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Citizenship, Territoriality, and Post-Soviet Nationhood: The Politics of Birthright Citizenship in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova Maxim Tabachnik
Citizenship, Territoriality, and Post-Soviet Nationhood: The Politics of Birthright Citizenship in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova Maxim Tabachnik
Citizenship, Territoriality, and Post-Soviet Nationhood: The Politics of Birthright Citizenship in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova Maxim Tabachnik
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“This fine book captures a moment in the identity negotiations of three lesser
known communities of the former Soviet space: Azerbaijan, Georgia, and
Moldova. Among other things, it shows the resilience of identity in the old
developed cultures vis-a-vis its mutability in the recent artificially-created ones. It
also underscores the error of regarding the development of identities in post-So-
viet nations as a function of a natural inclination for liberal democracy. Full of
fascinating data, the book should be of interest to every student of PSS.”
—Liah Greenfeld, Professor, Sociology, Political Science, and Anthropology,
Boston University, USA
Citizenship,
Territoriality,
and Post-Soviet
Nationhood
The Politics of Birthright Citizenship
in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova
Maxim Tabachnik
Department of Politics
University of California, Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA, USA
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my grandparents and all victims of the Second World War
and ethnic genocide
Preface
This book, based on the findings of my Ph.D. research, was born out
of my fascination with ethnicity and ethnic belonging. I grew up in the
Soviet Union, in the city of Ufa, the capital of what is currently known
as the Republic of Bashkortostan, a subject of the Russian Federation.
Bashkirs, the titular ethnicity, constitute less than a third of the region’s
population, the rest shared almost equally between Russians and Tatars.
Street signs and much of the local media, however, was in Bashkir, even
if most of Bashkir speakers lived in rural areas. Bashkirs also dominated
leadership positions in the region. This situation seemed strange to me
growing up.
While I haven’t examine my home region’s history specifically, now,
of course, I know that the borders cutting across ethnic populations are
the result of the infamous Soviet nationalities policy, masterminded by
the Commissar for Nationalities Joseph Stalin in the early 1920s. The
overrepresentation of the titular ethnic group in leadership position is
the likely effect of korenizatsiya, the 1920s policy of “rooting” ethnici-
ty-based administrative regions in titular cultures to increase support for
the newly established Bolshevik regime.
One of Stalin’s policy goals was to avoid pan-Turkism, or the nation-
alist idea of unifying all Turkic-speaking people into one political state.
From that point of view, it was important to break them down into as
many ethnic groups as possible (those were meticulously established by
Soviet social scientists) and, just as it was done with other ethnic groups,
to mismatch administrative and ethnic borders. I assume that the clearly
vii
viii Preface
reduced borders of the potentially insurgent Tatar Republic are the result
of the same preoccupation. Tatars had been the most politically and cul-
turally active Turkic ethnic group in the Russian Empire. Bashkortostan
ended up with more than double territory of Tatarstan. Many, if not
most, of Bashkortostan’s Tatars live in the districts that border Tatarstan.
The fall of the Kazan Khanate (a prominent descendant of the
Mongol empire) to Ivan the Terrible in 1552 (commemorated by the
construction of the postcard-famous St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square)
is a key milestone in the political consolidation of the Russian state
and the catalyst of its spectacular territorial expansion into Siberia and
beyond that has made Russia by far the largest territorial state in the
world, even today, after the loss of many of its possessions during the
rise and fall of the Soviet Union. Russian Federation is an inheritor of
the empire with an uneasy relationship between ethnic Russian collective
identity and that of over 160 other ethnolinguistic groups.
To explain my interest in ethnicity fully, I have to come back to
my family history. My mother Irina, an ethnic Russian (or so she was
convinced before I discovered her Ukrainian roots) married my father
Mark, an ethnic Jew. The ethnic tension within the family was ever-present
during my childhood, which went along with the overall anti-Semitic
general sentiment I encountered among my peers, despite of the Soviet
ideological values of ethnic equality and brotherhood we were taught in
school. When I started secondary school, I had to choose my “nationality”
from the two options available to me (nationality was an infamous “fifth
graph” entry in the Soviet passport). My teacher told me to put down
“Russian” because it is better. My family thought so, too. My patronymic
(derived from my father’s first name) and my last name (Jewish-Ukrainian)
remained “Jewish,” however, which led to frequent questions.
