Abstract:
While international lawyers analysing Vladimir Putin’s ongoing actions and justifications through the broad arc of Russian history have no shortage of materials to draw upon, one comparatively under-explored discourse is the Russian tradition of Pan-Slavism. In this piece I argue that while Russian Pan-Slavism – and its invocation of a common Slavic destiny – provides an important resource, uncovering its origins and content requires a new approach to international legal history better attuned to the overlap between nationalism and imperialism. Towards this end I focus on how interactions within and between various empires, especially those in Central and Eastern Europe, gave rise to a distinctly Pan-Slavic consciousness that Russia ultimately championed through a distinctly paternalist anti-imperial imperialism. This contextual account culminates in a reading of Nikolai Danilevskii’s 1869 text Russia and Europe, the most iconic manifesto of Russian Pan-Slavism, as a critique of the international legal positivism that consolidated in the late-nineteenth century. Through this account, I seek to provide new insights into ongoing political contestations as well as international law’s variable functions as an active shaper of collective political identities.
On the author:
Eric Loefflad, University of Kent Canterbury, UK
Read the article here (DOI 10.3790/gyil.2024.370076).
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