On the Edge of the West: Citizenship and Foreign Policy in the Baltic States

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – the three Baltic States have much in common. All of them are small states with weak capabilities to shape security in the Baltic Sea region. All of them used to be part of the Soviet Union and successfully transformed their political system into liberal democracies. Additionally, all of them perceive Russia as a substantial threat to their national security. At the same time, the Baltic States differ considerably in their share of Russophone population (Russian-speaking citizens of the Baltic States, Russian-speaking citizens of the Russian Federation inhabiting the Baltic States, and Russian-speaking stateless people) as well as their post-transformation citizenship policies. Estonia and Latvia (high share of Russophones, around 30%) introduced exclusionary post-transformation citizenship policies, whereas Lithuania (low share of Russophones, around 5%) introduced inclusionary one. These citizenship policies had important repercussions, in particular for the degree of access to democratically elected domestic institutions and for the integration of Russophones within the nation-states as they were reestablished after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The partial exclusion of Russophones from citizenship in Estonia and Latvia has arguably exposed these states to unconventional cross-border interference by the Russian Federation under the slogan of protection of its own nationals. The proposed paper is part of an my ongoing research project “From Stettin Eastwards: Comparative Foreign Policy Analysis of the Baltic Sea States”. In this project, I explore the divergent foreign policy responses of the Baltic States, Finland and Poland to the dynamic of security in the Baltic Sea region. The long-term consequences of exclusionary citizenship policies introduced in Estonia and Latvia in the early 1990s considerably narrow down the menu of foreign policy alternatives available to foreign policy decision-makers. The clearest empirical evidence for this entanglement of citizenship and foreign policy comes from the use of exclusionary citizenship policies as a bargaining chip: by the Russian Federation during the negotiations on withdrawal of the Soviet military forces, and – simultaneously – by the Council of Europe during the accession negotiations. Yet, today a new generation of Russophones, born after the political transformation, enters the domestic political stage. Although they considerably differ in terms of education, occupation and political attitudes from their ancestors, surprisingly little research is done on the cross-generational effects of different citizenship policies introduced by the Baltic States after the political transformation. Even the recent publications in the field of comparative politics of the Baltic States (Mole 2012, Auers 2015) build upon solid but outdated accounts of Russophones in the Baltic States, published by Lieven (1993) and Laitin (1998). In my research project I attempt to update the knowledge about Russophones in the Baltic States, asking why and how different citizenship policies introduced in the past affect foreign policy actions performed today. Additionally, through upcoming ethnographic fieldwork, with use of descriptive survey data, process-tracing, and discourse analysis, I attempt to verify deep concerns about the destabilising role of denied citizenship on the Russophone population in the Baltic States.