While there is no set definition of the ‘rule of law’, there are half a dozen international indicators competing for recognition. It is clear, though, that the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union would not score high on any of these indicators. And yet, the notions of legality (zakonnost’) and justice (spravedlivost’) mattered in both: political and cultural elites invoked these notions as much as the wider citizenries, with outcomes that could not be scripted. While existing literature has addressed both ‘legality’ and ‘justice’ in studies of state policy and in histories of intellectual opposition to the tsarist and Soviet orders, there is little recognition of how instrumental they both were to ethnic and religious minorities.
Non-Russians made up over half of the population in the late Russian Empire and just under 50% of people in the Soviet Union. 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. Just as religion greatly affected access to places of residence, occupation, and education in the imperial period, nationality did so under Soviet rule. Being part of a religious or ethnic community other than the dominant one could mean open or subtle discrimination. Yet, such discrimination was neither automatic, in most cases, nor did it go unchallenged. This project therefore explores the ways in which ethnic and religious minorities, from the Russian Empire’s ‘Great Reforms’ of the 1860s to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, routinely invoked ‘legality’ and ‘justice’ to further their rights within otherwise repressive systems. It argues that these systems allowed, even encouraged, them to do so, even if the activism thus invited could help to erode their authority. The overall objective is to show how ethnic and religious minorities actively used these concepts to resist discrimination within authoritarian settings, thereby challenging simplified victimhood narratives.
To track similarities and differences between the imperial and Soviet periods, the project proposes a multi-sited historical enquiry, combining an analysis of published sources with extensive work in regional and central archives, and oral history. The results will be debated with NGOs and wider society in a variety of innovative knowledge transfer formats.
