[Asick]

Originally Posted by Przemolog

1st Jan 2008 for land traffic, 1st Apr 2008 (or something around) for air traffic. Not sure about the sea traffic.

From this point of view (transits) the land traffic is more important, since you can stay in the 'behind the border' zone at international airports making a connection there, right? So, it's just a year remaining... not bad.

Originally Posted by Przemolog

Well, are so long trains journeys cheap enough to prefer them to taking the plane???

Yes if you travel from Russia or Ukraine or any exUSSR. Trains and buses are much cheaper in this part of the world. Also, some people (like me) just like to travel by trains and buses because you can visit many interesting places on your way too. And, which is for sure, there's always some people who are sick of aerophobia.

Originally Posted by Przemolog

Must it be done personally? Can't travel agencies do those "paper transfers"?
In Poland travel agencies do that kind of job at least for Russian and Belarusan visas (and used to do the same for Western European or Israeli visas as long as they were required).

No, it usually should not be done personally when you apply for a EU visa. Luckily, EU countries do not require a personal interview for a visa applicant (but the States and UK do it, so you can get their visa only in person). However, travel agencies take too much here for such the services. For example, my aunt was applying for an Austrian visa while we had no Austrian consulate in St.Petersburg (now we still don't have it but Austrian visas are issued by the Finnish consulate here since 2005). The cheapest service for sending her documents to Moscow and back that she found was about 150 Euros (while the visa costed about 35 Euros itself). You can imagine how much a person should pay for sending documents from Vladivostok to Moscow via a tourist firm, for example... I don't say it's the problem that can't be solved, eventually, but look, it would have even been possible to go abroad from the USSR, if you had been ready to get this as the purpose of all your life and to bother much. I mean there should be some more adequate instruments in 21th century, such as Internet visas, simplified procedures for those who has other EU visas normally used etc and now it's not the time for building new walls in Europe, eventually. Talking about Russian and Belarussian visas... well, it's just the reflection of the rules that EU sets, nothing more.

Originally Posted by Przemolog

In 1972 there was even an experiment of full free trafic and full currency convertibility between Poland and GDR. Free traffic remained but there was a lack of balance about currencies - eastern Germans reamined with millions of Polish zlotys and with empty shops .

Oh, I can imagine this. GDR was known to be the most rich 'soclalist' country in the whole East Europe, USSR was spending MUCH money to support this rich state of them to keep the contradiction between two German economics not that huge. So, it's quite reasonable why it had been ruined being gathered with another budget.

Originally Posted by Przemolog

However, when the passport policy loosened later in the 1980's, about 1 million Poles emmigrated anyway.

Oh, this is really interesting info that I have not heard here before. Surely, it could not be published in USSR in 80s, and now it's just the socialist Europe history detail which is not generally interesting for Russian media.

Originally Posted by Przemolog

It was visible especially if to consider that before 1988 there were only 2 road and 3 railway border crossings between Poland and USSR available for public use (the border length was over 1200 km).

Which ones? One is surely Brest, and which was another road crossing? Anyway, it's perfectly clear why USSR inhabitants were not allowed to easily visit 'socialist' countries. From the Soviet point of view, people in these countries lived much better than Soviet people, and they had much more 'rotten' things in their lifestyles that made them closer to the 'rotten' West. It was 'half West', so it would have ruined the Soviet lifestyle itself if it had been too close. Also, if they allowed Soviet people to easily travel to Poland or to GDR, then millions and millions from here would have bought all the goods they find abroad, making the situation much worse that it was in 1972 with GDR-Poland. Remember, in 70s and especially in 80s Soviet people had much money that they could not spend (deficit). Money exchange limitation? Well, it's a problem, but there's always used to be the black market. It's known you could exchange soviet rubles to crones or zlotys and back in hotels etc., even though it was illegal and the rates were much worse than in official banks. From the other hand, it was not very difficult to visit USSR for people from the West in 70s and 80s, here were many Finnish 'vodka tourists' in that time, for example, or even Finnish workers building some hotels and other things. Also, here were West German, French, Italian or even American tourists... Not millions of them, but quite enough to create special layer of services for them (hotels, shops selling western goods for dollars etc.).