Fluid Russia

Between the Global and the National in the Post-Soviet Era

Vera Michlin-Shapir

• Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781501760549
• eBook ISBN: 9781501760556
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Russian History
• Index: History

Fluid Russia offers a new framework for understanding Russian national identity by focusing on the impact of globalization on its formation, something which has been largely overlooked. This approach sheds new light on the Russian case, revealing a dynamic Russian identity that is developing along the lines of other countries exposed to globalization. Vera Michlin-Shapir shows how along with the freedoms afforded when Russia joined the globalizing world in the 1990s came globalization's disruptions.

Michlin-Shapir describes Putin's rise to power and his project to reaffirm a stronger identity not as a uniquely Russian diversion from liberal democracy, but as part of a broader phenomenon of challenges to globalization. She underlines the limits of Putin's regime to shape Russian politics and society, which is still very much impacted by global trends. As well, Michlin-Shapir questions a prevalent approach in Russia studies that views Russia's experience with national identity as abnormal or defective, either being too weak or too aggressive.

What is offered is a novel explanation for the so-called Russian identity crisis. As the liberal postwar order faces growing challenges, Russia's experience can be an instructive example of how these processes unfold. This study ties Russia's authoritarian politics and nationalist rallying to the shortcomings of globalization and neoliberal economics, potentially making Russia "patient zero" of the anti-globalist populist wave and rise of neo-authoritarian regimes. In this way, Fluid Russia contributes to the broader understanding of national identity in the current age and the complexities of identity formation in the global world.

PART ONE

Fluid Citizenship

Citizenship Policy in Post-Soviet Russia

CHAPTER 1

The Unmaking of the Soviet Project

Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel Prize laureate for literature, explained the Soviet national experience as the result of a “Marxist-Leninist laboratory” that “gave rise to a new man: Homo Sovieticus.” The Homo sovieticus “isn’t just Russian, he’s Belorussian, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Kazakh.” She confesses that “although we now live in different countries and speak different languages, you couldn’t mistake us for anyone else.”¹

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was an amalgamation of peoples and identities brought together under an overarching Soviet identification, in which the Russian language and culture played a central role. As it disintegrated, the unravelling of the Soviet state challenged the identification and rights of Homo sovieticus on its territories. Nowhere was this more pronounced than in Russia, the center and successor of the Soviet Union. The breakdown of the Soviet political structure raised questions that went to the very core of the new Russian identity. Russia’s legislators had to determine who the Russian people were: who belonged to the national in-group and shared a sense of belonging and identification with the new Russian state and who should be awarded the political, social, and economic rights that citizenship conferred. This difficult task was similar to experiences of other postimperial states—the conundrum of addressing mixed ethnic and national populations after years of coexistence and their inevitable mismatch with the newly formed geographical entities.²

For Russia, at the heart of the heterogenous reality stood two major outcomes of the Soviet imperial project. After 1991, 36 million people—25 million ethnic Russians and 11 million Russian speakers, who identified with Russia linguistically and culturally—remained outside the territory of Russia. These groups included large concentrations of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers, like in North Kazakhstan, East Ukraine, and Crimea. Many in Russia considered these people as kin, part of an imagined national in-group. At the same time, newly established Russia included numerous ethnic minority groups, forming approximately 20 percent of its population.

The main legislation in this period was the Federal Law on Citizenship of the RSFSR from 1991, whose aim was to resolve the problems of a mixed Soviet population and accommodate certain former Soviet citizens in the citizenry. Scholars, such as the social scientist Oxana Shevel, described this citizenship legislation as very inclusive to former Soviet citizens, ideological and permissive.³ Its consequences—or, rather, perceived consequences—were, however, a migration surge of millions into Russia and a sense that the citizenry was becoming uncertain and insecure. Other scholars, such as the professor of law George Ginsburgs, noted the importance of implementation in understanding Russian citizenship legislation.⁴ Ginsburgs explained that chaotic and often corrupt implementation practices were the source of Russia’s perceived difficulties in creating a stable citizenry.

