Abstract: Using production and trade flow data from 1946 to 2012, this paper assesses the state of Russia’s forest resources and demonstrates how sweeping changes ushered in by perestroika and globalization have forged a highly export-dependent forest sector. In tracking these flows through China to US urban centers, we demonstrate how consumption patterns affect ecosystems and socioeconomic relations in resource and manufacturing peripheries far beyond regional and national borders. The research is illustrative of how the “ecological shadow” of forest change and degradation in post-Soviet Russia is a confluence of factors related to both consumption and production.