Sultan - International Law - Fall 1991
Sultan
International Law
Fall 1991
QUESTION 1 (50 POINTS)
Back in the second half of the last century, "The Iron
Chancellor" of Prussia, Count Otto von Bismark, commented to
the Russian Czar that Russia can only find troubles and
disappointments in Europe. Desiring freedom from pressures
from the east while he unified Germany under the Prussian
crown, Bismark's diplomatic acumen proved once again to be
most astute: the Czar began a successful military campaign
in the south and southeast that led to the eventual conquest
of a large number of largely Moslem areas that presently
undergirdle the Soviet Union.
On September 1, 1991, Tarterstan, one of these
"autonomous" republics, conducted a referendum ordered by
its parliament, but condemned as "unconstitutional" by the
Soviet government in Moscow. As a result of the balloting,
94% of the votes called for the creation of a completely
independent Moslem state of Tarterstan, and for an
acceleration in the already active construction of new
mosques that had begun two years earlier. Implementing the
referendum on October 1, 1991, the Tarterstan parliament
declared its independence from Moscow, that Islam was its
official religion, and that the new state will be a nuclear
free zone with existing nuclear weapons to be transferred to
the Government of Russia (then and now led by Boris
Yeltsen).
On September 15, the newly formed Tarter government, a
cabinet system constitutionally elected by the Tarter
parliament, demanded the removal of all Soviet military
forces within six months. It also entered into economic
treaty relations with twelve of the seventeen "autonomous"
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