ABSTRACT
Despite theoretical challenges, competition and critique, realism has survived as one of the important approaches to Russian foreign policy. Especially in the last few years, realist interpretations have experienced a revival within Russian foreign policy studies. This chapter provides a review of how realism has been applied to the study of Soviet/Russian foreign policy. The first section discusses some of the major realist perspectives which have been most frequently used by Russia scholars. The second section illustrates how these perspectives were applied in relation to specific questions often raised by Russia scholars. The last section summarizes the main conclusions of using realism, in general, in the area of Russian foreign policy studies, but also pays special attention to the advantages and caveats of using neoclassical realism, in particular, as the most useful and promising trend within realism. It concludes that the promises of NCR are strong enough for NCR analyses of Russian foreign policy to be pursued.
