Abstract
The Soviet Union and post-communist states are outstanding case studies of the changing meaning of expatriation and citizenship. The historical shifts in voluntary and forced expatriation and the relationship between the two signify the changing perceptions of citizenship. Although there appears to be a disjunction between the two periods, I argue that this difference is mainly in scale and is symbolic rather than a transformation of the philosophical principle that allows free movement and free emigration. Both philosophically and legally, the right to exit one’s country and emigrate is considered a basic democratic human right. However, like all philosophical and actual manifestations of this right, during both the communist and post-communist periods the right to leave was conditional. Similarly, most post-communist countries adhere to the traditional conception of citizenship that sees dual citizenship as a violation of the exclusiveness of national political membership.
It is assumed that the status of citizenship in non-democratic and totalitarian regimes can only be considered citizenship in name and that persons holding this citizenship are not much different than subjects. Thus, today it would be expected that post-communist countries would have a completely different understanding of citizenship than the corresponding attitude during the Soviet rule. While the communist states consciously tried to transform the very meaning of the liberal-capitalist relationship between the individual and the state, the post-imperial states tried vigorously to distinguish themselves from their Soviet past. While there are many differences between democratic and non-democratic citizenship, this assumption should be questioned rather than taken for granted—a task that I undertake in this paper.
From a theoretical perspective, scholars of citizenship have traditionally discussed two issues. On one hand, many have asked who is allowed to join each state and become a full citizen. On the other hand, scholars have questioned what rights and responsibilities are associated with the legal status of citizenship. I suggest that there is another element of citizenship that we should study. That is, we should investigate the meaning of the tie between the individual and the state, the social and cultural assumptions behind it, and the social order that citizenship represents. Can citizenship be transferred, removed, divided, or be multiple? The comparison between citizenship laws in the Soviet and post-Soviet world enables me to study and understand the meaning of citizenship (see appendix).
There are many additional theoretical justifications for studying citizenship in the Soviet and post-Soviet part of the world. Following the Bolshevik revolution, countries from Mongolia to Eastern Germany changed their citizenship regimes. The former Communist Party States consciously tried to transform the very meaning of the liberal-capitalist relation between the individual and the state. 1 Furthermore, the new states that emerged from the ashes of the Soviet Union reconstructed the meaning of citizenship once again. While the new state institutions and ideology were considered weak, 2 post-imperial states took steps to distance themselves from their Soviet past. Many studies have shown that those ideological transformations changed the national identity of these states (mainly between civic and ethic understandings of belonging). Some of the differences can be attributed to the fact that some successor states were reconstructions of old countries while others were new states, Shevel (2009), Brubaker (1992, Citizenship Struggles). Regardless of the cause, there is no doubt that both the rights and responsibilities of the people in those states were completely altered. However, in this article I question whether the greater meaning of citizenship has been changed. Until the end of the twentieth century in the West, citizenship was perceived as an exclusive (but transferable) tie between the individual and the state. Was this aspect of citizenship similar under Soviet rule? Did this feature change after the fall of the Berlin wall? Are multiple citizenships considered threatening to both new and restored states? To answer those questions, I will look on the practices of taking away citizenship and the opposite practice of prohibiting exit from the state.
After comparing the citizenships laws in the Soviet and post-Soviet worlds, I argue that although the different political entities in this region embraced different ideologies and traditions of citizenship, in the end, all subscribed to the traditional understanding of citizenship. Some scholars have shown that citizenship does not necessarily or directly represent the conception of nationhood at each particular moment. However, I argue that citizenship laws do represent the ideal of national belonging that assumes exclusive, undivided, permanent and full allegiance of each citizen to his or her country. Therefore, during both the communist and post-communist periods the right to leave was conditional and forced expatriation was utilized in order to regulate the exclusiveness of national loyalty.
