‘There is no Russia’: Self-determination and State Recognition during the Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1922

This paper describes, explains, and critically evaluates the processes of recognition (and non-recognition) of the various successor governments of the former Russian Empire during the revolutionary and civil war period, from the February Revolution (1917) to the establishment of the Soviet Union (1922). Faced with the chaos and instability of the Russian Civil War, world leaders looking at the region were faced with a set of familiar problems. What makes a state? How and why are sovereign claims validated by external actors? How do external actors balance their declared respect for values such as self-determination with their own interests and the realities on the ground? Taking a more historical perspective on this section’s themes, this paper’s main research question is as follows: what were the criteria - if quantifiable - that those outside of the former Russian Empire used to validate the self-determination and statehood claims of the Bolsheviks, the White Movement, and other governments and non-state peoples between the years of 1917 and 1922? Especially pertinent to this work is the emphasis on conflict - we may well accept that during war new states are founded on and by force, but what impact does this have on how others see these states? Does the recognition of sovereign claims become inexorably tied to value judgements on the righteousness of their cause or conflict, or some other factor or combination of these elements? Whilst the bulk of the paper’s empirical data comes from the public and private records of the so-called “Great Powers”, including “Russia”, a conscious effort is also made to analyse the agency of smaller aspiring states, such as Estonia, and their populations. This is not simply the result of a desire to focus on often-neglected actors but also a consequence of the author’s genuine belief that novel ways of thinking about self-determination and statehood, relevant to scholars of political theory, international relations, and history, can be found and analysed here. Drawing on the author’s own doctoral research on the concept of self-determination in “Russia” during the aforementioned period, this paper marries the conceptual issues surrounding self-determination, sovereignty, and statehood with empirical examples from a region once again experiencing conflict. The aim is not to draw direct parallels to current events - to do so would be ahistorical at best and dangerous at worst - but to reaffirm the importance of context and the nature of imperialism (and, especially, of imperialistic mindsets) in how peoples, governments, and their leaders view would-be states. Straddling and breaching the lines between political theory, international relations, and intellectual and diplomatic history, this work should also hopefully demonstrate the worth - perhaps even the necessity - of interdisciplinary approaches to multi-faceted and recurrent research puzzles.