Russian citizenship law

• 1. Introduction

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  Russian citizenship law carries a promise that has changed dramatically over centuries: the right to belong to a state that will protect you. On the 1st of July 2002, a federal law known as "On Citizenship of the Russian Federation" came into force, replacing a patchwork of post-Soviet rules that had governed who could call themselves Russian for the previous decade. Then, just over twenty years later, that law itself was replaced by a completely new statute, law 138-FZ, which entered into force on the 26th of October 2023.

  What explains these repeated rewrites? Why does a country periodically feel the need to redefine who belongs to it from scratch? And what happens to the millions of people caught between legal frameworks when the rules shift beneath them?

  The story of Russian citizenship reaches back before the concept of citizenship even existed in Russian law, to a time when subjects pledged themselves as "obedient slaves" to a tsar. It winds through revolution, the birth and death of the Soviet Union, the chaotic 1990s, and the geopolitical tensions of the 2020s. Each chapter in that history reveals something about what Russia wanted from its citizens and what, in return, it was willing to offer them.

• 2. Slaves, Subjects, and Oaths

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  Peter the Great introduced the first formal requirement for foreigners who wished to become Russian subjects: a sworn oath of personal fealty to the monarch. The language of that oath was striking. It required the subject to pledge themselves as an "obedient slave and eternal subject with my family" of the sovereign. That wording remained untouched for decades, until 1796, when the word "slave" was quietly removed.

  Before Peter's era, belonging to Russia was defined by religion rather than legal procedure. From the 16th century onward, it became customary to treat any person christened by the Russian Orthodox Church as having acquired subjecthood. No formal application was required; baptism was the gateway.

  The picture shifted considerably on the 10th of February 1864, when the imperial government introduced a five-year residence requirement. Just as importantly, authority over naturalization moved away from provincial governments and toward the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire. The reforms also formally introduced the term "citizenship" into Russian law as an alternative name for the concept of subjecthood.

  Within these new rules lay clear hierarchies. The residence requirement could be shortened for individuals who performed extraordinary service to the Russian state, had exceptional scientific talent, or made significant financial investments in the empire. Those without such credentials waited five years. Women who married foreign men had no choices at all: they automatically lost their Russian subject status upon marriage, though a widow or divorcée could petition for its restoration.

  The harshest sanction in this imperial framework was aimed at those who tried to leave. Any person who acquired a foreign nationality without prior government approval could be punished by deprivation of their rights or banishment to Siberia.

• 3. Soviet Reinvention

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  After the October Revolution in 1917, the new Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic abolished all previous imperial legislation and started from a blank page. Prevailing Bolshevik theory held that communism was an international movement, and that ideological commitment shaped citizenship law from the start. Under the 1918 Russian constitution, local soviets could directly grant foreigners Soviet citizenship, with the process particularly intended for those belonging to the peasant and working classes. No specific procedures were required beyond local authority approval.

  The simplicity cut both ways. The same contemporary regulations that made citizenship easy to acquire also allowed it to be stripped away at any time, at the sole discretion of the central government, as a deterrence against what the law called "the enemies of Soviet power."

  When the RSFSR became a founding member of the Soviet Union in 1922, citizenship regulations were restructured under the All-Union government. Every person living within the USSR was automatically a Soviet citizen unless they declared themselves a foreign national. The new framework also departed from the international norm on one notable point: Soviet women who married foreign men were allowed to keep their Soviet citizenship, in contrast to the standard international practice of requiring wives to follow the husband's nationality.

  The 1938 Soviet Citizenship Law formalized things further. Rather than granting citizenship to virtually all residents by default, this law defined Soviet citizens as those who had been Russian subjects at the founding of the RSFSR in 1917 and had not subsequently lost that status, plus those who had lawfully obtained citizenship afterward. Everyone else resident in the USSR who could not prove foreign citizenship was classified as stateless. Beginning in 1967, all Soviet Jews who permanently migrated to Israel were stripped of Soviet citizenship by decree.

  A new citizenship law enacted on the 1st of December 1978 prohibited extraditing Soviet citizens to foreign jurisdictions and formally barred holding multiple citizenships. Dual loyalty was treated not as a legal technicality but as a violation of loyalty to the state itself, potentially punishable by deprivation of citizenship.

  The final revision of Soviet citizenship law came during the glasnost and perestroika reform period of 1990. That revision transferred the power of deprivation from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet to the president of the Soviet Union and sharply narrowed when that power could be used. Soviet citizenship could now only be stripped from individuals who had enlisted in foreign military forces, lived abroad for five or more years without registering at a Soviet consulate, or had fraudulently obtained citizenship in the first place.

• 4. The Post-Soviet Scramble

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  When the Soviet Union dissolved, the RSFSR's new citizenship law, adopted on the 28th of November 1991, had not yet even come into force. It took effect on the 6th of February 1992, after the union it was designed to reform had already ceased to exist.

