Putin’s Russia, a successor state to the Soviet Union, is challenging American foreign policy by offering a “Multipolar World Order,” an alternative to Western capitalism, liberal democracy, and globalization. While scholars know of the Soviet Union’s successful outreach in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, Russia’s current relations with the Global South have received less attention. We explore both the contemporary and historical influences shaping Russia’s network of multilateral alliances. These alliances span the globe and include pockets of support in Europe and the United States. Our research has significance for American foreign policy, scholarship, and university curricula.
Choi Chatterjee is the co-director of the Urban Ecology Center and an Emerita Professor of History at California State University, Los Angeles. Her most recent book is Russia in World History: A Transnational Approach (2022). She is writing a history of the worldly travels of the Russian Orthodox text The Way of a Pilgrim and how it sparked spiritual conversations in Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and India.
Karen Petrone is Professor History at the University of Kentucky, and co-director of the UK-JHF Holocaust Education Initiative. She is the author of Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin (2000) and The Great War in Russian Memory (2011) She is currently completing a book on war memory in Putin's Russia.