| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
CONSIDERING THE CONTINUITY between the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation, bilateral relations between Brazil and Russia exceed 180 years. However, a number of factors contributed for this relationship to remain incipient in most of its history - and the location of Brazil in a United States' zone of influence since its independence deserves special attention among them. In fact, the periods of lower intensity in relations with Moscow were those of greater animosity between the North American neighbor and the Soviet Union, as illustrated by the severance of diplomatic relations with the USSR in the beginning of the Cold War. In contrast, relations are restored in the context of the Independent Foreign Policy (1961) and start to intensify again in the 1970's, due to both the abandonment of the automatic alignment to the United States, adopted after the 1964 Coup, and the growing economic pragmatism of the military's foreign policy. However, even at those times the intensity of the relationship was moderate. In the late 1980's, with the end of the Cold War and the easing of tensions between the U.S. and the USSR, it could be expected a differential intensification of the relations between Brazil and Russia - the legal successor of the Soviet Union. Although there was an increase in bilateral relations since then, it is only after 2000 that the mechanisms built during the second half of the 1990's were implemented and bilateral relations reached their apogee, if compared to previous years.
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