7 - Law and Socialist Revolution

Summary

There are few events in modern history that evoke as much controversy, and possess as much political salience, as the Bolshevik Revolution. The events of 1917 continue to animate a variety of political projects, as was evident with the various symposiums on the centenary of the revolution, and the different ways in which narratives about the events inform contemporary politics. The field of international law is no different. For a long time, scholars of international law looked to the revolutionary Soviet state for an example of how a radical political orientation clashed with the principles of international law and challenged its claim to universal representation. Numerous scholars on both sides of the political divide presented an image of the Soviet state as representing ‘socialist’ international law, in contrast to the existing norms and practices of law that guided the behaviour of contemporary states.