In Defense of Peace: Aron Trainin’s Contributions to International Jurisprudence

The Soviet Union played a major role in the establishment of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) that tried Nazi Germany’s leaders for their criminal actions at Nuremberg. Only a handful of Western scholars have noted that the Soviets were early proponents of the use of the legal principle of conspiracy and in establishing the principle that a war of aggression in and of itself could be legally construed as a criminal act. And it was the brilliant Soviet jurist Aron Trainin who forcefully “advanced the idea of individual responsibility for international crimes…the realization of which was established during the course of the Nuremberg deliberations.” The Soviet leadership would consistently call for an international war crimes trial after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. This article looks at Trainin’s remarkable career and especially at the evolution of his legal thought.