The temporal context of the collapse of the Soviet Union was no less important than the direct consequences of imperial Soviet disintegration. This was largely overlooked by Russian policy makers and scholars alike. While the government focused on the place of Russians and Russian speakers in the citizenry, the new migration space, created by late modern trends of freedom of movement and deregulated economic systems, became a determining factor in the inability to produce a stable sense of citizenship. This chapter focuses on the abrupt change from Soviet socialism to a global free-market economy and how this affected migration, citizenship, and their perception in society. The sense of dissatisfaction with citizenship laws and sense of insecurity in the public was a result of the fragmentation of the institution of citizenship that is characteristic of the late modern period. In this sense Russia’s situation was much closer to the late modern concept of citizenship in Western countries, which were also struggling with these dynamics of citizenship fragmentation.

Citizenship in the Disintegrating Soviet Union, 1989–1991

Attempts to counter the Soviet mixing of populations through citizenship legislation started in the late 1980s on the periphery of the Soviet Union—in the Baltic republics. When Soviet power loosened in 1987–1988, the Baltic states strove to increase their autonomy within the union and set their eyes on full independence. As part of this effort, they launched campaigns that aimed to delineate their citizenries. Central to those campaigns was a debate on ways to prioritize citizens over migrants—mostly Russians and Russian speakers who had moved to the republics after 1940.⁵ These were the first signs of the looming postimperial syndrome, grappling with the mixed populations and essentially trying to unentangle them. This brought the issue of Russianness to the fore.

The core of the problem in the Baltic states was their claim that they had been illegally incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940 and that the Soviet regime purposefully undermined their demographics.⁶ Indeed, after 1945 the Soviets established numerous military and military-industrial facilities in the Baltic states, which were staffed primarily by Russians and Slavic persons, who were Russified and were later labeled Russian speakers, and who moved to these republics in large numbers.⁷ In the late 1980s, during glasnost, the scale of migration was revealed.⁸ In Latvia, the percentage of ethnic Latvians decreased from 77 percent in 1939 to 52 percent in 1989. In Estonia, the percentage of Estonians dropped from 90 percent in 1939 to 61 percent in 1989.⁹ These figures caused outrage and led many in those republics to consider legal options that would reinstate their prewar citizenries, based on the logic of “restoration of independence.”¹⁰ In 1987–1991 political groups circulated versions of possible citizenship laws that excluded residents who had arrived after 1940.¹¹ Although not yet adopted, the laws threatened the future status of Russians in these republics.

Meanwhile, in Moscow, two centers of political power were forming—Soviet power under Gorbachev and a new Russian leadership around Yeltsin. The first legal response to the Baltic republics’ moves came from the Soviet center. In 1990, in a bid to gain control over the institution of citizenship, Gorbachev signed the new Soviet citizenship law, which tried to restrain the Baltic republics from excluding Russians and Russian speakers from their citizenries. The Law on Citizenship of the USSR from 1990 stated that Soviet citizens were simultaneously citizens of their republics and of the union and that union citizenship was equal to all.¹² However, by 1991 the Soviet Union was unraveling, and Soviet attempts to regain control became futile.

After the failed coup of August 1991, Gorbachev had no political capital, and the initiative lay with the republics’ leaders, including Yeltsin, who positioned himself against Gorbachev in his own bid for Russian independence.¹³ From this point, the status of Russians and Russian speakers outside Russia had become Yeltsin’s problem too. This was not easy for him. Politically, he was on the side of the national elites in the republics who wanted independence, some of whom were accused of discriminating against Russians and Russian speakers. As a result, in the early 1990s Yeltsin was expected to defend Russians and Russian speakers in the republics, while he was also perceived to be working contrary to their interests. In the Baltic republics, local Russians called him Judas.¹⁴

Russia’s First Citizenship Law, 1991

The Russian citizenship law was adopted in November 1991 against the backdrop of these events and after most republics (except the Baltic states) had adopted citizenship laws.¹⁵ It is unclear whether in November Yeltsin had already set his mind on full independence outside the union, but as the law suggests, it was a strong possibility.¹⁶ The first Russian citizenship law expressed two sets of ideas.

