Horizontal citizenship in Estonia: Russian speakers in the borderland city of Narva

ABSTRACT

This paper critically interrogates the notion of ‘citizenship’ from the politically-charged perspective of Russian speakers in Estonia. Drawing on a broad range of critical citizenship literatures, and ethnographic examples from the borderland city of Narva, we propose re- and de-centring citizenship away from universalising conceptions, towards a historically and culturally grounded horizontal perspective on citizenship. While cognisant of dominant, state-centric approaches in Estonia, we present citizenship as a process unfolding through individual, everyday practices of belonging. We demonstrate how Russian speakers, excluded from membership in the Estonian community, can still become members in many less-formal ways, through vibrant interaction with local space.

KEYWORDS:

• Estonia
• horizontal citizenship
• Russian-speakers
• post-Soviet
• borderland

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Without wishing to embellish the essentialising nature of these terms, we reluctantly use labels that have embedded social meaning in the Estonian context. Drawing on Soviet nationalities practices, ‘Estonian’ (used in inverted commas) is used as an ethnic categorisation, widely used in social discourse. ‘Non-Estonian’ (again, in inverted commas), conversely, refers to groups of people outside of this categorisation.

2. The idea of legal continuity of the Estonian Republic of 1918–1940 rests on the basis that the Soviet Union illegally occupied and Sovietised Estonia in 1940. When Estonia regained its independence in 1991, policymakers argued that the country was returning to the legal position it held in 1940.

3. A number of individuals (24,102 in total) were able to receive Estonian citizenship if they had a certificate attesting their support for the Congress of Estonian Citizens, obtained before independence. The Congress was an unofficial body that sought to create a list of ‘Estonian’ citizens (based on the principle of legal continuity) as part of the independence struggle. (Poleshchuk 2004, 18).

4. The number of stateless people has dropped from over 30% in 1992 to approximately 6.1% in 2016. This is primarily because stateless people have decided to undertake ‘naturalisation’ or have, instead, acquired Russian citizenship.

5. In all cases, pseudonyms have been used to ensure the anonymity of our respondents.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alina Jašina-Schäfer

Alina Jašina-Schäfer has completed her PhD at the Justus Liebig University Giessen, exploring spatial belonging of Russian speakers in the borderland areas of Estonia and Kazakhstan. She works currently as a coordinator of Giessen Centre for Eastern European Studies and continues her research into materiality of belonging, citizenship, politics of inequality as well as minority integration in the post-Soviet region.

Ammon Cheskin

Ammon Cheskin is Senior Lecturer in Nationalism and Identity within the subject area of Central and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow. His research focuses primarily on Russian-speaking identities in the post-Soviet space, with particular focus on the interaction between Russia's compatriot policies, the attitudes and policies of the Soviet successor states, and the actual practices of Russian speakers themselves. His monograph: Russian Speakers in Post-Soviet Latvia was published by University of Edinburgh Press. Ammon has previously published on topics such as Russian soft power in Ukraine, civil society in Russia, and memory politics in Latvia.