Abstract
This article focuses on the use of the concept of friendship in the treaties of friendship concluded by the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century. The range of reference of friendship and its usage by these two political rivals display a number of commonalities, which indicate a key role this concept plays in maintaining the existing order of interstate relations. The concept is conventionally used in the treaties marking the changes in the global or regional political settings. In the texts of these treaties appeals to friendship are made together with the expression of respect for state sovereignty, independence, borders and so on. It also appears as an exclusive and contractual relationship. These conventions in diplomatic rhetoric, meant to reassert and legitimize the particularistic sovereign order, pose a challenge to the attempts to conceive of international relations in terms of friendship as an ethical, universal and benevolent phenomenon.
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Notes
The treaty of friendship concluded in 1939 is exceptional and may be compared to the treaties with Abkhazia and South Ossetia from 2008 in the sense that they were concluded with governments that only the Russian government recognized (as of today Nicaragua, Venezuela and Nauru also recognize the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia). The 1939 treaty was concluded with Otto Kuusinen's government (also known as the Terijoki government) on 2 December, that is, one day after the Finnish Democratic Republic was established in the town of Terijoki, which was occupied by the Red Army at the beginning of the Winter War. Although the eventual peace treaty was made with the legitimate government of Finland, the treaty was still retained in the Soviet collection of documents from 1946 (see Vneshnyaya Politika SSSR, 1946) and well illustrates the Soviet use of friendship to legitimate changes in state borders.
This is the list of treaties, agreements and declarations acquired from the UN Treaty Series database: http://untreaty.un.org/. The exceptions are: the treaty with Germany, 1939 (available at the Avalon Project website: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/); Czechoslovakia, 1943, Yugoslavia, 1941 and 1945, GDR, 1955, India, 1971 and Iraq 1972 (all available from the Soviet treaty collection SDDSK). Some prolongation acts are not included in this overview. The search for the ‘treaty of friendship’ in the UNTS produced 257 hits (on 25 May 2010), which included treaties and other documents signed by countries from around the world.
I am aware of the difference that exists between the words ‘narod’ and ‘natsia’ in Russian. Both words could be translated into English as ‘nation’ and ‘people’. I will, however, adhere to translating ‘narod’ as ‘people’ as this seems to better correspond to the nuances of the Soviet internationalist rhetoric.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all those who took part in the panel ‘Friendship in International Relations’ at the International Studies Association Annual Convention, New Orleans 2010, as well as Paul-Erik Korvela, Andrea Oelsner and Kari Palonen for their valuable questions and comments. This work was generously supported by the collective research project of the Academy of Finland ‘The Concept of World Politics’.
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Roshchin, E. Friendship of the enemies: Twentieth century treaties of the United Kingdom and the USSR. Int Polit 48, 71–91 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2010.39
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2010.39