This book addresses a simple question: how do Russians understand international law? Is it the same understanding as in the West or is it in some ways different and if so, why?

It answers these questions by drawing on from three different yet closely interconnected perspectives: history, theory, and recent state practice. The work uses comparative international law as starting point and argues that in order to understand post-Soviet Russia's state and scholarly approaches to international law, one should take into account the history of ideas in Russia. To an extent, Russian...