Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire

Russia’s domestic political conditions also had an impact on the adoption of these documents. Parliamentary and presidential elections held in December 1995 and June 1996 prompted broader debates about compatriots and the country’s obligations to Russian citizens.⁶² A likely reason that Moscow still had failed to formulate legal definitions and policies toward its diaspora, despite the millions of ethnic Russians outside the borders of the Russian Federation, was that from 1993 to the end of the decade it simultaneously pursued a strategy toward its compatriots that contradicted its policy documents—one of turning them into Russian citizens. In the early 1990s, Moscow did not systematically pursue the passportization policy of handing out Russian citizenship to Russians and Russian speakers who are residents or citizens of foreign countries. Instead, the focus was on promoting the concept of dual citizenship in the former Soviet republics. Both methods of providing Russian citizenship would eventually come to serve Moscow’s policies of expansion in Ukraine’s Crimea, Moldova’s Transnistria, and Georgia’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Initially, though, the dual citizenship strategy was favored by another young reformer in Yeltsin’s team—Foreign Minister Andrey Kozyrev (1991–96). Appointed foreign minister a year shy of his fortieth birthday, Kozyrev was a sophisticated, experienced diplomat with a Ph.D. in history. Like others in Yeltsin’s circle, he believed in Western liberal democratic ideals and at the same time insisted that Russia be treated as a great power in international relations. Kozyrev held that promoting dual citizenship policies could serve as a “vital instrument” of Russia’s foreign policy toward the near abroad, and he aimed to issue Russian passports to all ethnic Russians living in former Soviet republics, as well as to people from other ethnic groups who had historical ties to Russia.⁶³

As foreign minister, Kozyrev personally sought to sign agreements with the former Soviet republics regarding dual citizenship, but the newly independent states were hardly enthusiastic. With the exception of Estonia and Latvia, all post-Soviet republics awarded their own citizenship to their entire populations, including Soviet-era immigrants. In November 1993, the Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev made it clear that Kazakhstan’s Russian minority does not need Moscow’s passports or protection. The man who had once turned down Mikhail Gorbachev’s offer to run as vice president of the Soviet Union was once again turning down Moscow’s overtures. He presciently warned, “whenever one starts talking about the protection of Russians in Kazakhstan, not Russia, I recall Hitler who began to ‘support’ the Sudeten Germans at one time. I start feeling deep anxiety for Russians who live outside Russia. Really, they did not ask to be defended, did they? They are citizens of Kazakhstan.”⁶⁴ The only states that signed up for dual citizenship agreements were Turkmenistan in 1993, when Yeltsin was also ceremonially offered a Turkmenistan passport, and Tajikistan in 1995. However, our discussion of Central Asia will show, Turkmenistan went to great lengths to prevent its citizens from gaining Russian passports and withdrew from the agreement in 2003.⁶⁵ Spreading Russian citizenship was no success but it did not mean that Moscow abandoned this project altogether.

Yeltsin’s Legacy: Defining a Legal Framework for Compatriots

By 1999, the decade of the ailing Yeltsin’s leadership was winding down. Despite having issued four documents related to compatriots since 1994, the Russian government still lacked a coherent legal framework to address the approximately 25 million Russians living in the former Soviet states in addition to Russian speakers and other people of Russian descent living across the globe. Passportizing the compatriots also had not shown much progress. Overall, Yeltsin’s call to support and defend Russian compatriots was largely rhetorical, diplomatic, and tactical (as in the case of the Baltic States). Despite the rhetoric, Yeltsin generally pursued a policy of respect for international borders, as seen in his resistance to politicizing the Russian speakers of Crimea, who were already demonstrating for autonomy and separation from Ukraine in the early 1990s, his negotiation of the Friendship Treaty with Ukraine in 1997 recognizing its borders, and his eventual withdrawal of Russian troops from neighboring states without successfully extracting any guarantees for the local Russian-speaking populations. As the policies of the Yeltsin era demonstrated, compatriots were never a top priority for the Russian government.