This paper is devoted to a comprehensive assess of «shuttle» business as a significant social-economic phenomenon in the post-soviet Russia.

Amerged in the late 1980's in Russia and former Soviet Republics as an illegual business, «shuttle» trade through the years of Perestroyka turned into legal wide-spread model of economic activity. It played appreciable role in supplying population with consumer goods and helped to solve an employment problem durind the period of economic transformation.

The first part of the paper concentrates on the development trends of «shuttle» trade before and after the crisis of 1998: reshaping of infrastructure and mechanisms of purchasing, transportation and sale of goods on the Russian markets.