Russia, after all her humiliation, will rise again in some new form, and we shall have very seriously to count her in later stages of European history. Perhaps we shall have to part with Russia as a fighting ally, but if on our side the parting is friendly and warmly sympathetic, if we can show the Russian people that we understand their insuperable difficulties and that for the sake of the great battles we have fought together and for the sake of the great sacrifices we have all made in the common cause we are prepared to continue our moral support, then the greatest trial of the war will not be an unmitigated loss.(1)
In the early 1920s, the Soviet legal world was marked by a tension between idealism and pragmatism, reflecting the ambiguity of the revolutionary project at large. While it was one matter to reshape domestic laws, reckoning with external forces proved a more challenging issue. Despite a political commitment to revolutionary internationalism, early Soviet thinkers and diplomats found themselves enmeshed in a complex web of global ties and conflicts. This dilemma was expressed in the field of international law, particularly in the writings of its earliest advocate, Evgenii Korovin (1892-1964). Korovin attempted to formulate principles that would speak both to a global revolutionary ambition and to the practicalities of an international order where the Soviet Union was largely isolated and capitalist states predominated. Although he has been more regarded for his later contributions to space law, Korovin's earlier career and theoretical writings reflect the delicate balance between internationalism and nationalism, which was felt across all aspects of the early Soviet experience. This paper examines how early international law fits into the bigger picture of Soviet law through the lens of one of its first architects. It establishes Korovin's training and his early involvement in paradiplomatic organisations. It then analyses his key theoretical works against the shifting grounds of the revolutionary period, and into the 1920s.
This article examines political groupism in the Azerbaijan SSR leadership in the 1920s and early 1930s-specifically factionalism among high-ranking officials at the regional level-as a distinctive characteristic of the Soviet political system. Focusing on the Azerbaijan Communist Party, the study examines how the ruling elites consolidated their position both in the centre and at the regional peripheries, against the backdrop of the Soviet government's nationalities policies. Attitudes on the ground to the programme of 'korenizatsiia' shaped political intercourse in this region as local actors were labelled 'nationalist deviationists' or 'Great Russian Chauvinists' and factions were formed often along ethnic lines. This case study finds that, ultimately, in the Azerbaijan SSR, factionalism among party officials remained confined to localized networks and failed to evolve into organized interest groups, largely due to interventions in personnel change from the centre and the pervasive effects of repression.
This article explores Armenian intellectuals' responses to the call for 'peace without annexations,' focusing on the ideological diversity among Armenian political factions and their positions on the future of Turkish Armenia. Amid the turmoil of World War I and the collapse of the Russian Empire, Armenian intellectuals and political figures debated Lenin's proposal within the broader context of socialism and national security. Drawing on Armenian and Russian language periodicals mainly published in Tiflis and Baku, this study analyzes the varied perspectives of prominent Armenian political factions, examining how they navigated ideological commitments to peace and national priorities. My analysis demonstrate that while some socialist thinkers viewed an immediate end to the war as essential, Armenian intellectuals, particularly Dashnaks, Specificists, and Mshakists, largely opposed Lenin's policy, fearing it would lead to Turkish Armenia's reabsorption by the Ottoman Empire. Overall, Armenian intellectuals, including some Bolsheviks, expressed reservations about Lenin's approach, aligning with the 'defensist' view. This article highlights the complex interplay between the 'peace without annexations' formula and local national concerns, revealing how Armenian intellectuals grappled with the Left's approach through the prism of Turkish Armenia's fate.
The Bratstvo Russkoi Pravdy (BRP) was a self-proclaimed terrorist organization that emerged among the Russian emigration in the interwar period. Their grandiose claims of terrorist activities inside the USSR put the BRP at the centre of much controversy during its existence and are still a matter of debate, which has at times eclipsed the analysis of other aspects of the organization. This article, focusing on the BRP's main organ, Russkaia Pravda, as well as other publications by the group, will attempt to show that the organization was ideologically close to fascism in both its Italian and German varieties, actively trying to promote these ideas within the Russian diaspora and establishing ties with groups and organizations aligned with fascism.
This article examines the emergence and evolution of revolutionary museology in Imperial Russia between 1901 and 1917, addressing a previously understudied aspect of revolutionary culture. By analysing four successive attempts to establish revolutionary museums - the Russian Museum in Geneva (1901-1902), Maxim Gorky's initiative on Capri (1912-1913), Vladimir Burtsev's various projects, and the Petrograd House Museum (1917) - it explores how revolutionaries appropriated and adapted European museum models to articulate their collective history. The paper argues that these museum-building efforts reflected a broader musealisation of revolutionary culture, in which material artefacts increasingly shaped revolutionary memory. While embodying the revolutionaries' subjective sense of unity, these initiatives simultaneously revealed underlying tensions between revolutionary ideals and national narratives. Although none of these initiatives fully materialized, they preceded later Soviet historical-revolutionary museums, demonstrating how museums became key sites for negotiating and constructing revolutionary identity.
