Contemporary Russian Foreign Policy (DHP-D282)

Fall 2026 · DHP D282 · Tufts University · 3 credits · Undergraduate

This class examines contemporary Russian foreign policy from the late Soviet collapse to the fifth year after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with special emphasis on the post-2022 transformation of Russian strategy, doctrine, and state capacity. It asks how imperial legacies, regime type, elite politics, public legitimation, wartime economics, military adaptation, nuclear coercion, and global order narratives shape Russian conduct toward Europe, the post-Soviet space, Asia, and the Global South. Students work intensively with primary Russian (translated), Western, and multilateral documents alongside recent scholarship and policy analysis. The class is designed to develop both theory-driven explanation and policy-relevant judgment. Lessons learned from the radical turn in Russian foreign policy are useful not only because they help us to make better judgments about the future of Russia and its place in the world, but because they also sharpen our tools as analysts of any country's foreign policy and international relations in general. This class will be distinct from Professor Chris Miller’s course, History of Russian Foreign Policy: From Peter the Great to Putin and will cover primarily on the post-Cold War period. Towards the end of the course, we will focus on the outlook for Russia’s foreign policy beyond the war with Ukraine. That said, the two classes will be complementary and mutually reinforcing. While none of them is a pre-requisite for the other, taking them both in any sequence would provide a stereoscopic view of Russian foreign policy through a combination of historical and contemporary perspectives.

Course codes: DHP-D282

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