The more I dug into my family history, the more I realized how drasti-
cally ethnic identity affected it. My paternal grandmother Lyuba grew up
in a Jewish-Ukrainian village on the border with Poland. She spoke many
languages fluently, including Yiddish and Ukrainian. One day she went for
a brief visit to her aunt in Kiev. Turned out, it was destiny’s way to save
her from an imminent death. All her numerous immediate family perished
during the first day of the War as the Nazi troops crossed from Poland
into Western Ukraine, leaving her the sole survivor. She never recovered
from that trauma fully. I also found out that maternal great-grandmother
Katya, the key person during my childhood, was an ethnic Ukrainian. Her
“kulak,” or rich peasant, family was stripped of possessions in Chernigov,
Preface ix
Ukraine, and sent on a wheel cart to Siberia. Throughout her life, she
always traveled to the West, spending long periods of time in Lvov and in
Riga as she lost all her three husbands to the War and the Stalinist repres-
sions. The two family branches met in Ufa, a safe place just West of the
Ural Mountains away from the Nazis for one, and a half-way escape from
the Siberian exile for the other (of course, Ufa is also famous for being the
exile destination of Vladimir Lenin during the tsarist regime).
One of Katya’s daughters Lyusya moved westward, first to Kazan
and then to Riga, Latvia, together with many other Russian-speakers
recruited by the Soviet state to man newly built factories there. Thanks
to Lyusya, I was able to spend summers in Riga, which retained its
Germanic and Western European feel despite decades of Sovietization in
the aftermath of the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states as the result of
the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi
Germany. I was able to witness the surge of the nationalist movement in
Latvia, and even the entry of Soviet tanks into Riga during the August
Coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, which led to
the dissolution of the country that I grew up in. Upon Latvia’s inde-
pendence, Lyusya, like most of the Russian “invaders,” became stateless
and received the “passport of non-citizen” of Latvia, which served as her
identification document. As all government and business communication
was switched into Latvian, her daughter Galina‘s Latvian skills became
crucial for survival. Later, during my years spent in Barcelona, I was
shocked about how similar the Catalan nationalist movement was to the
Latvian one, but also to the Bashkir one, to the Tatar one, to the Russian
one. Ethnic nationalism clearly had very defined ideological qualities.
The logical continuation for my curiosity about the nature of ethnic
consciousness was to delve into the existing scholarship on nationalism
during my graduate studies at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and
the University of California, Santa Cruz. The first thing I discovered, to
my surprise, was that the term “nationalism” meant different things in
the West and in the East. By nationalism in Russia (and probably the rest
of Central and Eastern Europe), we mean to say “ethnic nationalism.”
In the West, the term refers to the principle of organizing the world into
territorial nation-states, a type of political organization that has become
standard practice since the French Revolution (with the important prece-
dents of English and American Revolutions).
This difference gave me great insight and threw me into the midst of
the biggest conceptual debate of the nationalism field over the ethnic/civic
x Preface
xi
xii Acknowledgements
xiii
xiv Contents
Index 283
List of Figures
Chapter 4
Fig. 1 Evolution of unconditional jus soli and dual citizenship
legislation in post-Soviet states with frozen territorial conflicts 72
Chapter 5
Fig. 1 Ethnic composition of post-Soviet countries with frozen
conflicts (Source CIA Worldbook, except for Transnistria
[Encyclopædia Britannica.com], Abkhazia [UNPO.org]
and S. Ossetia [Gutenberg.org]) 100
Chapter 6
Fig. 1 “Bessarabia is Romania” on the walls of Bucharest, 2014 132
Fig. 2 “Moldovans are Romanians” on the walls of Chisinau, 2015 133
Fig. 3 “Bessarabia is Romania”, a political poster from Romania, 2012 134
Fig. 4 Rate of approval of Women’s marriage by nationality
(Source The Caucasus Barometer) 154
Chapter 8
Fig. 1 Rate of approval of women’s marriage to Georgian Azeris
(Source The Caucasus Barometer) 231
xv
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Territorial
National Identity in Russia’s “Buffer Zone”
and Georgia from forging stronger ties to the West, be it closer asso-
ciation with the EU or NATO. While these three countries have been
recognized as a “new and surprisingly enduring geopolitical space”
due to the frozen conflicts (Toal 2017:4), I call these states a “buffer
zone” between Russia and the West. Located, as a foreign service offi-
cial from Abkhazia labeled it, on the imaginary “border between the US
and Russia” (Tania 2016), the three buffer states continuously vacillate
between a pro-Russian and a pro-Western political orientation. This is
happening at the time of the lowest point of the US-Russian relations
since the Cold War, when any small trigger can lead to escalated confron-
tation. The geopolitical importance of the buffer zone, therefore, is diffi-
cult to overstate. An escalation of the frozen conflicts has the potential to
disrupt the entire international system (Berg 2018:4).
