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The Russian Concept of International Law as Imperial Legacy

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Abstract

While during the Soviet period differences in Russia’s concept of international law compared to the West were explained by Marxism-Leninism, in the post-Soviet period and at least during the later Putin era, civilizational differences have been referred to as the decisive factor. This contribution explores the idea that the main feature of the concept of international law in Russia is its imperial legacy—the need to protect the territorial integrity of the largest territorial state on Earth and a certain skepticism about the impact of human rights which might have a disruptive potential for the Empire. Imperial thinking also indicates that states that have seceded from the former (Tsarist) Empire might need to have a special (legal and political) relationship with the imperial center.

Research for this chapter was supported by a grant from the Estonian Research Council PRG969.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See VV Pustogarov, Our Martens. F.F. Martens, International Lawyer and Architect of Peace, edited and translated by WB Butler, The Hague, Boston: Kluwer, 2000; The Tunkin Diary and Lectures: The Diary and Collected Lectures of G.I. Tunkin at the Hague Academy of International Law, edited by WE Butler and VG Tunkin, The Hague: Eleven International Publishing, 2012. Concerning Tunkin’s book, see also for important additional information the review by his disciple Rein Müllerson in 107 American Journal of International Law 2013, 710–714.

  2. 2.

    ON Khlestov, ‘Rossiiskaya doktrina mezhdunarodnogo prava’, 3 (58) Evraziiskii iuridicheskii zhurnal 2013, 19–22.

  3. 3.

    For a historical analysis and comparisons, see Dominic Lieven, Empire. The Russian Empire and Its Rivals, New Haven: Nota Bene, 2002.

  4. 4.

    VE Hrabar, ‘Nachalo ravenstva gosudarstv v sovremennom mezhdunarodnom prave’, in: Izvestia ministerstva inostrannykh del, St Petersburg: V Kirschbaum, 1912, 225. The translation of the same ideas in French was published as V Hrabar, La crise actuelle du principe de’l égalité des états, Catania: Tip Di Mattei, 1914,

  5. 5.

    See ICJ, Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965, Advisory Opinion of 25 February 2019. See also, eg, Miriam Bak McKenna, ‘Chagos Islands: UK Refusal to Return Archipelago to Mauritius Shows the Limits of International Law’, The Conversation, 26 November 2019, http://theconversation.com/chagos-islands-uk-refusal-to-return-archipelago-to-mauritius-show-the-limits-of-international-law-127650.

  6. 6.

    See Richard Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime, 2nd ed, London: Penguin Books, 1993.

  7. 7.

    See Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014.

  8. 8.

    See further Henn-Jüri Uibopuu, Die Völkerrechtssubjektivität der Unionsrepubliken der UdSSR, Wien: Springer, 1975.

  9. 9.

    For one history of vassal states, concerning the Ottoman but occasionally also the Russian Tsarist Empire, see Keith Hitchins, A Concise History of Romania, Cambridge: CUP, 2014.

  10. 10.

    The historical origins of European military interventions and their legality have been explored in Leonid A Kamarovski, Nachalo nevmeshatel’stva: Okhranitel’nye interventsii i Sviaschtchennyi soiuz, Moscow: URSS, 2017. (Reprint of the original published in Moscow in 1874.)

  11. 11.

    Radek Sikorski, remarks at the Lennart Meri Conference organized by the think tank ICDS in Tallinn, ca 2015. See also Roy Allison, Russia, the West and Military Intervention, Oxford: OUP, 2013.

  12. 12.

    Dmitry Trenin, Post-Imperium. Evraziiskaia istoria, Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2012.

  13. 13.

    Ibid, 39.

  14. 14.

    It is difficult to locate the original source of this statement. For many receptions, see Angela Stent, ‘Putin’s Ukrainian Endgame and Why the West May Have a Hard Time Stopping Him’, 04 March 2014, CNN, https://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/03/opinion/stent-putin-ukraine-russia-endgame/index.html.

  15. 15.

    For many, see AP, ‘Putin: Russians, Ukrainians Are “One People”’, 20 July 2019, https://apnews.com/3fe3ff2299994fae97825381765b831c.

  16. 16.

    Russian Foreign Policy Concept, 30 November 2016, https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/official_documents/-/asset_publisher/CptICkB6BZ29/content/id/2542248.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 23.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., 26, b.

  19. 19.

    Ibid., 26, c.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., 38.

  21. 21.

    See, eg, the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, The Kosovo Report. Conflict, International Report, Lessons Learned, Oxford: OUP, 2000, 163 et seq.

  22. 22.