The Revocation of Citizenship
Although most countries in the world did take away citizenship in the past (and some continue to do so even today), this policy created some anomalies. The paradoxes that arise from following this policy can be viewed from two perspectives. From the standpoint of the state, expatriation symbolizes the ultimate power of the state over any individual, but once activated, the state loses its control over the person it has expatriated. From the individual point of view, the paradox is that those who moved did not want to, and those who most wanted to move could not. Thus, I will look at the symbolic ramification of this policy, rather than its practical outcomes.
A variety of terms describe the practice of formal termination of citizenship. The most common legal terms to describe loss of citizenship are expatriation, denationalization, denaturalization, renunciation, and revocation of citizenship. Those terms denote the act in which the status of citizenship is formally taken away. The different words utilized to express the loss of citizenship usually indicate an implicit understanding of the meaning of citizenship.
Each of the terms signifies two important distinctions. The most common distinction regarding the loss of citizenship is the one between voluntary and involuntary expatriation—that is, between state-initiated and privately initiated revocation of citizenship. This dichotomy is evident in many government and scholarly papers. For example, in a survey of the citizenship laws of the world, 3 the U.S. government divided loss of citizenship into two categories—voluntary and involuntary loss of citizenship. The same distinction has been the foundational question in most congressional debates and legal discussions on expatriation in the United States since 1958. 4 This division between voluntary and forced expatriation will constitute the framework of this article. The second most important distinction is whether the expatriated person was a native-born or a naturalized citizen. While the two features may appear merely as analytical divisions, they signify central philosophical stances regarding the political community. The right to renounce your citizenship and thus change your national identity is a liberal/democratic ideal associated with contractual citizenship (rather than perpetual allegiance). It signifies that the rights of individuals supersede those of the state. The second distinction, between native-born and naturalized citizens, also expresses the division between jus soli and jus sanguinis perceptions of citizenship. 5 However, in this case the logic is more complicated. At first it may seem that making this distinction goes against democratic ideals that would be expected to grant universal rights regardless of birthplace. Nevertheless, this division actually represents the liberal principle that rights should be granted to all the people who were born in the state’s territory and not limited to a particular ethnic or national group.
The Citizen’s Right to Leave
In the past, political membership was seen as a biological condition. Being born into a particular community determined a person’s natural subjecthood. 6 Therefore, persons who did acquire allegiance to a new ruler were considered to be “naturalized,” a term that is still used today although its underlying meaning is not usually accepted. 7 Thus, it is common to understand persons in pre-democratic political arrangements as subjects rather than free citizens. This analytical distinction (I showed earlier that the practical division is more complex) created a division between people whose allegiance was assigned by birth, regardless of their color, parentage, or race, and thus was “not alienable: it could not be renounced, abandoned or confiscated.” 8 Since one of the debates in the citizenship space concerns the identity of the persons within it, one can describe the history of modern citizenship as the changing relationship between membership and biology. Before the emergence of the nation-state as the dominant political arrangement in the nineteenth century, people were officially bound to each other by hierarchical, overlapping, religious, and dynastic systems. “Legally, people were peasants, gentlemen, barons, burghers, laity, or clerics first, and Englishmen, Belgians, or Germans second or third if, at all.” 9 Within national identity, we can observe a process of separation between national identity and biology, which began with the political philosophy of the Enlightenment, crystallized in the French Revolution and the American Declaration of Independence, deepened throughout the nineteen and twentieth centuries, and continues so even today. But this development has not been linear, equal, or inevitable for it was introduced in a different context in each country, was actualized differently or even retracted in some, and there are still several countries that grant citizenship only on the basis of ethnic descent.
