An investigation of the evolution of Soviet foreign policy from the Revolution of 1917 until the end of the Soviet era, tracing the origins and characteristics of Soviet external strategies from their Marxist-Leninist roots through to the collapse of communism. There is a careful analysis of Soviet foreign policy alongside the inception of the Bolshevik state with its global manifesto of revolutionary change; Stalin's struggle to survive the twin threats of a revisionist Germany and militant Japan through alliance with the capitalist states; the expansion of Soviet power in the closing stages of World War II and the subsequent Cold War; the Soviet search for some form of accommodation with the West from the 1960s onwards; the attempts of successive leaderships to find a way of regenerating the failing Soviet system and the impact of economic weakness on Soviet behaviour in both the Third World and Eastern Europe.
Based on a wide range of sources, including Russian materials that have become available since the end of the Cold War, this work differs from many standard accounts in its emphasis of the factional nature of decision-making over external strategies and its description of competing strains in Soviet thinking about the outside world.