In Pursuit of 'Legality' and 'Justice': Minority Struggles in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union

ongoing

The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union are rarely associated with the ‘rule of law’. And yet, the notions of ‘legality’ and ‘justice’ greatly mattered in both: political and cultural elites invoked them as much as the wider citizenries. While existing literature has addressed ‘legality’ and ‘justice’ in studies of state policy and intellectual opposition to the two orders, there is little recognition of how instrumental they both were to ethnic and religious minorities. Whereas religion was one of the key determinants of rights, privileges, and obligations in the empire, ‘nationality’, understood in ethnic terms, replaced religious affiliation in this capacity under socialism. Being part of a minority could mean open or subtle forms of discrimination. Yet, such discrimination was neither automatic nor did it go unchallenged. This project therefore explores the ways in which minorities, from the Russian Empire’s ‘Great Reforms’ of the 1860s to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, routinely invoked and employed ‘legality’ and ‘justice’ to enforce their rights. It argues that the systems allowed, even encouraged, them to do so. What is more, minorities were also represented among the political and cultural elites, from imperial lawyers to Soviet party officials. What did minority actors expect when they called on ‘justice’ and ‘legality’? More importantly, how and to which degree did this strategy help them defend their rights in two highly authoritarian states? While there are obvious differences between the imperial and Soviet periods in this regard, there are also substantial similarities. To track these, the project proposes an ambitious multi-sited enquiry, combining an analysis of published sources with extensive work in regional and central archives, and oral history. This ground-breaking research will also create an online database on minority legal action that will be debated with NGOs and wider society in a variety of innovative knowledge transfer formats.