Twice over the last 25 years, the USSR and Russia’s actions have been a major catalyst for change in international politics. Gorbachev and his fellow New Thinkers adopted unprecedented concessions that dismantled the Soviet Empire and brought an end to the Cold War. Contemporary Russian leaders are undertaking a risky challenge to US global leadership that signals an end to post-Cold War US dominance and the beginning of an era of unprecedented global disorder. Existing paradigms have had a difficult time accounting for Soviet/Russian behavior and integrating it into their larger theories about change in international politics. This is partly because they have ignored the important role that status considerations have played in Soviet and Russian decision making. But it also reflects larger shortcomings in the way that these paradigms approach the issue of change. What is needed is an evolutionary theory of change that is able to integrate driving historical (root) causes of change with proximate and contingent ones. In both of these cases, larger historical forces have pushed the international system towards change, limiting the choices available to Russian leaders. Yet it has been status considerations that have determined the actual policy choices Soviet and Russian leaders have made. While larger historical forces have been the root cause behind change, status aspirations and status dissatisfaction have been the proximate causes catalyzing change and moving it forward.