Russia’s Imperial Worldview and International Law

Lennart Meri Lecture 2026

As a young man, I had some meaningful encounters with President Lennart Meri. In Estonia, we have a tradition of inviting graduates who earn distinction to a festive gathering in the rose garden of the Presidential Palace in Kadriorg. I attended one in 1998, after graduating from law school and already knowing I had the opportunity to go to the US to pursue my master’s degree. President Meri shook my hand and asked whether I would continue my studies and in what field. I said I would study international law, to which Meri responded: “Oh sa nugis, seda läheb meil veel vaja!” (Oh boy, we’ll need it for sure in the future!)

The ‘we’ in that context, of course, referred to Estonia. Today, this “we will need it” can be extended to the world as a whole, because it has unfortunately become uncertain to what extent international law still serves as a barrier to aggressive wars.

A Nuclear Weapon of Small States?

My second encounter with President Meri was when he came to Berlin for a state visit in 2000, while I was a PhD student at Humboldt University. I could observe how well President Meri got along with Boris Meissner, a Baltic German legal scholar, who had written in his 1956 dissertation that, as the Baltic states had been illegally occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union, they had not lost their state continuity under international law. Lennart Meri was a writer—remember his book Silverwhite. He had a charismatic way of conveying international legal ideas in a beautiful, succinct language. For example, he wrote that during the Soviet annexation, the Baltic states found their last refuge in international law. He also called the state continuity thesis a “foundational state philosophy” for Estonia during its post-1991 independence period.

During the Soviet annexation, the Baltic states found their last refuge in international law.

On a state visit to Slovakia, President Meri was asked by a journalist what he thought about the successful nuclear tests of India and Pakistan. The president quipped that the nuclear weapon of small states is international law. In Estonia, we sometimes debate the meaning and seriousness of this metaphor. President Meri did not develop it further, so it may not be correct to treat this sentence as a manifesto or article of deep faith. There was a specific context to his statement. This is certainly true for small states when we replace ‘is’ with ‘should be’; we want and need international law to play such an important role.

In today’s lecture, I will develop a theme from a well-known episode in the life of Lennart Meri. In February 1994, he gave a speech at Hamburg City Hall, during the traditional Matthiae-Mahlzeit reception, warning the west about the rise of neo-imperialism in Russia. He particularly pointed out that in the post-Soviet space, Moscow continued to use the tone of a former imperial master. President Meri said: “[Those] who want today to really help the Russian state and the Russian people should consistently convince the Russian leadership that the time of imperialist expansions is over.” The Hamburg speech entered the annals of diplomatic history primarily because the deputy mayor of St Petersburg, who was present in the audience, could not stomach President Meri’s message and stormed out of the hall during that speech. His name was Vladimir Putin.

The Imperial Continuity

A lot was done to accommodate Russia in Europe in the 1990s and 2000s—there was the hope of Wandel durch Handel, and the country was accepted as a member of the Council of Europe (CoE) in 1996. That was also a ‘gesture of goodwill’ because both the Russian and CoE legal experts concluded that, objectively, Russia at that time did not fulfil the membership criteria. To an extent, the question of imperial attitudes that President Meri raised in his Hamburg speech was consciously pushed aside in European interactions with Russia.

The nuclear weapon of small states is international law.

However, even in the CoE context and in the European Court of Human Rights, the many cases against Russia concerned its imperialist legacy and continued reality: Moscow regaining control over Chechnya in an armed conflict; pro-Romanian Moldovan politicians being tortured in Transnistria; war crimes and even accusations of genocide in the Soviet-annexed Baltic states; later followed by large inter-state cases of Georgia againstRussia and Ukraine and the Netherlands against Russia. Perhaps emerging restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly in Russia were a side effect of the renaissance of great power thinking, as the rulers felt that any dissent would weaken national unity and grandeur.

The language of human rights protection failed to address the actual elephant in the room: because of its imperialist legacy, Russia saw and constructed these situations, often rooted in history, entirely differently. In the 2000s, a series of Russian stamps was issued to celebrate various regions in Russia and the hundreds of years that had passed since they ‘voluntarily’ became part of Russia. This is a widespread trope—a truth that has been inherited and accepted, often without critical knowledge or thought.

In the centre of the capital of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek, there stands a 1974 Friendship Monument, celebrating 100 years of the ‘voluntary’ unification of the Kyrgyz people with Russia. However, the National Historical Museum of Kyrgyzstan reveals that some events which led to the expansion of the Russian Empire in 1874 were not ‘voluntary’ at all; they were imperial conquests. The Russian Empire used a classical colonialist blueprint in Central Asia—the rhetoric of the Russian mission civilisatrice was employed, and the Central Asian khanates were either conquered outright or first made protectorates.

It is imperative to reflect on why Russia’s imperialist history is often left out of these western discussions on imperialism.

