Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire

In May 1999, with less than a year before Yeltsin’s resignation, the government released the “Federal Law on the State Policy of the Russian Federation Concerning Compatriots Abroad.” This law finally set the basic legal framework for and definition of compatriots. It defined them as those “who were born in one [Soviet Union or Russian] state, are living or lived in it” and who “share common language, history, heritage, traditions and customs,” as well as their direct descendants “residing outside the territory of the Russian Federation and related to peoples historically living on the territory of the Russian Federation,” except for “descendants of persons who belong to titular nations of foreign states.”⁶⁶ For instance, it meant that an ethnic Russian woman and her descendants living in Ukraine would forever be compatriots, whereas an ethnic Ukrainian woman born during the Soviet era would be a compatriot while her Ukrainian children born after the fall of the USSR would no longer be compatriots. Likewise it implied that an Ossetian and his descendants living in Georgia or Uzbekistan would forever remain Russian compatriots. This contradiction is partly born from Stalin’s Soviet nationalities policies and his propagation of concepts of natsionalnost’ (ethnic rather than civic nationality, such as is customarily entered in passports) that are to this day preserved in Russia’s compatriot policies.

Furthermore, neither the aforementioned ethnic Russian nor the Ukrainian woman nor anyone else could request to be a Russian compatriot. The new law changed the right, set out in 1995, of the Soviet Union’s nationals to claim the status of compatriot. Instead, that status was automatically granted both to nationals of the former USSR and to Russia’s emigrants’ descendants if they self-identified as such. Self-identification, like the concept of compatriot itself, was a muddled affair. It was defined as identification with Russia or Russianness or declaration of loyalty to the Russian Federation, the process for which was never formalized in practice.⁶⁷ The law also provided for compatriot ID cards but the project never achieved momentum and no such cards were ever issued.⁶⁸ As a result, by 1999 there were two distinct elements in Russia’s compatriot policies: the imposition of the category on foreign states and peoples and room for self-identification as a compatriot. It is unlikely that with this definition Moscow would have tried to claim the entire 150-million population of the fourteen former Soviet republics as compatriots since most of them would not have self-identified as such, but it is feasible that the some 30 million Russian speakers would have been likely targets.

This broad concept of compatriots held some additional contradictions. First, there was a hierarchy in which a Russian “citizen” outranked a Russian “compatriot.” A compatriot was never equal to a Russian passport holder residing outside Russian borders (an expatriate), though an expatriate could also be called a compatriot. Second, the concept included Russian émigrés from the tsarist and Soviet eras and their descendants. Thus, an American-Russian woman or French-Russian woman with Russian ancestors who had fled the Soviet regime following the Revolution would also be included. In practice, however, there was a geographical distinction between regions where Moscow sought to protect and support compatriots. Generally, Russia was more interested in doing so in the post-Soviet republics, which it perceived as being part of its special sphere of influence. Despite state-funded Russian language schools and special status for the Russian language in most post-Soviet states—privileges not available to Russian speakers in the West—Russia increasingly took a combative line with the post-Soviet republics on compatriots’ rights. Compatriots in other parts of the world like North America or Western Europe, where Moscow held less sway, generally received less attention.⁶⁹ Despite its contradictions and vagueness, however, the 1999 law remained in place for a decade with the most significant revisions coming into force in July 2010.⁷⁰

THE PUTIN ERA: COMPATRIOTS AS TOOLS OF FOREIGN POLICY

Compatriot Policies in the Early 2000s