Accounts of Russia's experiences with assistance programmes during the post-Soviet period have typically been framed along one of two narrative threads: assistance as a catalyst for introducing neoliberal economics and democratic forms of political organisation and civil society, or assistance as compensation for both the legacies of Soviet inefficiency and the bumps that have occurred as part of the postsocialist transition. Through loans and gifts, multilateral lending organisations, nonprofit organisations, and groups of private citizens have provided help to Russia's citizens. The geographic trajectories by which this assistance has moved have been critical to these narratives, with ‘West-to- East’ directions taking precedence over other routes, notably those from ‘the East’ and ‘the South’. Consequently, the efforts of organisations associated with and located in ‘the West’ – for instance, the IMF, the World Bank, USAID, and a plethora of North American and west European religious and private organisations, among others – have been well documented (Creed and Wedel 1997; Wedel 1998). By comparison, far less attention has been paid to the contributions of Russia's ‘Eastern’ supporters such as the Asian Development Bank and the Japanese government or the assistance activities of ‘Southern’ actors such as African students and labour migrants living in Russia.

Such preoccupations with Russia's position as a beneficiary of Western aid have also obscured the country's longstanding and more complicated roles within other circulations of global assistance and development.