Upon this backdrop, a peculiar collective identity development has
taken place. Despite the dominance of ethnic nationalism (and defining
the nation by blood relations) in the post-Soviet space (PSS), Azerbaijan
and Moldova have opted for a strikingly territorial definition of the
nation (I assume that, broadly, citizenship rules stand for a national
membership policy designed by the nation-state). Both of these coun-
tries have bestowed citizenship on anyone born on their territories, a
policy known as unconditional jus soli. It is typically contrasted to jus
sanguinis (citizenship by blood). Today’s national membership is decided
mostly by one of the two legal principles, together known as birthright
citizenship (Ehrkamp and Jacobsen 2015:157). Jus sanguinis is ubiqui-
tous but few states use jus soli, and especially its unconditional version,
associated with liberal democracies and the American continent. In the
USA, President Trump made unconditional jus soli a campaign slogan
and recently threatened to eliminate it by an executive order leading to
a wave of protests (Davis 2018). No such policy exists in the rest of the
PSS, Europe or Eurasia, except for the two states mentioned.
While Moldova’s democracy is somewhat tangible, Azerbaijan has
been continuously criticized for its authoritarianism and a progres-
sively worsening human rights record. Did these countries turn away
from ethnic nationalism to reconnect to the residents of frozen con-
flicts? This seems plausible. However, Georgia, the third buffer zone
country, practices not only no unconditional jus soli but no jus soli ele-
ments whatsoever. Uncovering the reasons behind the persistence of
citizenship policies of territorial nationalism (by territorial nationalism
I mean, in this case, defining the nation by the territory v. by ethnicity)
1 INTRODUCTION: TERRITORIAL NATIONAL IDENTITY … 3
in Azerbaijan and Moldova and their absence in Georgia is the grand task
of this book.
I argue that citizenship policies of territorial nationalism (or their
absence) in the three countries with frozen conflicts have been condi-
tioned not by liberal-democratic development associated with civic
nationalism but three factors: territorial integrity concerns, historical
collective identity, and geopolitics of dual citizenship. These findings
are based on archival and secondary sources and, more importantly, on
almost 100 in-depth interviews with politicians, academics, constitutional
lawyers, policy analysts, and journalists during my fieldwork stays in the
region.
Why do I insist on the term “territorial” nationalism and avoid the
term “civic” nationalism? In an attempt to clarify the continuous con-
fusion surrounding the concept of civic nationalism, I have argued for
a conceptual separation between “civic” and “territorial” nationalisms
(Tabachnik 2019). Civic nationalism is territorial (it defines the nation by
the territory of the state and not by blood), but it is also based on liber-
al-democratic values and is a product of modernity. Pre-modernist school
of nationalism thought, on the contrary, testifies to the long history of
the tension between blood and territory that goes back to pre-modern
times (Hastings 1997; Myhill 2006). This tension may be an intrin-
sic attribute of land-based societies that had left the nomadic lifestyle
behind. I, therefore, agree with scholars who, while recognizing nation-
alism and citizenship as products of modernity, see the political nation
as a modification of pre-modern collective identity (Coleman 1995:49–
50; Hastings 1997:29–30). The tension between ethnic and territorial
collective identities has been going on continuously since pre-modern
times and is parallel to the better-recognized one by the public debate,
between ethnic nationalism and liberal democracy.
The ethnic/territorial tension is extremely impactful in Russia whose
relationship with the West is at its worst due to, among other issues,
Russia’s takeover of Crimea, its alleged role in the military conflict in
Eastern Ukraine and its apparent efforts to meddle into Western political
processes, all too reminiscent of Cold War tactics. To fully understand
Russia’s motivations, it may be helpful to see Russia as “torn state” (in
the words of Russian nationalist writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn) caught
between its remaining imperial ambitions (and thus, a territorial under-
standing of the nation) and the desire to reconnect to the 25 million eth-
nic Russians cut off in 1991 by the dissolution of the USSR (the ethnic
4 M. TABACHNIK
Finally, the connection between jus soli politics, dual citizenship, and
geopolitics is another important contribution to nationalism and citi-
zenship studies. Dual citizenship has been rapidly expanding globally
(Brøndsted Sejersen 2008) as it had firmly entered the human rights
agenda (Spiro 2010) greatly aided by the recommendation in the 1997
European Nationality Convention of the Council of Europe (Checkel
2001; Joppke 2008:4).