Recently, I published a book that examines the history of international law in Russia and the Soviet Union through the lens of imperialist ideas and practices. It is titled Russia, the Soviet Union, and Imperial Continuity in International Law, and was published by Oxford University Press in November 2025. Modern scholarship acknowledges the imperialist past of international law, but examples mostly focus on western European empires and perhaps to an extent on certain periods in the history of the United States. It is imperative to reflect on why Russia’s imperialist history is often left out of these western discussions on imperialism. There may be several reasons. One is that there is a certain conflation in some minds between the concepts of imperialism and colonialism.

Socialist International Law

As a rule, Russia did not declare its conquests ’colonies’—but it declared them part of Russia right away. Furthermore, we can observe the Soviet influence on how the discourse has been framed. Vladimir Lenin offered his definition of ‘imperialism’—i.e., the highest stage of capitalism. Thus, by being anti-capitalist, the Soviets also understood themselves as an ‘anti-imperialist’ power. While others were ‘imperialists’, the Soviets were always ‘liberators’. The Soviets also formally endorsed the principle of the self-determination of peoples and referred to it in several peace treaties, including the 1920 treaty with Estonia. However, the case of Georgia was quite illustrative—the Russian–Georgian peace treaty was concluded in May 1920 and recognised Georgia’s separation on the basis of self-determination. Yet, irrespective of it, already in February 1921, Soviet Russia, with the help of Georgian Bolsheviks, conquered the Georgian Democratic Republic.

The Soviet Union vehemently portrayed itself as an ‘anti-imperial’ power—a power which ended imperialism in 1917. At the Bandung conference in 1955 and during the UN General Assembly debates in 1960, the Soviet Union insisted that it was—by definition—on the same side as oppressed peoples and the victims of colonialism. But this rhetoric concealed the fact that the Soviet Union was a reconstituted Russian Empire. Although Soviet Russia initially lost territories in the west after World War I, it gained territory in Central Asia when it Sovietised and annexed the former ‘protectorates’ of Khiva and Bukhara. Moreover, even the notorious Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939 can be interpreted as Moscow’s determination to regain lost Tsarist lands: Finland, parts of Poland, the three Baltic states, and Bessarabia (largely the territory of today’s Republic of Moldova).

The Soviet Union was a reconstituted Russian Empire.

The Soviet international discourse attacking western colonialism differed considerably from the domestic one held in the Russian language, reflecting double standards. While Nikita Khrushchev was giving a speech at the UN in 1960, claiming that Russia had put an end to imperialism and colonialism in 1917, Soviet legal journals such as Советское государство и право (Soviet State and Law) were publishing articles justifying the expansion of the Russian statehood into Siberia and Central Asia. The authors argued that the local populations who integrated into the Russian Empire in the 19th century could consider themselves tremendously lucky to have established close contact with a ‘culturally superior Russian civilisation’ and to have become part of a large and powerful state. Despite the Soviet Union being a highly centralised state, Soviet lawyers and diplomats developed a doctrine to explain that Soviet republics were all ‘sovereign states’. The main goal was to silence their pursuits of autonomy and self-determination, including linguistic and cultural.

By the end of World War II, the Soviet Union established hegemony over the ‘national democracies’ in central and eastern Europe. In 1956 in Hungary and in 1968 in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union deployed military force to keep these nations obedient in the socialist bloc of countries. Leading Soviet legal scholars such as Yevgeny Korovin and Grigory Tunkin referred to the concept of ‘socialist international law’, invented in their country. Essentially, they argued, universal international law—such as the UN Charter—did not apply to socialist states; they were not bound by the prohibition on the use of force in their mutual relations, but rather by proletarian internationalism and the Soviet ‘duty to intervene’. This seems to me like a classical hegemonic, imperialist doctrine—an aberration in the universal understanding of international law. During the Cold War and from 1960 onwards, the one rival power calling out the Soviet Union for its imperialism was the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese criticised both US imperialism and the USSR’s ‘social imperialism’.

A Flexible Approach to Treaties

One aspect of international law that is particularly relevant to Russian and Soviet imperialist practices is the attitude towards treaties. The central political problem in international treaty law is the value of the principle of pacta sunt servanda, meaning that agreements must be kept. Both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union developed a flexible approach to treaties: when the moment was ripe, Russia would unilaterally terminate or violate a previous treaty, citing a fundamental change or other circumstances. It demonstrates the relevance of the history of international law and its legacies today because this was exactly what happened vis-à-vis Ukraine, starting from 2014 with the illegal annexation of Crimea. Russia had previously accepted, in treaties, Ukraine’s 1991 borders—not just in the Budapest memorandum of 1994 but also in a bilateral border treaty of 2003. The unilateral invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a violation of previous treaties, as well as Russia’s unilateral attempt to annex more Ukrainian territories in 2022.

When the moment was ripe, Russia would unilaterally terminate or violate a previous treaty, citing a fundamental change or other circumstances.

