Economic Aggression – A Soviet Concept
Kirsten Sellars, 'Economic Aggression – A Soviet Concept' in Nina H.B Jorgensen (ed.), The International Criminal Responsibility of War’s Funders and Profiteers (Cambridge University Press, 2019, Forthcoming).
22 Pages Posted: 6 Jun 2019 Last revised: 14 Jun 2019
Date Written: December 1, 2018
Abstract
At the end of the war in Europe, the Allies wished to prosecute at Nuremberg some of the financiers and industrialists who had rearmed Germany and bankrolled the Nazi regime. But how could the actions of the German magnates be distinguished from those of their Allied equivalents? And at what point did legitimate profit-making, the object of every capitalist, turn into criminal profiteering, the subject of criminal proceedings? This question was never properly answered, but it is not surprising that the most active proponents of the idea of trying individuals for economic aggression hailed not from the capitalist world, but from the USSR.
Keywords: Economic aggression, USSR, V.I. Lenin, Imperialism, Moscow trials, Andrei Vishinsky, A.N. Trainin, Nuremberg tribunal
JEL Classification: K33, K41
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation