Russian Foreign Policy

Abstract

THREE further Oxford Pamphlets on World Affairs are of particular interest in view of recent events. Miss Barbara Ward's “Russian Foreign Policy” (No. 34), while not dealing with events beyond the Finnish war, is of interest as an attempt to interpret Russian foreign policy free from ideological preconceptions, on the assumption that neither her problems nor her approach to them are in the last analysis very different from those of her neighbours. Miss Ward traces the foreign policy of the U.S.S.R. from the first year of its existence and its preoccupation with keeping its lands intact and its frontiers inviolate, through the failure of world revolution and the period of concentration upon economic contacts and peaceful diplomatic relations with the outside world, to Russia's entry into the European system of collective security. Obstacles to closer co–operation with the West and the influence of the Anti–Comintern Front are discussed as well as the events leading to the isolation of Russia, the Non–Aggression Pact with Germany and the Finnish war, and the underlying principle in Russian policy—security—is stressed.