Authors

Discussion

As a result of the Bolshevik revolution and the continuing violence of the civil war, many people from the former Russian empire found themselves abroad in a situation of stateless refugees, scattered throughout the world. To guarantee an international protection for refugees, a special commission of the League of Nations proposed a creation of Nansen passports. These passports were destined specifically for “any person of Russian origin, who no longer enjoyed the protection of the Soviet state, or “any person of Armenian origin” from the former Ottoman empire, as in 1920s only these two categories constituted the concept of a refugee in international law. Such a definition reconstituted the former Russian empire as an important reference point in international law. 

In my paper, by contrast, I would like to examine the attempts of Jewish and Ukrainian refugee lawyers in 1920s and 1930s to challenge the imperial framework of the international law and bring in an ethnic principle into the identity of the Nansen passport. These efforts also reflected the attempts of many non-Russian emigrants establish their own national communities (or states) in international law. Appealing to the League of Nations, the Ukrainian international lawyers argued that the citizens of the former Ukrainian National Republic should be entitled for Ukrainian Nansen passports and thereby constitute a distinct Ukrainian community of refugees. Similarly, the Jewish international lawyers sought to establish their separate national community in the international law. 

Considering these discussions allows a more diverse understanding of post-imperial discourse of international law as well as questioning the established understanding of interwar emigration from Eastern Europe as “Russia Abroad.”