    See High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility”, https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/files/gaA.59.565_En.pdf, 2.12.2004, 56 et seq. The endorsement of R2P ideas was included in the report of the Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan, in ‘In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All’, https://undocs.org/A/59/2005 , 21 March 2005.

  23. 23.

    Some US International lawyers argued that military action was justified by earlier UN SC resolutions, see Abraham D Sofaer, ‘On the Necessity of Pre-emption’, 14 European Journal of International Law 2003, 209–226.

  24. 24.

    See Russian Foreign Policy Concept, 24, a.

  25. 25.

    See DW, ‘Putin Fires Fresh Salvo on Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, This Time Singling Out Poland’, 24 December 2019, https://www.dw.com/en/putin-fires-fresh-salvo-on-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-this-time-singling-out-poland/a-51788971.

  26. 26.

    Foreign Policy Concept, 26, b.

  27. 27.

    Sergei Lavrov’s Speech at the UNGA, 28.09.2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR_Zu4TtWkE, the mentioned point starting at 7:50.

  28. 28.

    See, eg, the Russian TV mini-series ‘Trotsky’ (2017).

  29. 29.

    See, eg, Associated Press, ‘Vladimir Putin Accuses Lenin of Placing a “Time Bomb” under Russia’, 25 January 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/25/vladmir-putin-accuses-lenin-of-placing-a-time-bomb-under-russia.

  30. 30.

    https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/position_word_order/-/asset_publisher/6S4RuXfeYlKr/content/id/2331698.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., 2.

  32. 32.

    Ibid., 3.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., 4.

  34. 34.

    UN GA Resolution 68/262, 27 March 2014.

  35. 35.

    The Russian-Chinese Declaration, 5.

  36. 36.

    Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), The South China Sea Arbitration (The Republic of Philippines v The People’s Republic of China), Final Award, 12 July 2016.

  37. 37.

    See Vladlen Vereshchetin, ‘Mezhdunarodnyi Sud OON na novom etape’, in Rossiiskii ezhegodnik mezhdunarodnogo prava (Russian Year Book of International Law), St Petersburg: Neva, 2002, 25. (Referring to the fact that by the time of writing, the USA had been applicant or plaintiff at the ICJ 20 times, the UK 13 times, France 10 times, Germany 6 times – and Russia (or the former USSR) never.

  38. 38.

    See ICJ, Case concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v USA), Merits, Judgment of 27 June 1986.

  39. 39.

    See ICJ, Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v Russian Federation), Judgment of 1 April 2011; Application of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Ukraine v. Russian Federation), Judgment of 8 November 2019.

  40. 40.

    See Isabella Risini, The Inter-State Application under the European Convention on Human Rights. Between Collective Enforcement of Human Rights and International Dispute Settlement, Leiden: Brill, 2018.

  41. 41.

    See AA Moiseev, Suverenitet gosudarstva v mezhdunarodnom prave, Moscow: Vostok Zapad, 2009. Cf Louis Henkin, ‘That “S” Word: Sovereignty, and Globalization, and Human Rights, etc’, 68 Fordham Law Review 1999, 1–14.

  42. 42.

    ET Usenko, GG Shinkaretskaia, Mezhdunarodnoe pravo, Moscow: Iurist, 2005, 46.

  43. 43.

    See, eg, VM Shumilov, Mezhdunarodnoe pravo, 2nd ed, Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnoshenia, 2012, 222 (advocating that Russia continued to have valid claims about Crimea).

  44. 44.

    II Lukashuk, Mezhdunarodnoe pravo. Obshchaia chast’, 2nd ed, Moscow: Beck, 2001, 323.

  45. 45.

    Rein Müllerson, Dawn of a New Order: Geopolitics and the Clash of Ideologies, London: IB Tauris, 2017, 5 et seq.

  46. 46.

    A British International lawyer (of German Jewish origin) who advocated balance of power before 1914 was Lassa Oppenheim in his International Law. A Treatise, Volume 1: Peace, 2nd edition, 1912, 80.

  47. 47.

    EA Lukasheva, Chelovek, pravo, tsivilizatsii: normativno-tsennostnoe izmerenie, Moscow: Norma, 2009. See also Shumilov, (n 43), 190 et seq (Russia and the West as different civilizational types).

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  1. University of Tartu School of Law, Tartu, Estonia

    Lauri Mälksoo

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  1. Italian Law, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

    Peter Hilpold

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Mälksoo, L. (2021). The Russian Concept of International Law as Imperial Legacy. In: Hilpold, P. (eds) European International Law Traditions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52028-1_9

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