Universal History Annotation << Back Economic Integration in the Post-Soviet Space in the 1990s Mukhin M.Yu. The article examines the main stages of the formation of the economic integration system in the post-Soviet space during the 1990s. The author comes to the conclusion that the fi nal decade of the 20th century became a time of complex and contradictory process of empirical search for the best options for economic integration of post-Soviet countries. Around the mid-1990s, it became obvious that the CIS was not able to act as a basis for economic unifi cation on the scale of the entire post-Soviet area, as a result of which two groups of states emerged in the post-Soviet space. The fi rst group relied on economic effi ciency - on its basis, slowly and diffi cultly, but everything began to take shape, the Eurasian Economic Union and, on its basis, the Customs Union. The second group united around the idea of "Integration without Russia". But in practice, the attempt to establish economic integration based solely on political expediency ended in failure. Keywords: economic history, history of post-Soviet countries, economic integration, free trade area, Customs Union, CIS, Eurasian Economic Union, GUUAM. DOI: 10.25791/vseist.01.2025.1218 Pp. 17-28.