The French and the American revolutions, each in its own way, gave the basic form to modern citizenship that entailed a repudiation of the natural subjection of people to a particular authoritarian rule. Modern citizenship was based on the rejection of rule by hereditary monarchical and aristocratic families in favor of a broader community of political equals. The French revolution crystallized the modern institutions of both the nation-state and the development of citizenship. The four aspects of the revolution—the bourgeois revolution, the democratic revolution, the national revolution, and the bureaucratic revolution—established the predominance of national citizenship that determines most of men’s (and later on women’s) obligations and rights up to the present day. The constitution adopted in France in 1791 legally established the term citizenship for individuals eligible to call themselves French. Similarly, it was the established norm in liberal democratic societies that citizens were to be permitted to leave their homes in pursuit of better opportunities. 10 In the original French constitution, the freedom to depart took precedence over fundamental rights such as freedom of speech and assembly. 11
Both philosophically and legally, the right to exit your country and emigrate is considered a basic democratic human right. 12 This right is institutionalized in both national and international laws. On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 13, section 2, states that “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” Similar international instruments include Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), Article 8 of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (1990), Article 5 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965), Article 10 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), and Article 5 of the General Assembly’s Declaration on the Human Rights of Individuals Who Are Not Nationals of the Country in Which They Live (1985). According to international norms, the right to leave exists independently of the length of time that the individuals choose to reside outside their state or the purpose of their leaving.
There appears to be a disjunction between the communist and post-communist periods regarding the right to leave. The Soviet Union was notorious for prohibiting free movement, while the new democracies that emerged after its collapse permit voluntary renunciation. I argue that this difference is mainly in scale and is symbolic rather than a transformation of the philosophical principle that allows free movement and free emigration. On one hand, a careful look at the laws and signed treaties of the USSR and Eastern European countries up to the collapse of communism show that the freedom of movement was documented legally and philosophically in Marxism. On the other hand, we will see that in practice, the right to leave was always conditional.
Marxist philosophy rejected the liberal belief in individual freedom. While it is debatable whether the Soviet regime embodied this political philosophy fully, as the citizenship laws in the former USSR suggest, there is no doubt that it did aspire to it. Ideologically and institutionally, citizenship was not a contractual relation between individuals and the state. 13 In the same manner, Soviet citizenship was granted to all inhabitants of the new territorial unit regardless of nationality or origin.
However, as a humanist, Marx advocated the future rights of men which included free movement. Following this philosophy, Vladimir Ilich Lenin, clearly stated (before gaining power) that the Social-Democratic Party in Russia should abolish passports and allow full freedom of movement and residence. In fact, the Bolsheviks condemned the Tsarist policies that controlled movement as tools of class oppression. 14 This attitude even continued during the first years of the existence of the Soviet State.
This approach changed with the evolution of the USSR, especially under Stalin’s dictatorship and uncompromising battle against the “enemies of the state.” 15 Nearly all countries in Eastern Europe ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that established the right to leave. In a similar manner, all socialist countries recognized the change of nationality as well. This is not to say that the abusive image of the Soviet block was unfounded. The legislation in the socialist countries left great freedom of decision to the authorities (sometimes without even the need to give any justification). Many of those judgments were made behind closed doors and heavy penalties were imposed on those who departed without the requisite authorization. This region of the world was widely criticized for constantly violating the right to leave. None of the Marxist or Socialist constitutions (with the exception of Yugoslavia’s) specifically recognized the right to leave, Hannum (1987). In Helsinki, Belgrade, and Madrid, the United States took the lead in criticizing the governments of the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries for their exit-visa requirements. In other words, there was a huge gap between the official and ideological statements and the actual practice. Thus, a citizen would have found it very difficult to leave unless he was a perceived threat to the regime—in that case he might be forced to go. Paradoxically, those who moved usually did not want to, while those who most wanted to leave were not permitted to do so.
Sometimes a state would decide to prohibit the exit of citizens from its own territory. During the Italian Fascist Regime, an exit visa was required from 1922 to 1943 as was the case in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. According to law, “exit from the citizenship of the USSR is sanctioned by the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet” (Article 17, 1977 citizenship law). Individuals were not free to leave the territory of the Soviet Union, and even if they did they could not renounce their Soviet citizenship without the approval of the authorities. The case of the Soviet Jews, who were prohibited from leaving the USSR, especially during the 1980s, is well known (see Figure 1).