At key junctures in history, Russian and Soviet international lawyers highlighted that treaties were flexible and that fundamental changes in circumstances—or, as lawyers call it, clausula rebus sic stantibus—can bring a previous treaty to an end if only the revisionist party wants it. Throughout centuries, Muscovy launched two major wars to gain control over what are today the Republics of Estonia and Latvia. When Muscovy started the Great Northern War against Sweden in Narva, it also faced the imagological problem: Sweden and Muscovy had concluded several treaties in the 17^th century, confirming their common border was final.

However, by starting the war in 1700, Muscovy challenged that border. The first original Russian publication on international law dates back to that period—the justification of Muscovy’s action against Sweden, written by Petr Shafirov, Peter the Great’s diplomat. It argued that previous treaties were circumstantial—they were concluded by a weak Tsar; Sweden, too, had not behaved properly; the overall circumstances had changed; and therefore, the principle of pacta sunt servanda did not bind Muscovy. This was the crux of the argument. Hence, the first-ever Russian text on international law and treaties—and arguably also the first-ever Russian text translated into English—was, in reality, a justification of conquest and an argument for why Muscovy could neglect the previous solemn treaties with Sweden.

In Estonia, we honour the memory of Friedrich Martens, Tsarist Russia’s leading international lawyer. Martens was born in Pärnu and lived there for the first 9 years of his life, but in reality, he was a Russian imperial thinker. He criticised the nascent right of peoples to self-determination and argued that a great power could unilaterally terminate treaties. This also corresponded to the Russian treaty practice of the late 19^th century. Namely, in 1870, Russia unilaterally terminated certain conditions of the Paris Peace Treaty, which had ended the Crimean War of 1856 and was widely discussed as the main case of clausula rebus sic stantibus.

Although Soviet jurists strongly criticised Tsarist Russia from a class perspective, they did not change its approach to international treaties. Leading Soviet legal scholars of the interwar period, Yevgeny Korovin and Yevgeny Pashukanis, followed Martens’ line, insisting that treaties reflected the balance of power at the time and the principle—or rather the exception—of fundamental change of circumstances enabled the termination of an earlier agreement. Soviet Russia concluded the Brest–Litovsk Peace Treaties with imperial Germany and Ukraine in March 1918 but denounced them unilaterally in November. Lenin said that Soviet Russia gave territories to buy time, implying that such treaties were not meant to last in the first place. In that sense, the conclusion of the secret protocols to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939 also demonstrated Soviet Russia’s approach to international treaties vis-à-vis its border states, Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In this lecture—and in my book—I characterise this approach as imperial and imperialist.

A Somewhat Successful Camouflage of a More Successful Empire

Of course, it is fair to say that Russia has not been the only imperial power in the history of international law. A lecture could be held on the effects of the US Monroe Doctrine in Latin America and on Chinese historical thinking about tributary (vassal) states in its neighbourhood. Nevertheless, it is important to highlight that Russia has been part of this imperialist history, and the fact that the Soviet Union perceived itself as an ‘anti-imperial’ power was merely a somewhat successful camouflage in the context of international law.

Perhaps Russia was a more successful empire than the British or French, because it only fell apart in 1991. Parts of the former Soviet Union are only now starting to critically engage with their own history. They only now realise that almost everything they learned about the history of their own peoples and earlier political history was part of imperial construction and agenda.

Perhaps Russia was a more successful empire than the British or French, because it only fell apart in 1991.

There is a certain irony in the fact that the Russian Federation is very active and enthusiastic at the UN General Assembly on issues related to the condemnation of colonialism. In December 2025, most western countries abstained from voting on the Draft Resolution on International Day against Colonialism in All its Forms and Manifestations, but the resolution was adopted anyway. Poland’s representative—speaking on behalf of Belgium, Czechia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, the Netherlands, and Romania—pointed out the hypocrisy of the Russian Federation, given its own history as a co-sponsor of such initiatives at the UN level. Perhaps more awareness and historical-legal knowledge are needed.

My final thoughts turn to the future of Russia. Not all Russian opposition members understand, or want to acknowledge, that the root problem for the country is neither Putin’s personality nor the system of governance he created. My research shows that Putin uses tropes that imperial-minded international lawyers in Russia discussed already in the 1990s. For example, the Moscow Journal of International Law argued that, with self-determination and the constitutional right to secession, the Bolsheviks laid a “a time bomb” under the foundations of the Russian Empire—something Putin later echoed when annexing Crimea. Russian legal scholars also argued that Belarus was obliged, under the treaty, to form a genuine union state with Russia. And finally, they argued that the borders between former Soviet republics should not be ‘hard’ but rather flexible so that no one would leave the imperial space in terms of movement of people and trade, but also in terms of security.

When imagining post-Putin’s Russia at some later stage, regardless of who comes to power, my first litmus-test question to the new elites would be: “How do you see the legacy of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union from the perspective of imperialism?” If they acknowledge that this has been a problem, it would be a good sign. By contrast, any talk of a ‘liberal empire’ based solely on the aspiration to human rights and democracy would be an oxymoron, as history demonstrates, often leading to new imperial aggressions but, unfortunately, without much democracy or human rights.

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Lennart Meri Lecture by Lauri Mälksoo: Watch on YouTube