ABSTRACT
Five different policy-shaping forces have been examined in some detail by analysts of Russian foreign policy. The policies are: shifts in ideological foundations, regime change, leadership politics, interest group influence and bureaucratic politics and the effects of external actions and reactions. Two of these are particularly appropriate for this analysis of post-Soviet Russia's foreign policy. The first is the Marxist–Leninist ideological traditions that have exercised a dominant influence upon Russia's politics and foreign policy since 1920. The second is the influence of a series of socioeconomic crises that followed the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Russian foreign policy took a distinctly revanchist, outward-looking turn with the ascendency of Putin. In a 2013 foreign policy statement, Russia expressed Putin's dissatisfaction with the continuing expansion of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) closer to Russia's borders and the welcoming of former Soviet satellites into closer ties with the EU and the United States.
