Introduction: Russian Foreign Policy in the 21st Century

Abstract

It is now almost twenty years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the Russian Federation as its major successor state. During those two decades the Russian political system has undergone major restructuring, while its domestic and foreign policies have experienced significant changes. At the outset many — in both Russia and the West — hoped, even expected, that Russia would soon join the democratic and capitalist West. For reasons that will be discussed in the following chapters, this has not occurred. Western, especially US, triumphalism, the fragility of the economic and political legacy inherited by Russia, and the pull of the authoritarian political past have all contributed to a quite different trajectory — especially over the course of the past decade. The Russia that has emerged is a political and economic hybrid that combines aspects of electoral democracy with top-down management of both the political and the economic system. As Herd notes in his contribution to this volume, probably fewer than 20 per cent of the political elite in Russia support a policy that emphasizes what would be recognized as democracy in the West.