408 Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1914– )in the world, in place of the single isolated one of the past. Th is meant that
the way was now open for holding that relations between the socialist states
inter se were governed by a new and distinctive kind of international law.
One of those advancing this “new” line of thought was Korovin himself—
who should merit the sobriquet of “the Great Survivor” of socialist law. He
brought his turbulent career to a comfortable end as professor of interna-
tional law at Moscow University in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Th e principal champion of this revived and updated version of a distinc-
tively socialist international law was Grigory Tunkin. He held professorships
of international law, fi rst at the Institute of State and Law and then at the
University of Moscow. Like Martens, he combined this academic work with
the post of legal adviser to the Soviet foreign ministry. Th e basic idea was that
relations between the socialist states were fundamentally diff erent in charac-
ter from those between socialist and capitalist countries. Th e law governing
relations within the socialist world was characterized in clearly solidarist
terms. (For relations with the capitalist states, as will be seen, a fi rmly posi-
tivist philosophy prevailed.) Th e Brezhnev Doctrine supported, and exempli-
fi ed, this thesis— with important support from Tunkin.
Kovalev’s 1968 Pravda article forthrightly rejected “small- nation narrow-
mindedness, seclusion and isolation” and insisted instead on the need to
“subordinate the par tic u lar to the general interest.” Similarly in the solidar-
ist spirit was the assertion that “each Communist party is responsible not
only to its own people, but also to all the socialist countries, to the entire
Communist movement.” Th ere was a warning that “[t]he weakening of any
links in the world system of socialism directly aff ects all the socialist coun-
tries,” coupled with an insistence that “[f]ormally juridical reasoning” must
not be allowed to obscure the social realities of class confl ict.
One feature of solidarist thought that was especially evident in the Brezhnev
Doctrine was a discarding of absolutist theories of sovereignty and their re-
placement with a tolerance for intervention in the overall interest of a larger
community. Th e Pravda statement asserted, in this spirit, the existence of a
new kind of right of self- defense—not of individual, isolated nation- states,
but rather of the over- all “social system” of socialism. When that system was
threatened in any state where it was established, then “abstractly understood
sovereignty” could not be permitted to stand in the way of forceful action. Th e
Soviet military intervention was therefore justifi ed as a discharging of the So-