Blood of Nations, Blood of Empire: Pan-Slavism as a Critique of International Law in Late Imperial Russia and Beyond

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.