USSR Type 2 exit visa for those who received permission to leave the USSR forever and lost Soviet citizenship (Type 1 was for temporary visits outside the Soviet Union)
The need to regulate exit has been largely eliminated all over the world. However, some countries continue to control the departures of their citizens. For example, Uzbekistan is the last remaining former USSR country that still requires an exit visa (a visa is valid for a two-year period). Cuba, too, still requires an exit visa or “white card” for all citizens intending to travel abroad.
Following the Western ideal that national political membership should be based on consent, all post-communist countries allow voluntary renunciation of citizenship. The Soviet ideology wanted to distance itself from the liberal ideal of voluntary citizenship. Post-communist countries desired to overcome their dark history by allowing free movement. The communist practice that prohibited all nonauthorized exit or emigration was to be replaced with democratic and liberal ideals.
However, it is also accepted that the right to leave is not absolute but has limitations. Article 12(3) of the ICCRP permits states to restrict exit as long as it is legal, reasonable and proportional to protect national security or public order. 16 All the states in Eastern Europe and the USSR (except Albania) were parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. That is, they subscribed to the ideal that free movement should be allowed unless it is prohibited by law to protect the collective needs of the state.
Like all philosophical and actual manifestations of this right, during both the communist and post-communist periods the right to leave was conditional. Thus, instead of prohibiting exit with certain exceptions, the new states allow movement with certain exceptions. The limitations on renunciation of citizenship are numerous:
Bosnia and Herzegovina maintains that during the state of war or the danger of imminent war, voluntary renunciation is prohibited. The main reason is so that citizens should not be able to avoid military service by renunciation. Therefore, this rule applies only to citizens of military age. In countries where there is mandatory military service, completion of or an exemption from military service is a prerequisite for renunciation (Moldova). Serbia has even added to this limitation a general provision (Article 29) that states that “release from citizenship of the Republic of Serbia shall not be granted if that is necessary for the reasons of security or defense of the county, for a reason of reciprocity of when that is requested by economic interests of Serbia and Montenegro.”
In a similar manner, but in regard to civil national obligation, voluntary expatriation is approved only if the citizen does not have ongoing charges, for example, paying taxes, fees, and other public charges (Slovakia); not having any pending criminal charges, an unfinished sentence, or any other legal obligations (Albania); or having to regulate financial obligation to family (Macedonia).
Some states demand that voluntary expatriation can be processed only if the citizen actually lives abroad (Montenegro, Albania, and Slovenia). Other countries have an age limitation (eighteen) to make sure the decision is voluntary (Montenegro, Albania, and Croatia). However, Serbia and Slovenia have also dictated that this decision should be made before the age of twenty-five.
Another requirement, which follows international and humanitarian norms around the world, is to show proof that by this voluntary renunciation the citizen does not become stateless (Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, Slovakia).
It is accepted today that voluntary renunciation of citizenship is a basic human right. Virtually all democratic countries explicitly embrace this right. However, almost all democratic countries also impose some restrictions on this right. The post-Soviet world is not different. Thus, the common perception that the breakup of the Soviet Union led to a complete change regarding the right to leave is exaggerated. Although the post-communist states embraced the liberal-democratic vocabulary of free movement, in essence, both citizenship regimes have regulated movement and emigration from the state.
