On December 30, 1922 at the 1st Congress of Soviets the establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was proclaimed. Last week, the presidents of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus approved the institutional part of the draft agreement on the Eurasian Union. The work of the EurAsEC is scheduled to commence on January 1, 2015. Is there something in common between the current integration processes of the post-Soviet Union and the USSR? Political analyst Sergei Mikheyev shared his thoughts.   According to the Gallup poll, the majority of residents (over 50 percent) of post-Soviet countries believe the collapse of the USSR to be a negative event. Approximately 25 percent of those polled talk about "benefits" of this event. Could such sentiments serve as a basis for the integration processes on the post-Soviet territory? Or are these processes imposed artificially?

"These sentiments objectively exist. Another thing is that the ruling elites in many countries do not want to notice or consider them. On the contrary, they want to eradicate all these positive memories and sentiments by all means. These sentiments are associated with simple things. There are many advantages of living in a large country. Very few saw improvements in the long run compared with the past. Or, at least, the majority believes that these improvements are inadequate.

Could these sentiments be the basis for integration? Of course they could. They are one of the foundations for integration. If our population would not want anything like this and would not have any positive memories of the shared past, the elite would not have been able to do anything.

Continue reading at:  http://english.pravda.ru/russia/politics/01-01-2014/126533-ussr_ret...