Artëm Rudnitckiy, ‘The Drawbacks of the Detached View: Russia, the USSR and the Pacific’, IR Working Paper 1991-6, Canberra: Department of International Relations, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, October 1991.

This paper outlines certain basic trends of Russia and Soviet involvement in Pacific affairs, which besides political and ideological factors have been shaped by the geographical and spiritual alienation of Petersburg’s and Moscow’s policymakers from the Far East and the Pacific. The author also considers the difference between ‘regional’ and ‘great power’ policy and from this perspective tries to assess the merits and flaws of the Vladivostok-Krasnoyarsk initiative and those of the Soviet regional approach in the Perestroika years on the whole.