The Soviets, Colonialism, and Legal Consciousness: Rethinking Armenia’s Relationship with International Law

Thirty years into independence, not much is known about the state of international legal scholarship in Armenia. This paper advances a particular explanation for this marginality – the colonisation of legal consciousness. By bringing together the relational-critical theory of legal consciousness and a colonial perspective on Armenia’s Soviet history, the paper suggests that the process of constructing the Soviet legality of international law involved colonial practices that relegated scholars in Armenia to the role of faithful reproducers of the Soviet Russian narratives of international law. Moreover, decades after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, faithful reproduction remains a predominant form of academic engagement with international law.