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Mälksoo, Lauri --- "International Law between Universality and Regional Fragmentation. The Historical Case of Russia" [2011] ELECD 585; in Orakhelashvili, Alexander (ed), "Research Handbook on the Theory and History of International Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Theory and History of International Law

Editor(s): Orakhelashvili, Alexander

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848443549

Section: Chapter 16

Section Title: International Law between Universality and Regional Fragmentation. The Historical Case of Russia

Author(s): Mälksoo, Lauri

Number of pages: 22

Extract:

16 International law between universality and
regional fragmentation. The historical case of
Russia
Lauri Mälksoo*


16.1 INTRODUCTION

Russia's role in the history of international law has not yet become subject to extensive
critical scrutinies. What do I mean by saying `critical' scrutinies? My impression is that
the historical work done on Russia's or Russian scholars' role in international law tends
to be quite Eurocentric. The Eurocentrism comes in two versions: the Western European
one and, perhaps surprisingly, the Russian one. The Western European version tends to
marginalize or even stay relatively silent on any major independent Russian role in the
history of international law. For example, when Carl Schmitt (1888­1985) wrote his Der
Nomos der Erde1, the historical case of Russia would have enabled him to make an even
more extensive argument in terms of the history and geography of colonization. Schmitt's
point was that ius publicum europaeum or the `European law of nations' (as the `classi-
cal international law' was often called in Europe) flourished especially because it was
created to organize and control the European colonization of the world. Yet if Schmitt
had included the history of the Russian colonization of Siberia, the Caucasus and Central
Asia, he could have demonstrated that the normative language of Christian mission civili-
satrice was at work not only in overseas colonization but also in conquering vast adjacent
land masses in Asia.2 If Schmitt had taken this phenomenon into account, he could have
changed emphases ...