 Micro-Economic Basis of Reforms.- 8.1 The Firm in the Pseudo-Market Economy.- 8.2 Major Trends in Firm Restructuring.- 8.3 Insolvency and Preventing Insolvency.- Field of Debate.- 9 CIS Countries on the Way to Regional Economic Integration.- 9.1 Regional Economic Integration in Today's World.- 9.2 Experience and Problems of Economic Integration in the CIS.- 9.3 Towards a Common Economic Space.- 9.4 Towards a Common Science-Technology and Education Space.- 9.5 Organisational Forms of Integration.- 9.6 The Petersburg Economic Forum.- 9.7 Issues of Economic Integration in International Research.- Field of Debate.- Conclusion.- Literature.- The Country Index.

This last century of the second millennium has compressed human history to such an extent that whole ages of engineering, economics, social politics and the humanities have been accommodated in decades or even years. Mankind has matured and applied its cognitive and creative genes to advance science and to internationalise future goals, including the vital goal of sustainable social development. However, having no control over the new pace of history, twentieth-century civilisation has faced global cataclysms of a frequency and depth unprecedented and inconceivable in the past millennia. Among the recent "crises" to be "resolved" in the third millennium is disintegration of the Soviet Union, the biggest state and third largest population in the world. Regretfully, the pace of change in the Soviet Union had been slower than the rates of reform elsewhere. Attempts at economic redecorating instead of radical market-oriented reforms failed. In Soviet society, general discontent with the progress of perestroika in the 1980s provoked the "child complacency" syndrome that is typical of a young mind contemptuous of any adult action: it is convinced that things could have been done much better and much quicker. With the new millennium approaching, the Soviet Union gave way to 15 new states ridden with both inherited and acquired economic, political and social maladies. It is common knowledge, however, that childhood epidemics are short-lived.