  The law's transitional arrangements were sweeping. Former Soviet citizens permanently resident in Russia on that date automatically became Russian citizens unless they explicitly applied to refuse citizenship by the 6th of February 1993. Other former Soviet citizens could obtain Russian citizenship by registration if they migrated to Russia between the 6th of February 1992 and the 31st of December 2000. The law also aligned Russia's rules with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: citizenship could no longer be stripped at the sole discretion of the government, and dual citizenship was no longer strictly prohibited, at least in cases where Russia had a bilateral agreement in place.

  To manage the movement of ethnic Russians now living in newly independent foreign countries, Russia established visa-free travel throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States in 1992. Dual citizenship treaties followed: one with Turkmenistan in 1993 and one with Tajikistan in 1996. Simplified naturalization agreements were signed with Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in 1996, and a multilateral agreement added Belarus and Kyrgyzstan in 1999.

  Part of Russia's reasoning for these agreements was economic as much as humanitarian. The Russian government wanted ethnic Russians living in the former Soviet republics to feel secure enough that they would not flood into Russia during a period of prolonged economic crisis. The other post-Soviet states, for their part, were wary of Russian influence and did not want Moscow extending its reach into their populations.

  The experiment produced unexpected results. Most people who used the dual citizenship pathways were not ethnically Russian at all. They came from areas of the CIS that were economically dependent on Russia, and the citizenship arrangements offered practical advantages. By 2000, the Russian government began pulling back. The Ministry of Internal Affairs stopped issuing passports to former Soviet citizens who lacked established residency records in Russia dating to the 6th of February 1992. Attempts to negotiate a similar arrangement with Ukraine during the 1990s and again in 2004 ended without agreement.

• 5. The 2002 Law and Its Reversals

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  The law "On Citizenship of the Russian Federation," which came into force on the 1st of July 2002, tightened the rules substantially. Where almost any former Soviet citizen could have obtained Russian citizenship through simple registration under the 1991 law, the 2002 version required proof of Russian language proficiency, a legal source of income, and renunciation of any previous citizenship. Applicants also had to establish permanent residence in Russia before naturalizing, even if they had previously held a propiska. The cumulative effect of these added conditions meant that the process for a former Soviet citizen could stretch to as long as eight years.

  For foreign nationals in general, the standard pathway required more than five years of residence with a valid residence permit, demonstrated language proficiency, and a legal income. The residence requirement dropped to one year for asylum seekers and refugees, or for those who had made extraordinary scientific, technological, or cultural contributions. Citizens of other post-Soviet states who had served at least three years in the Russian Armed Forces could have the requirement waived entirely.

  For the following decade, dual citizenship was actively discouraged by Russian government agencies. Then the 2014 annexation of Crimea changed the political calculus. Residents of the breakaway regions of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria had already been granted Russian citizenship under provisions of the 1991 law. Now, in the years that followed 2014, Russia again began relaxing rules for citizens of neighboring states.

  Ukrainian citizens seeking Russian citizenship were no longer required to prove they had renounced Ukrainian citizenship, beginning in 2017. Residents of Donetsk Oblast and Luhansk Oblast became eligible for expedited acquisition of Russian citizenship in 2019. The five-year residence requirement was removed entirely for citizens of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and Ukraine, and the requirement to renounce foreign citizenships before naturalizing was completely abolished in 2020.

  Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the expedited acquisition process was extended first to Zaporizhzhia Oblast and Kherson Oblast in May 2022, and then to all of Ukraine in July 2022. The 2002 law that had made Russian citizenship harder to acquire than at any point since the Soviet era had, within two decades, been transformed into a tool of geopolitical expansion.

• 6. Who Belongs, and How

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  Under the rules that crystallized over this long history, Russian citizenship by birth is automatic for any child born in Russia if at least one parent is Russian. Children born in Russia to two foreign parents receive citizenship only if they would otherwise be stateless. Children born abroad to two Russian parents are citizens by descent; those born abroad to one Russian parent need the other parent's consent, or face statelessness without it. Abandoned children found in Russia are presumed to be Russian citizens if their parents cannot be located within six months.

  The facilitated acquisition pathway serves a broad range of people who do not qualify for birth citizenship but face a reduced or waived residence requirement. Former Soviet citizens who are permanently resident in a post-Soviet state but have never acquired citizenship there can use this pathway. Citizens of former Soviet states who were educated in Russian secondary schools or universities since the 1st of July 2002 also qualify. So do people already resident in Russia who are married to a Russian citizen for at least three years, or who are a parent of a Russian citizen child when the other parent is deceased or legally absent.

  The Russian language requirement sits at the center of the standard admission process. So does proof of a legal income source. The president of Russia retains discretionary authority to grant citizenship to any foreigner directly, a power that dates in its spirit to the imperial era when a foreigner's exceptional talent could shorten the waiting period.

  Russian citizenship can be relinquished through a formal declaration of renunciation. Parents may apply for renunciation on behalf of their Russian citizen children. Dual citizens, however, have been refused requests to renounce Russian citizenship. And in cases where Russia cedes territory to another country, Russians living in that territory are given a choice: retain Russian citizenship or acquire citizenship of the state that now controls their land. That clause, written into law as a theoretical safeguard, became newly significant when the new citizenship law 138-FZ entered into force on the 26th of October 2023, replacing the 2002 law that had governed Russian citizenship for more than two decades.