ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the background of Russia's role in the world up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Soviet foreign policy during its formative period can be seen as being determined by the necessity to engage in shifting alliances to ensure the territorial integrity and security of the state in the face of an anarchic international setting. A realist account of the history of Soviet foreign policy is useful for understanding some of the underlying dynamics at the international level. The main dynamics of global politics between the ends of World War Two and the Cold War were linked to the bipolar strategic competition between the so-called superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Lenin saw the War of 1914-1918 as an imperialist war and the revolution in Russia in 1917, undertaken in the name of the international proletariat, as the breaking of the weakest link in the wider imperial chain.
