Soviet–Latin American Studies

Ch. 2. P. 32–45.

Jeifets V., Rozental D. M.

With a bit hit or miss, globalization continues raising the interdependence in the world. It also shapes international relations and brings dramatic economic, political, and cultural challenges for any nation. In this context, as an important actor in the international arena, Russia strives to build up relations with heterogeneous actors around the globe. Russia’s leadership believes that such an approach responds better to its national interests in a constantly changing global environment. Moreover, because of continuing tensions with the West, Moscow has no choice but to look for allies elsewhere. At the same time, there is little doubt that the success of Russia’s policy of global reach depends on many factors, one of which is the availability of professional knowledge of the other regions of the world. From this perspective, we decided to take a fresh look at the origins and the current state of Latinoamerikanistika.1 As in other countries of the world, a specialized field of studies, Latinoamerikanistika focuses on examining a wide range of issues concerning Latin America and the Caribbean. At the same time, while we use the term Latinoamerikanistika in this chapter as a synonym to the term “Latin American studies” to avoid unnecessary complexities for non-Russian speakers, Russian Latinoamerikanistika differs from Latin American studies in other countries in many aspects. As this chapter will show, the differences include research traditions, methods, methodology, and the impact of research findings on world science.

Keywords: Cold War, Latin America

In book

Rethinking Post-Cold War Russian–Latin American Relations

L.: Routledge, 2022.