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According to Wikipedia, Russia joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) on August 2012. This is quite late, as all major economies had already joined the organization for some time.

I am wondering what made its joining so hard. Was it mostly politically motivated or are there some technical (economical) reasons behind it?

Question: Why did Russia join World Trade Organization so late?

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Based on a 2010 paper by Anders Aaslund entitled Why Doesn’t Russia Join the WTO?, the main reasons were political and internal to Russia.

He unfortunately doesn't provide a summary anywhere in his paper, but from a cursory read:

  • Officials were slow to decide it was important from the outset.
  • (At least) 4 internal interest groups were lobbying against it.
  • Putin eventually tried to push this forward, but his interest later waned.

They nearly gained accession in 2006, but there were still three obstacles then:

  • The first was Russia’s poor relations with Georgia, already a WTO member. They basically were on their way to fighting a war around then. (This was the last obstacle, too.)
  • The next was the U.S. Jackson-Vanik amendment, which was attached to the U.S. Trade Act of 1974, and appears to require Russia to allow jews to emigrate as a pre-condition for the US to open its markets.
  • The last was that the EU, specifically Finland and Sweden, did not accept that Russia has decided to impose prohibitive export tariffs on lumber, which have been hiked gradually.

And in 2009, Putin convinced Belarus and Kazakhstan to join Russia in a Customs Union, which added an additional hurdle.

The whole process eventually took 18 years.

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    The links offer a great insight, however some details should also be included in the answer, otherwise it would become useless if the links break.
    – Alexei
    Commented May 4, 2019 at 18:00
  • @Alexei: Yeah, I was skimming the article hoping while you were commenting. I probably left out important details, but it hopefully captures the spirit of what's in there.
    – Denis de Bernardy
    Commented May 4, 2019 at 18:10
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The existing answer provides with a lot of insight, but one more reason seems to have slipped from that answer. The reason is:

The recognition as a "market economy" country according to U.S. Tariff Act (1930) was essential.
And that status has only been granted in 2002.
And revoked in November, 2022.

Here's how Reuters puts it:

Washington granted Russia market economy status in 2002, an essential step for Russia's admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2012.

It is not currently known which reason was more decisive in Russia's admission to the WTO. However, we can judge it in the nearest future: now that the U.S. Commerce Department has revoked the Russia's market economy status, the sooner Russia gets expelled from the WTO (despite the lack of the formal procedure yet) the more important this factor is.

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