The Road to Collective Security: Soviet Russia, the League of Nations, and the Emergence of the ius contra bellum in the Aftermath of the Russian Revolution (1917–1934)

This article argues that the quest for ‘peaceful coexistence’, sometimes depicted as an inherent quality of Soviet foreign policy, rather reflects a re-interpretation of actual practice in the light of subsequent developments – in connection with the emergence of Joseph Stalin’s doctrine of Socialism in one country. The latter was primarily inspired by tactical necessities rather than doctrinal dogmas. Even though Soviet Russia was perceived and sometimes acted as an outsider, if not a disrupting agent, until the accession of the USSR to membership in the League of Nations in 1934, Soviet foreign legal policy discourse in the 1920s and early 1930s, with its increasing focus on ‘peaceful coexistence’ and collective security rather than world proletarian revolution, contributed substantively to the emergence and development of modern ius contra bellum.