The State’s Right to Revoke Citizenship
The complementary policy of forced expatriation is also associated with Stalin’s rule of the Soviet Union. Stripping away citizenship and all the rights that come with it are usually associated with despotic and totalitarian regimes. The imagery of mass expulsion of once integral members of the community is associated with such events as civil war, ethnic cleansing, the Holocaust, or other oppressive historical events. Moreover, it is usually seen as a punishment for disloyal behavior. Thus, it is not surprising to hear that this practice was used in the past by South Africa’s apartheid regime, 17 by Germany during both World Wars, 18 by Stalinist Russia, 19 pre-1789 France, 20 and the Roman Empire. 21
Although the USSR changed its constitution and citizenship laws several times, the principles whereby citizenship might be lost were similar throughout most of the Soviet period. The official principle was that the state had sovereignty to revoke Soviet citizenship from its subjects. After the revolution, the Soviet Union imposed denationalization on persons convicted of being “enemies of the toiling masses.” Millions of Russians were forcibly expatriated. 22
However, most countries in the post-communist world also use forced expatriation. Of course, this policy is not as widespread or arbitrary as in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, this state practice is still considered legitimate in some instances. In the post-Soviet world, we can find that the reasons can be divided to three parts. The first two types of reasoning (fraud and punishment) correspond to two types of political philosophies (liberal-democratic and authoritarianism). I argue that the third group of provisions relate to the national ideal of exclusive citizenship.
The liberal and democratic political philosophies emphasize the freedoms and rights granted to all citizens. The right of citizenship itself, or the right to have rights, should be protected and should not be taken away easily. However, regarding one ground there is usually agreement. Obtaining citizenship using false information or by concealment of material circumstances (whether intentionally or not) can result in termination of this status. The moral argument is that those people are not being expatriated but were not eligible to become citizens in the first place. It should be noted that this policy applies only to naturalized immigrants.
Applying for citizenship using false information may cause the revocation of citizenship in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Romania. In Bulgaria and Hungary, fraud can also be a ground for expatriation. However, in the two latter countries there is a time limit for the state’s ability to revoke citizenship for false or misleading information. If ten years have passed since the citizenship application, fraud can no longer be a reason for its revocation.
In many states, punishment is considered a legitimate although severe 23 reason for taking away citizenship and this is usually imposed for crimes against the state. Five post-communist states include this policy on their books. Romanian citizenship will be withdrawn if the citizen is found abroad and commits very serious offences that injure the interests of the Romanian State or negatively affect the prestige of Romania. This law applies only to naturalized citizens, and Romanian citizenship cannot be taken away from persons who have acquired it by birth. However, the law does not indicate what crimes are against the interest of the state or injure its image and does not specify the due process for such accusations. In a similar vein, Slovenia also revokes citizenship for activities that are harmful to the international or other interests of the Republic of Slovenia. In this case, the citizen must also be residing abroad but in addition, he must hold foreign citizenship in order for the law to apply. In Bulgaria, this clause includes both restrictions: it applies only to naturalized citizens, it cannot be taken away while a person resides in Bulgaria, and it cannot leave the person without any citizenship. Moreover, naturalization can be revoked only after conviction in court for severe crimes against the republic.
Two countries add contemporary concerns to the defense of the national interest and image. Bosnia and Herzegovina add that activity involved in the work of an organization whose aims are contrary to the general principles of the Charter of the United Nations or of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights may cause a person to lose his citizenship (as long as it does not make him stateless). Montenegro added convicted terrorists or those who planned, organized, financed, sheltered, or assisted terrorist acts in any other way.
The third group of reasons for taking away citizenship includes acts that question the exclusive nature of citizenship and nationality. While this logic is changing all over the world as well as in the post-communist states, I argue that acquiring dual citizenship or perpetrating an act that represents changed or divided national loyalty is considered a legitimate reason for forced expatriation. In contrast to the previous two groups of justifications, this logic is not restricted to one kind of political philosophy but applies to all nation-states. This provision includes formally acquiring citizenship of another country (Belarus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan) but also any acts that represent such transfer of allegiance. Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan would take away citizenship from citizens residing abroad without proper consular registration. Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan will revoke citizenship of a person on his joining the military service of another country. As mentioned before, citizenship will be taken away for acting against the interest of the state in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, and Slovenia. In Slovenia, refusing to carry out state duties as prescribed by the constitution and the law can be a cause for expatriation.
