Socialism and International Law

The contributions of socialist thinkers and states to the development of international law often go unrecognized. Socialism and International Law: The Cold War and Its Legacies explores how socialist individuals and governments from Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia made vital contributions to international law as it is practiced today, and also brought ideas and initiatives that constituted important disruptive moments in its history.

The socialist world of the 20th century was an ambiguous and fragile construct: there were clear divisions between the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc, which kept one foot in Western Eurocentric traditions, and the positions of the radical Third World, primarily post-colonial Afro-Asian states, which mounted a more fundamental challenge to the international order. Far from a monolith, the socialist world was an intricate and dynamic space, which still had many shared common understandings of global affairs and the meaning of the law within them.

By examining how different state socialist ideologies, legal principles, and realpolitik affected contemporary international law frameworks, this book contests existing linear and Western-dominated histories. It considers these state socialist engagements in conversation with liberal and Western approaches and underlines the divisions that existed between versions of socialism from different regions and across the North-South divide. The legacies of socialist international law are still with us today, as are the consequences of its failure.

With a focus on the Cold War and its aftermath, Socialist International Law features astute commentary on the history and present-day effects of socialist principles applied to international law, provided by an esteemed and diverse group of contributors from around the world.

Raluca Grosescu, Lecturer in Politics, National University of Political Science and Public Administration (Bucharest), Ned Richardson-Little, Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam

Raluca Grosescu is a lecturer in politics at the National University of Political Science and Public Administration in Bucharest. After a PhD in political science at the University of Nanterre, she worked in different universities and research institutes across Europe, including Exeter University, the Paris Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Imre Kertész Kolleg in Jena. Her latest monograph, Justice and Memory after Dictatorship: Latin America, Central Eastern Europe and the Fragmentation of International Criminal Law was published in 2024 by Oxford University Press. She also led various international projects, including the ERC-Consolidator Grant Transnational Advocacy Networks and Corporate Accountability for Major International Crimes and the Romanian Research Council Grant State Socialist Contributions to the Development of International Criminal and Humanitarian Law after 1945.

Ned Richardson-Little is a Research Fellow in Department V: Globalizations in a Divided World at the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam (ZZF). Previously a Freigeist Fellow at the Department of History at the University of Erfurt leading the Volkswagen Stiftung funded research group The Other Global Germany: Deviant Globalization and Transnational Criminality in the 20th Century, he is currently a principal investigator on the project Towards Illiberal Constitutionalism in East Central Europe: Historical Analysis in Comparative and Transnational Perspectives. His first monograph The Human Rights Dictatorship: Socialism, Global Solidarity and Revolution in East Germany was released with Cambridge University Press in 2020.