ABSTRACT

The contradiction highlighted in the Preface—between the assumption of Russia as a hard-line opponent of the West and the reality of its dependence on the West—continues to haunt Russian foreign policy studies. The study of Soviet and post-Soviet Russian foreign policy has not been immune to the perennial level of analysis debate dividing the field of international relations (IR). The related idea that the state functions as a "common trustee" of society is also viewed by Marxists as a ruling class mystification to legitimize its rule. The Russian leadership has, in conformity with the "social contract" thesis, sought to "buy" legitimacy and compliance from the working class. Marxism departs from and rejects the explanatory validity of the prevailing theories of politics and IR. To be sure, for Marxist analysis the nub of the issue is not so much relations between nation-states in abstract as between national capitals— here between the economic elites of Russia and those of the Western powers.