Although the new and post-communist countries have citizenship policies similar to those in the West before the Second World War, the policy of expatriation has changed in respect to international law and norms. One important distinction is the awareness that statelessness must be prevented at all costs. To put it another way, any case of expatriation would be prohibited if it were to result in a person not having any citizenship, even in cases where the citizen voluntary and explicitly wishes to do so. For example, in Montenegro the renunciation of citizenship will be suspended if the citizen cannot present documentation within a period of two years that “he/she will or has actually acquired foreign citizenship” (article 21). Today, it is much more difficult to exercise this policy in a total and unequivocal way. International laws, human rights standards, pressure from immigration groups, and demographic changes make it almost impossible for the former communist world not to change accordingly. Therefore, most countries have some (or even many) exceptions to the prohibition of dual citizenship. Two methods are noteworthy. On the positive side, some countries allow dual citizenship if this status is grounded in a bilateral agreement with another state. For example, in Turkmenistan dual citizenship was institutionalized in 1993 through a bilateral agreement with the Russian Federation. 24 On the negative side, in most former communist states naturalized citizens suffer disadvantages compared to native-born (or coethnic) citizens. That is, it is still legitimate to insist that the process of naturalization should include a requirement to renounce the immigrant’s former citizenship. Some countries, such as Russia, are more easy-going and demand only to see that the naturalized citizen has applied for renunciation while others will nullify the citizenship if the immigrant does not show proof of actual renunciation within a specified period (two years in Montenegro, six months in Estonia). Slovenia will cancel citizenship if such document is not produced within one or two years.
Expatriation and Dual Citizenship
While in the past dual citizenship was understood as a threat to the entire national world system, today in the West, more and more countries have embraced this policy, mainly for immigration considerations, Shevchuk (1996). The ideal of exclusive citizenship used to be the main justification for the revocation of citizenship. Since Citizenship is the formal signifier of nationality, it should not be divided, shared, or be multiple. Citizens who acted against the ideal of national exclusivity were penalized by being denationalized. Next, I will assess whether this policy still exists in the post-communist states.
This policy should be seen as a spectrum in which, on one hand, the state outlaws multiple citizenship and on the other openly embraces it. Between those two poles there are a variety of options. 25 For this exercise, I differentiate between the symbolic value of this practice and its de facto actualizations (see Table 1). Therefore, some countries might be very tolerant to multiple citizenships in practice but since this is not explicitly stated or the books may even assert otherwise, I consider those states as being against dual citizenship. Romania and Azerbaijan are silent in regard to dual citizenship. Except for Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, and Uzbekistan, which explicitly prohibit dual citizenship, all other countries have legal exceptions that allow dual citizenship. However, I do not classify them as allowing dual citizenship, as they do not explicitly and openly embrace this policy.
Variation in Dual Citizenship and Forced Migration across post-Communist states
In their first citizenship laws, Armenia (1995), Estonia (1995), Georgia (1993), and Uzbekistan (1992) explicitly prohibited dual citizenship. Similar to past practices, obtaining another citizenship may cause the loss of the original citizenship, even if obtained by birth. Estonia maintains (article 3) that in the case of children acquiring multiple citizenship by birth (as different states have different citizenship laws), they “shall renounce either their Estonian citizenship or their citizenship of the other state within three years after attaining the age of 18.” In 2007, Armenia changed this policy and openly embraced dual citizenship.
Poland and Kyrgyzstan maintain that they do not recognize dual citizenship. However, Poland does not compel immigrants to renounce their former citizenship but “Granting Polish citizenship may be dependent on submitting evidence of loss of or release from foreign citizenship.” In 1998, the provision (article 13) that automatically expatriates any citizen who acquires a foreign citizenship was eliminated. The Kirgiz Republic citizenship law (1991) is also ambiguous. It requires some immigrants to renounce their former citizenship but Kirgiz citizenship is not taken away after acquiring another citizenship. Russia, Moldova, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Lithuania do not allow multiple citizenships. However, there are numerous exceptions. For example, the Russian legislation allows dual citizenship where there are bilateral treaties with another state, and the Lithuanian citizenship law (1991) allows dual citizenship resulting from marriage.