The first was Russia’s interest in transforming into a democratic liberal state that embraced Western principles of globalization, human rights values, and trends of late modernity. These elements articulated an inclusive and civic vision of identification in the law. Most enlightening in this regard was article 13, stipulating that citizenship could be acquired through recognition of citizenship (priznanie grazhdanstva).¹⁷ As of February 6, 1992, Russia recognized all permanent residents of the RSFSR as Russian citizens. This type of policy favored by international norms is called zero option. By choosing it, Russia accepted inclusive liberal norms.¹⁸ Further, article 13-2 stipulated that recognition of citizenship also applied to those who were born in the RSFSR, or if at least one of their parents was a Soviet citizen and permanently resided on the territory of the RSFSR (as a birthright).¹⁹ Russian citizenship could also be acquired by birth (po rozhdeniyu).²⁰ Hence, the law combined the two principles of determining citizenship: the first, by origin (jus sanguinis) which gives preference to the origins of the parents (birthright), and the second, jus soli, which accords importance to the place of birth.²¹ This was (and is) the practice of most Western countries and demonstrated an inclusive agenda.²² Moreover, the law also expressed an obligation to reduce statelessness according to international legal norms. This meant that Russia was opening itself to the influences of globalization and late modern trends of inclusivity and the flexibility of identities. As we will see later, this had far-reaching effects on the concept of citizenship and perceptions of identity.

Despite the law’s inclusiveness and compliance with international legal practices, it also bore a second set of ideas—namely, characteristics of Russia’s primacy among the republics. The person who led this policy was Valery Tishkov, Yeltsin’s nationalities minister and Russia’s leading ethnographer. His assessment was as follows: “A man born in Alma-Ata, who studied in Leningrad, and worked in Kharkov, had the full right to acquire citizenship not only of Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine, but also of any other state formed on the territory of the former USSR.”²³ Tishkov, who held liberal views, chose to see the inclusive qualities of the Soviet imperial laboratory and its product—the Homo sovieticus. However, this typical Soviet citizen was based on Russian linguistic and cultural characteristics, and so although the law never specifically referred to ethnic Russians, the emblematic Soviet citizen who it tried to cater for was in many cases either an ethnic Russian or a Russified individual (a Russian speaker). This was reinforced by the evolving reality, for as the union was coming to its end, it became increasingly clear that ethnic Russians and Russian speakers were the predominant group that did not fit the new nationalizing realities of the newly formed post-Soviet states. This meant that the law positioned Russia as the material and spiritual caretaker of the rights of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in the post-Soviet space.²⁴

Hence, the law demonstrated the need to address the challenges of the ensuing imperial Soviet collapse. A situation where millions of ethnic Russians or Russified people—who culturally and linguistically identified with Russia and might soon find themselves outside the Russian state—dictated policy. This resulted in the most exceptional method of acquiring Russian citizenship—citizenship registration (grazhdanstva v porjadke registratsii).²⁵ The law recognized the special kinship between Russia and the citizens of the former Soviet Union.²⁶ This was specifically expressed in articles 18-3 and 18-4, which stated that former Soviet citizens residing on the territories of former Soviet republics who had not acquired citizenship of their republic within three years since the law came into force and declared their desire for a Russian citizenship were eligible for citizenship.²⁷ The same applied to former Soviet citizens who became stateless persons, although they had to make the declaration within a year (again, as an expression of concern for the reduction of statelessness). Article 18-5 stated that foreign citizens or stateless perso...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Note on Transliteration
• Introduction
• Part One: Fluid Citizenship
• Part Two: Fluid Words
• Part Three: Fluid Times
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index