The connection between the politics of jus soli, geopolitics of dual cit-
izenship, however, came as a surprise in my research. It became apparent
only when Azerbaijan canceled its unconditional jus soli in 2014 due to
fears of foreign interference and further tightened its ban on dual citi-
zenship. On a closer look, the other two cases had a similar connection,
if not with the same empirical outcome. In Moldova, complete dual cit-
izenship liberalization under the passportization assault by Romania and
Russia contributed to the seamless acceptance of unconditional jus soli,
which appeared as a result of a legal oversight. In Georgia, jus soli was
rejected on the grounds of it being conducive to dual citizenship, from
the beginning seen as beneficial to Russia and threatening the country
with further separatism through its “fifth column.”
The Azerbaijani state has been the most decisive in its use of jus soli
policy in the overall attempt to manage collective identity in order to
retain territorial integrity and prevent ethnic conflict. While historical
collective identity may be on its side, geopolitical pressures are not. It is
yet to be seen whether the cancelation of unconditional jus soli in 2014
will result in the re-ethnicization of national identity in Azerbaijan and
with it, a re-ignition of inter-ethnic conflicts on its borders with Russia
and Iran. Moldova has recognized the value of jus soli for its efforts
to reconnect with the residents of Transnistria as well as for retaining
inter-ethnic peace in the country. In Georgia, however, the government
has not responded to NGO calls to introduce jus soli in its citizenship
law, which complicates the life of its ethnic minorities and the integration
of migrants. I devote a separate chapter to the plight of Georgian Azeris,
both in Georgia and Azerbaijan, as well as another chapter on the per-
spective on the Georgian national identity politics from inside the frozen
conflict, Abkhazia.
From a normative perspective, the book demonstrates the political
attractiveness of the territorial definition of the nation. Such definition
allows for a continuous separation between the modern state and histori-
cal ethnicity, which may counterbalance the tendency by historical ethnic
1 INTRODUCTION: TERRITORIAL NATIONAL IDENTITY … 7
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8 M. TABACHNIK
Since its beginnings in the works of Hans Kohn in the middle of the
twentieth century, academic literature on nationalism has been character-
ized by an intense conceptual debate and ambiguity (Brubaker 1999:55).
The lack of conceptual consensus may be, in fact, the main hurdle in this
subfield of political science (Hutchinson and Smith 1994:3–4) at the
intersection of comparative politics and international relations. Some
scholars have even suggested that no definition of the central concept
of nationalism studies, the nation, may be devised whatsoever (Seton-
Watson 1977:5). This debate has been the most divisive in the case of
“ethnic/civic nationalism,” where the differences between the dominant
modernist school of nationalism thought collide with its critics the most.
I suggest that a deeper reflection on ethnic/civic nationalism and dis-
tinguishing territorial nationalism from civic one may hold the key to a
rapprochement between modernists and their critics.
history and its, even if often mythical, symbols are passed through gener-
ations (Smith 1988; Smith 1999). The persistent and prominent modern-
ist school of nationalism thought, however, believes that the nation is not
a historical reality since the dawn of times but an invention of modernity
and pre-modern history is all but irrelevant (Cărăuş 2001:18, 21, 46).
Modernity is understood as a complex sociopolitical, economic and
ontological change that originated in Europe sometime in the middle of
the second millennium A.D. when “something happened” in collective
consciousness of such proportions that we still do not fully understand,
it despite the attempts by such bright minds of sociological thought as
Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim (Lachmann 2000:1). This
“something” has since spread, bringing with it the demise of monarchy
(politically); industrialization and globalized capitalism (economically);
secularism, rationalism, and individualism (ontologically). The impact of
this social change is not fully clear until now. In the words of Karl Marx,
“All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable
prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become
antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that
is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses
his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind” (1848).
Nationalism, in modernist view, is part of the overall transition to
the age of modernity. It is propelled by the change of economic rela-
tions from feudal agricultural economies to industrial capitalism on the
one hand and an ontological onset of the sociopolitical ideology of lib-
eralism based on individual rights, on the other. Nationalist ideology,
therefore, prioritized education, social mobility, egalitarianism, anonym-
ity, and communication to satisfy the needs of this social transformation
(Cărăuş 2001:18–19, 21, 61). The nations are constructed and recon-
structed using mostly mythological discourses and narratives, in order
to provide a functional collective identity for individuals plucked out of
collective living.
The role of history is central to the debate between modernists and
its critics. On the one hand, it is hard to dispute that history is crucial
for understanding nationalism since each concept of national identity is
rooted in a particular historical setting (Hechter 2000:4). On the other
hand, modernists see the historical setting as less relevant since they
believe all nationalisms to have been “constructed” in the course of
the eighteenth–nineteenth centuries and only made “feel” old with lit-
tle actual history behind (Gellner 1983:6). Modernists (such as Ernest
2 THE ACADEMIC SETTING 13
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