This course examines processes through which Moscow became one of the world’s two superpowers and later lost that position. It focuses on several issues: the changing nature of international power during the past century, the evolution of Moscow’s foreign relations, the domestic political and economic processes through which the Stalinist garrison state generated international power, and the system’s vulnerabilities under conditions of incipient globalization. The course also briefly examines the prospects for Russia to resume a central global role in the new century. Required for all RES concentrators.