Belarus, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic prohibit dual citizenship in cases of naturalization (unless there is a specific international treaty). That is, obtaining multiple citizenships at birth or on marriage is allowed. Croatia, Latvia, Slovenia, and Serbia and Montenegro prohibit dual citizenship only for naturalized citizens. Native-born citizens of these four countries can simultaneously hold citizenship of a foreign country. Among the different countries, only in Latvia is this rule reflected in the pledge of allegiance all persons who are admitted to Latvian citizenship must take: “I (given name, surname) born (place of birth, date of birth), pledge that I will be loyal only to the Republic of Latvia” (my emphasis). Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia have a similar provision that treats native- and foreign-born citizens differently. However, the wording is different. The latter states allow de jure dual citizenship with the exception of naturalized persons, while the former prohibit dual citizenship only for naturalized citizens. Romania and Azerbaijan are silent in regard to dual citizenship.
Together, the cases of Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Armenia exemplify that citizenship laws are in constant flux. While there are pressures to allow dual citizenship, there are also nationalistic pressures that call for an exclusive national allegiance (especially for naturalized citizens). Bulgaria stopped requiring single citizenship (for both immigrants and the native born) in 1998, but reintroduced this principle in 2001. After independence in 1995, Armenia prohibited dual citizenship only to permit it in 2007. The important lesson is not only that citizenship laws change but that they do not necessarily change in a linear or progressive direction (toward the acceptance of multiple loyalties).
On the opposite side of the spectrum are states which allow dual citizenship. Slovakia and Hungary permit dual citizenship that can only be lost on voluntary request by the citizen himself/herself. Bulgaria allowed dual citizenship before 2001. Turkmenistan and Albania allow dual citizenship and do not have any legal restriction to it. However, even Albania, which explicitly allows all citizens to also be citizens of another country, “preserves the right to, in compliance with the spirit of the international covenants for elimination of dual citizenship or statelessness, request from its citizens or the applicants for the Albanian citizenship to choose only one citizenship” (Albanian citizenship law, section 27).
Some of the laws include contradictory provisions. Usually the first articles of the laws are presented in a positive and modern fashion, while later articles challenge the former statements. For example, Turkmenistan explicitly maintains in article 7 that “A national of Turkmenistan cannot be expatriated from Turkmenistan” but in article 23 states that “the nationality of Turkmenistan is lost owing to being called to arms, security service, police, legal bodies or other bodies of the state authorities in another state excluding those cases specified in international agreements of Turkmenistan.” Article 2 of the Ukrainian law specifies the principles on which the citizenship legislation is built. One of those principles is the impossibility of depriving a citizen of Ukraine of the citizenship of Ukraine. Nevertheless, article 19 specifies the various reasons for the loss of Ukrainian citizenship. Tajikistan and Georgia make similar declarations. Estonia enacted contrasting provisions regarding the differential treatment of native and naturalized citizens. Article 1 says that an Estonian citizen shall not simultaneously hold the citizenship of another state. However, article 5 maintains that no one shall be deprived of Estonian citizenship acquired by birth. It contradicts itself again in article 22 that asserts that “a person shall cease to be an Estonian citizen upon acceptance of the citizenship of another state.”
I argue that the practice of taking away citizenship was mainly introduced to eliminate dual citizenship, which poses a great challenge to the national logic that assumes full loyalty to one’s nation-state.
