Aidar Sultanov: A Russian European Intellectual Against the Formidable ‘Sacrifice of Security to Security’

Review of Central and East European Law. 2016. Vol. 41. No. 1. P. 1–26.

Akopov S.

This article commemorates works of a renowned Russian legal scholar and human-rights activist Aidar R. Sultanov. In doing so, we will use an original methodology of the analysis of transnational intellectuals to consider the work of Sultanov illuminated by the following four approaches: the “We dimension”; the dimension of “Others”; the dimension of Sultanov’s “spatial narratives”; and key “historical narratives”. We concentrate our analysis of Sultanov not only as a legal scholar and human-rights activist but, even more broadly, as a public intellectual—some of whose cultural and philosophical premises have remained implicit but which we believe need to be explored in a brighter light. The latter are taken into consideration, in this essay, so as to speculate about the following: what elements of Sultanov’s worldview make this one of a transnational intellectual and, also, what prompts him to feel obliged to take a stand against attempts to securitize human rights at the national level in the Russian Federation?

Keywords: экстремизм, свобода слова, Европейский Суд по правам человека, extremism, European Court of Human Rights, freedom of speech, transnational intellectuals, транснациональные интеллектуалы, Aidar Sultanov, Айдар Султанов

Publication based on the results of: Национализм и национальная политика в СССР и России: количественные аспекты (2015)