Abstract

This chapter explores the different ways that Soviet lawyers articulated the concepts of aggression and crimes against peace to both domestic and international audiences. Focusing on the writings of Aron Trainin and Pyotr Romashkin, I argue that although Soviet approaches to the concepts of aggression and crimes against peace varied in their specifics according to both political concerns and evolving ideas in international law, there was a remarkable consistency to Soviet definitions of aggression between the 1930s and 1960s. This constancy was likely in part due to Soviet propaganda about the inherent peacefulness of socialist states, which made the concept of aggression more foundational to Soviet understandings of international law than other crimes. While the Soviet definitions of genocide and crimes against humanity changed with the international developments of the postwar period, aggression remained the criminal offence underlying essentially all international atrocities throughout the mid-twentieth century in Soviet international law.