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Economic sanctions against Russia form a completely new context for public and private efforts to cope with crisis trends in Russian economy. With limited access to global goods, capital, and technology markets, it can at best minimize costs of the crisis but not come back to the normal growth path. Strategies to find new trade partners and sources of capital outside the group of countries that have introduced economic sanctions against Russia are welcome, but their potential is rather limited. Under these circumstances, crisis management should be centered neither on the alleged 'Russia's pivot to the East' nor on the wide-scale import substitution but on normalization of economic relations with key country partners, regaining currency stability, and structural reforms aimed at moving national economy away from commodity specialization.

As a consequence of the global crisis, a major shift to the new growth model is under way in the world economy. The article analyses principal changes in the role of resources, technologies, institutions, and economic policies in shaping new growth patterns in developed as well as developing markets. With human capital and capital intensive technologies replacing cheap labor and natural resources as principal sources of comparative advantage, global economy is likely to be rebalanced in favor of richer countries. The resulting adjustment calls for more flexible regulatory rules and social institutions, while growth-friendly economic policies at subnational level are expected to complement (and sometimes substitute for) more traditional national policies.

The paper addresses key political economy dilemmas associated with the formation of the Common Economic Space (CES) by Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Analysis is focused on alternative integration strategies, prospects of the CES enlargement, and elimination of trade and investment barriers. Unification of regulatory norms and technical standards using the EU experience as well as negotiating free trade agreements with the EU and countries of the Asia-Pacific are shown to be crucial for the future of the CES project.

The paper estimates the impact of import tariffs on Russia's trade balance. Empirical model analyzes Russian trade by industries and partner countries, taking into account import tariffs on both industrial output and intermediate goods. It is shown that the aggregate impact of import duties on trade balance is negative in all industries outside the fuel and energy sector. Decrease in import tariffs is likely to improve market positions of Russian non-fuel exports, especially in such industries as machine building and metal works, agriculture and forestry, chemistry and light industry.

The questions of spatial development as a modernization driver (the Kazakhstan case) are considered in this article. The analysis of the regional economic differences makes possible to work out the development guidelines, based on the advantages combination of the basic goods specialization and the policy of transferring growth impulses from the raw materials sector to the industry and service ones. Current challenges and opportunities, which face the Kazakhstan economy, the questions of economic diversification drive up the importance of the connection between spatial development and the cluster priorities. The analytical scheme of macro-regions and diversification through the dynamic focal networks can settle up these challenges.

The article addresses factors that allowed large Russian companies to withstand the economic crisis, as well as prospects for their business expansion in the post-crisis setting. While anti-crisis policies adopted by Russian government supported big business substantially during the first months of the recession, they hardly played any pro-business role since mid-2009. The analysis of capitalization figures and sales volumes shows that leading positions of state-owned companies in oil, gas and financial sectors were in fact strengthened during the crisis. Excessive state control over corporate assets and decision-making works as a barrier to post-crisis recovery of large Russian companies and should be substituted for by policies supporting internationalization strategies and productivity improvements.