The Impact of Soviet Legal Experts in the Wake of Nuremberg

This paper will look at the role of Soviet legal experts in the shaping of a new international discourse about international law, human rights, state sovereignty, and economic development in the wake of the Second World War and the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46. It will pay particular attention to the direct and indirect role of international-law experts from Moscow's Institute of State and Law and Moscow State University in new international organizations from across the political spectrum—from the United Nations to the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. It will look in part at how these Soviet legal experts continually redefined "state sovereignty" to support Soviet political imperatives in postwar Europe and to criticize American policies and programs such as the Marshall Plan. In the end, it will show how Soviet legal experts came to argue that "economic sovereignty" (albeit of a certain sort) was a basic human right. It will also suggest how Soviet arguments came to shape a more general European (and international) discussion about development.