Until the Second World War, the international community still believed that it was desirable for the national ideal to be protected. Dual citizenship was perceived as an imminent threat to the continuation of this world order that supposes a one-on-one relationship between the individual and the state. In this setting, voluntary renunciation was encouraged and forced expatriation was recommended to regulate the inconsistencies that were produced through immigration or border shifts. One example of this well-established and accepted belief is a resolution accepted by the League of Nations in 1930 that entered into force on July 1, 1937. The Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws 26 explicitly stated that “it is the general interest of the international community to secure that all its members should recognize that every person should have a nationality and should have one nationality only.” Accordingly, protection of dual citizens is limited to one country only and renunciation must be authorized by all countries. It was the horrible consequences of the Second World War and the Holocaust that made the international community aware that it is not the lack of protection of states that threatens the world, but lack of protection for people. 27
It is evident that most post-communist countries (21 of 28) adhere to the traditional conception of citizenship that sees dual citizenship as a violation of the exclusiveness of national political membership (Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, and Slovenia). Armenia and Kyrgyzstan have started to allow multiple citizenships just recently (2007 and 2008), while Bulgaria and Slovakia have changed in the opposite direction (2001 and 2010). In the same manner, voluntary renunciation (that will limit duality in national loyalty) is authorized and even encouraged in all post-communist states. That is, countries that do not allow dual citizenship revoke the citizenship of citizens who try to acquire a second citizenship.
In other words, countries that appear in red in the dual citizenship map will usually be in yellow in the forced expatriation map, and vice versa. The main contradiction to this rule is Russia and Croatia which prohibit dual citizenship for naturalized immigrants, but do not take it away if they do hold such citizenship. Poland has an ambiguous terminology that states that it does not recognize dual citizenship, but does not specify in what circumstances or try to regulate the people who do. On the other hand, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Romania, and Turkmenistan in their written laws allow dual citizenship but, in practice, will take away citizenship from a person perpetrating acts that imply divided national loyalty. The abovementioned inconsistency with my proposed model is due to the fact that since legislation is usually written in a patchwork fashion and is in constant flux, many times states do have contradictory sections in their law books. In the cases of Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, this inconsistency was created by a recent change in their dual citizenship policy, which was introduced without overturning the grounds for forced expatriation. The physical size of one of these exceptions, that is the case of Russia, might obstruct a clear-cut picture of the inverse relation between allowing dual citizenship and having revocation laws.
The recent Hungarian–Slovakian “citizenship war” exemplifies the exclusive perception of citizenship. On May 26, 2010, Hungary’s new conservative-dominated parliament passed a law making it easier for ethnic Hungarians living in other countries to become citizens. The amendment to Hungary’s citizenship law passed almost unanimously in the Hungarian parliament and fulfilled a campaign pledge by the center-right Fidesz party, which won a landslide victory in the last elections (April 2010). The law will allow nearly three million Hungarians in neighboring countries to become Hungarian citizens without requiring them to live in Hungary. Recently, the Hungarian government even launched a website that provides potential applicants with information on the simplified naturalization process for Hungarian citizenship.
Lawmakers in Slovakia, where ethnic Hungarians account for roughly 10 percent of the country’s population of 5.4 million, responded by the unusually swift passage of a law to counter this. The Slovak government amended their own citizenship statute to state that any Slovak who accepts the citizenship of another country would lose Slovak citizenship. Many Slovak politicians said they see the idea of dual citizenship for its large ethnic Hungarian minority as an attack on the small nation’s sovereignty.
While this exchange can be seen predominantly as a symbolic struggle aimed at strengthening the popularity of the ruling political parties, it reveals the assumptions behind national citizenship. Not only does nationality continue to have an ethnic undertone (as suggested by the Hungarian move) but nationality may be perceived as exclusive membership (as represented by the Slovakian reaction).
Both the fluctuations and contradictions in citizenship laws suggest that citizenship is not a fixed representation of the national identity but is a policy that combines immediate national interests and ideology, international pressures and trends, and I wanted to emphasize, the taken-for-granted national perception of the world that assumes that each individual should have one citizenship and one citizenship only.
Footnotes
Appendix
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the anonymous readers for their time. I would also like to thanks Ivan Szelenyi for reading drafts of this article, and the participants at the panel on “Citizenship, Nationalism, and Identity in Eastern Europe and Russia” at the 2010 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association for their comments and suggestions.