This book is published in a series of new generation textbooks prepared at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (University) of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The authors reveal the essence and nature of international relations at the stage of their deep transformation associated with the erosion and collapse of the Yalta-Potsdam system; identify the characteristic features of the functioning of the global system of international relations and the existing regional subsystems, pay attention to the most important areas of foreign policy of the USSR in 1975-1991.