Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire

In some cases, the fact that residents of the former Soviet republics had not acquired citizenship in the newly independent post-Soviet states (due either to imposed legal constraints or to their own unwillingness) was also used by Moscow as a reason for passportization. The Russian government has maintained that if former citizens of the Soviet Union had not received citizenship in the new states, then “Russia as a legal successor to the Soviet Union was obligated to grant these people citizenship and rights under the Constitution of Russia.”⁷⁰ This logic has been particularly relevant in Estonia and Latvia, which, as discussed in more detail in the chapter on the Baltic States, did not grant automatic citizenship to Soviet-era migrants who included many Russians and Russian speakers. Tallinn’s and Riga’s policies and the resulting passportless populations played well into Moscow’s hands, providing an arguably justifiable reason for their passportization as well as creating an international grievance. Meanwhile, in Georgia’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia and Moldova’s Transnistria, while Tbilisi and Chisinau granted automatic citizenship to inhabitants of these territories, separatist movements precluded many from obtaining Georgian or Moldovan passports. In these territories there was ready acceptance of Moscow’s passportization policies. However, in most other former Soviet republics, like Ukraine’s Crimea or northern Kazakhstan, Moscow was clandestinely and often illegally offering Russian citizenship to foreign citizens. Interestingly, Russian ethnicity was not a prerequisite for passportization in Moldova and Georgia. For instance, in the case of South Ossetia, there were virtually no ethnic Russians or native Russian speakers according to the 1989 census which lists ethnic Ossetians as making up 66 percent of the population and ethnic Georgians as totaling 29 percent.⁷¹ Whether targeting Russians or other nationalities, Russian passportization policies have played an important role in establishing and reinforcing separatism in Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Crimea.

Indeed, passportization is no simple consular matter. While most countries focus their consular activities on tourism, cultural and educational exchanges, and migration of workers, Russia has made consular activities a means to its security and territorial ambitions. Moscow’s policies of protecting its citizens and compatriots abroad have rightfully made most post-Soviet countries suspicious of Russian consular activities.⁷² According to anthropologist Florian Mühlfried, passportization is a clear case of “a new form of imperialism by civic means.”⁷³ Its origins have been said to date back to the Cold War, when the notion of socialist international solidarity was used as grounds for intervention throughout the world. In the Putin era it has been replaced by a paternalistic ideology of providing help to fellow citizens and compatriots in need—an ideology formulated in the modern language of human rights.⁷⁴

The main actors in the passportization process, in addition to Russian consulates, have been public organizations, field forces or special door-to-door brigades, and at times even individuals. In Georgia, when the 2002 new Russian Citizenship Law simplified procedures, the Russian government created passport application centers in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.⁷⁵ At the same time a public organization, the Congress of Russian Communities, spearheaded the passportization process in Abkhazia and field forces traveled to remote mountain villages to hand out passports.⁷⁶ In Crimea, the Russian consulate in Simferopol had been aggressively issuing Russian passports for years leading up to the 2014 conflict.⁷⁷ The passportization policies achieved some success. According to the Russian Federal Migration Service, from 2000 to 2009 almost 3 million people living on the territory of the former Soviet Union beyond the Russian Federation had received Russian citizenship.⁷⁸ Many among these were dual citizens, especially in countries like Moldova and Ukraine.