ABSTRACT
The whole Russian national security establishment is encumbered by a difficult Soviet heritage and by complex and rapidly fluctuating international and domestic political situations. The regime's identification of the communist cause with the Soviet state grew in the course of the civil war, and so did its appreciation of military power as an instrument of foreign policy. The brutal realism of Leninist-Stalinist national security policy, with its emphasis on interstate and Class conflict and military instruments, was discredited because it pursued a goal which turned out to be utterly Utopian. The most prominent idea associated with this movement was that of the futility of using military force in a world characterized by interdependent nations and great vulnerability to modern weapons. Russian national security policy is being shaped, on the one hand, by memories of superpower conduct and remnants of superpower military capabilities, and on the other, by a sharply shrunken sphere of interests.
