Foreword. Russia’s Pivot to the East: Achievements, Problems, and Prospects

The time, which has passed since the moment when Russia proclaimed its turn to the East allows one to make preliminary assessments of its features, achievements, problems, and prospects. Equally, it lets one qualitatively differentiate this turn from the earlier periods of Russian Asian policy. Russian turn to the East has become structurally complicated. It now includes at least three components at the junction of domestic and foreign policy as well as regional and global dimensions of Russian foreign policy strategy. The second component refers to the internal political and institutional development of Russian Siberia and the Far East. The third component includes further development of Greater Eurasia conceptual framework, which could have helped Russia to retain and ideally to raise its integrationist potential as one of the leading states in the international system via institutionalized political and economic partnerships primarily with Asian states.