Window on Eurasia

Moscow Now Wrestling with the Problems of its Own Non-Citizens

Paul Goble

Vienna, June 20, 2006 – After more than 15 years of complaining about the status of those who did not qualify for citizenship in the Baltic states, Moscow is now having to deal with the problems arising from the fact that thousands of ethnic Russians do not have citizenship in the Russian Federation.

For the first time ever, the Russian Duma on Saturday conducted a
roundtable about the problems of what some speakers said were tens of
thousands of children of refugees, forced resettlers and migrants who
now live in the Russian Federation but who do not have citizenship
there
[http://www.dpni.org/index.php?php?0++5734].

The Russian legislature organized this discussion, deputy Vladimir
Nikitin, the deputy chairman of the CIS Affairs Committee, said,
because of the large number of letters of Russian “non-citizens” that had
been sent to the Duma and to other government offices.

In each line of these letters, he said, there was a cry for help:
“for my children born in Russia who for years have not been given
certification of their birth” or “for my 18-year-old daughter who
is forced to accept the citizenship of Uzbekistan where she lived before
the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

Many of these children are not admitted to kindergartens or medical
facilities because “by law, they do not have the right to study in
Russian schools and universities or serve in the army. And even if they
are admitted in spite of the law, they do not have the right to sit for
the common state examination. That requires a passport.”

Nikitin said that the situation of such people had become much worse in
2002 when the Duma adopted a law on citizenship that annulled the
passport of the former USSR. By that action, those who had been forced
resettlers or refugees were converted into foreigners who did not have
visas.

Some of those falling into this trap were deported, even if their
parents or spouses were citizens of the Russian Federation, Nikitin
said. And those subject to this punishment frequently have found
themselves cut off from their families: the laws of many former Soviet
republics do not allow such people to get visas for up to five years.

Those taking part in the Duma roundtable pointed to a variety of
problems in this area. Lyudmila Lukashova, the head of the Urals
Association of Refugees, for example, blamed many of the problems of
these people on “the constantly changing laws” and “the
high-handed approach” of officials involved in refugee work.

At the end of the roundtable session, the Duma deputies present
proposed adopting new laws in order to rectify the situation, but activists like
Lukashova argued that the more immediate task should be to force
immigration officials to abide by existing legislation by removing the
current leadership of the Federal Migration Service.

This acknowledgement by Russian officials that their legislation has
created a class of non-citizens on the territory of the Russian
Federation could prove to be far more important that many observers
might be inclined to think.

On the one hand and most immediately, this admission could open the way
to a far more open and fairer system of granting citizenship to those
returning from the former Soviet republics, something that would seem
to be entirely consistent with the demographic goals articulated by
President Vladimir Putin.

And on the other, this acknowledgement could lead to new discussions
between Moscow and the leaders of Estonia and Latvia about citizenship
issues, dialogues that likely would be more fruitful than those in the
past precisely because Russia has now acknowledged that its actions
have also created a class of non-citizens.

Indeed, such an admission by Moscow in that context could mean that the
European Union will again become involved in this issue, something that
in recent years it has been reluctant to raise. In this way, an
admission by Moscow could ultimately result in more pressure on Tallinn
and Riga.