ABSTRACT
Soviet writers approach customary international law with equal caution. Although traces of customary law were implicit in the actions of the Soviet state from very beginning, Soviet spokesmen at first refused to recognize custom as a primary source of law, placing reliance solely upon treaty law. The Soviet Union recognizes custom together with treaty as the only primary sources of international law. As long as the Soviet Union continues to view custom as composed chiefly of norms created prior to the Great October Revolution, a certain aloofness from customary international law is to be expected on ideological grounds. According to the Soviet view, duration, or the time element, is important in the process whereby the positive or negative actions of states are converted into customary law. In the Soviet view, the issue of new states and old norms of law is directly related to the question of the sphere of validity of customary norms.
