Russia’s Passportization Policy toward Unrecognized Republics

Abstract

While passportization, Russia’s policy of systematic distribution of citizenship in the post-Soviet space, is again attracting experts’ attention, most observers simply regard it as an example of Russia’s “expansionist” policies toward former Soviet countries. This article explains that Russia conducted passportization in Abkhazia and South Ossetia on an ad hoc basis to deter Georgia from regaining its control over these territories. Moreover, this article examines the situation in Transnistria and suggests that passportization has not been applied uniformly to unrecognized republics. Instead, Russia has used citizenship factors in different ways, depending on its aims and the situation in each instance.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author is immensely grateful to Professor Elise Giuliano for her comments on the first draft. This paper represents the author’s personal views and does not reflect the position of the Japanese government.

Notes

1. For example, Florian Muhlfried (2010) writes that passportization started in 2000. Noelle Shanahan Cutts (2007) writes that it was 2003. The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia (2009,147) did not determine the starting point of the policy by itself; it just cites the Georgian authority as saying that passportization began on a massive scale in Summer 2002.

2. The Congress of Russian Communities is a Russian nationalist group that was formed in Moscow in 1993 on the initiative of Dmitrii Rogozin. The main goal of this group was to reunite all Russians in an expanded Russian state. The Congress was a federation of groups from across the post-Soviet territory including Abkhazia (Ingram 2001,198, 205–6).

3. Although the expression “more than half” is a little ambiguous, this roughly squares with the description by Liana Minasian that no less than 40 percent of the residents received Russian citizenship in the 1990s (Minasian 2003).

4. In this respect, Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia (2009, 164–67) cites Clause 4 of Article 14, instead of Clause 1, as the legal basis for passportization, but Clause 4 was added on November 11, 2003 (see http://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_44977/3d0cac60971a511280cbba229d9b6329c07731f7/#dst100018, accessed May 2, 2017), and did not exist in the original version of the citizenship law of 2002. Given that passportization started in June 2002, this argument of the independent mission is inadequate. The original version of the new citizenship law as of July 2002 can be found on Parlamentskaia gazeta (June 5, 2002). The law has been amended many times.

5. The law was passed by the State Duma on April 19, 2002, adopted by the Federal Council on May 15, 2002, signed by President Putin on May 31, 2002, and went into effect on July 1, 2002.

6. The Russian government itself admitted that passportization started under the old citizenship law and continued under the new law. In August 2002, Vladimir Rushailo, then secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, explained to journalists that Russian passports would continue to be granted to residents of Abkhazia after the new law went into force (Soldat Otechestva 2002).

7. The first reading in the Duma on October 18, 2001. Available at http://transcript.duma.gov.ru/, accessed May 2, 2017.

8. The second reading in the Duma on February 20, 2002. Available at http://transcript.duma.gov.ru/.

9. Postanovlenie o Zaiavlenii Gosudarstvennoi Dumy Federalinovo Sobraniia Rossiiskoi Federatsii O Situatsii v Gruzii v sviazi s Voennym Prisutstviem SSHA na ee Territorii [Resolution on the declaration of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation about the situation in Georgia regarding the military presence of the United States in its territory] (March 6, 2002).

10. These petitions were not made public at that time but were published later in the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaia gazeta (Rubleva and Gordienko 2002).

11. In fact, Igor Ivanov remained in his position until 2004.

12. For example, in July 2002, the speaker of the Georgian parliament, Nino Burjanadze, raised this problem in the parliamentary assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) (Vignanskii 2002b).

13. For example, Fiona Hill noted that in Russia many believed that Putin’s acquiescence to the U.S.-sponsored “train and equip” program was too hasty, and it was possible that Putin was now facing substantial pressure from high-ranking government and military officials to reassert Russia’s interests in Georgia (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2002).

14. Although under Saakashvili Russian–Georgian relations were strained, which even led to the direct war in 2008, at least in the first several months of Saakashvili’s tenure, the Kremlin had a hope for improvement of its relations with Georgia (Tsygankov and Tarver-Wahlquist 2009, 309–10).

15. For example, the residents in Adjara are mostly ethnic Georgians, unlike the Ossetians and Abkhaz. In addition, Moscow had much less security interest in Adjara than Abkhazia and South Ossetia (International Crisis Group 2004, 1).

16. The result of the census is available at the website of a Transnistrian news agency, Novosti Pridnestrov’ia: https://novostipmr.com/ru/news/17-03-01/v-pridnestrove-prozhivaet-okolo-80-bolshih-i-malyh-etnicheskih, accessed May 2, 2017.