"The Power of Law" - Interview with Yuri BARSEGOV

The article is devoted to an interview with Yuri Georgievich Barseghov — a prominent specialist in international law, Doctor of Legal Sciences, former member of the UN International Law Commission, and founder of the Armenian Institute of International Law and Political Science in Moscow — timed to coincide with the 85th anniversary of the Moscow and Kars Treaties of 1921.

Biographical Context
The material opens with a detailed account of Yu.G. Barseghov's professional career: work in the UN Secretariat, participation in the Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea, activities at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) of the USSR Academy of Sciences, teaching at the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN), membership in the UN International Law Commission (1987–1992), work in the OSCE Minsk Group on the Karabakh settlement (1994–1997), as well as an extensive scholarly legacy encompassing monographs on the problems of the World Ocean, the Caspian Sea, and the Armenian Genocide.

Key Thesis: The Illegality of the Moscow and Kars Treaties
The central thesis of the interview is that the world community's de facto recognition of the consequences of the Moscow (1921) and Kars (1921) Treaties created a precedent of impunity that subsequently paved the way for the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact — analogous to how the impunity for the Armenian Genocide became a precondition for the Holocaust. Barseghov points to:

• the falsification of the signing date of the Moscow Treaty (in reality March 18, not March 16), carried out with the aim of misleading the British side during parallel negotiations with Krasin in London;
• the legal nullity of both treaties from the standpoint of international law norms — violations of the conditions of validity for interstate agreements concerning their subjects, the free expression of the parties' will, and the lawfulness of the treaty's object;
• the disposal of the territory of a third state (independent Soviet Armenia) without its full participation, amid the conditions of genocide against the Armenian people.

The Role of the Treaty of Lausanne and the Western Position
It is noted that during the preparation of the Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey's northeastern border was not revisited, since it had already been determined de facto by the Bolsheviks at Kars — which allowed the Western powers to avoid an overt betrayal of the Armenian people's rights while effectively consolidating the outcomes of the Soviet-Turkish collusion.

Stalin's Special Role
A separate section of the interview is devoted to analyzing Stalin's conduct as a Georgian nationalist seeking to weaken Armenia in Georgia's interests (trading Armenian territories for the return of Batum), as well as the coordination of the Kemalist attack on Armenia in 1920 with the Bolshevik leadership, and the role of Stalin's inner circle (Ordzhonikidze, Mdivani, Eliava) in the Caucasian Bureau and the Revolutionary Military Council of the XI Army.

Conclusion
The key conclusion of the interview is that the Sovietization of Armenia and the subsequent territorial settlement were the result of a direct collusion between Bolshevik Russia and Kemalist Turkey, devoid of legal legitimacy, and that present-day Armenia retains full grounds to demand that the Kars Treaty be brought into conformity with the norms of international law — despite the absence of political will on the part of both Turkey and Russia as the legal successor to the USSR.