ANDREJEVA v. LATVIA JUDGMENT 3 THE FACTS I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE CASE A. Background to the case 10. The applicant was born in Kazakhstan and came to Latvia in 1954, at the age of 12, when it was one of the fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs) of the Soviet Union. She has been permanently resident there ever since. In 1966, after finishing her studies at Riga Polytechnic Institute, she obtained a job at the chemical complex in Olaine (Latvia), working in a laboratory at a recycling plant. 11. In 1973 the applicant was assigned to the regional division of the Environmental Protection Monitoring Department, which was part of the USSR Ministry of Chemical Industry. Until 1981 she worked for a State enterprise attached to the Ministry, with its head office in Kyiv (Ukraine). She was subsequently placed under the authority of a subdivision of the same enterprise, which was based in Belorussia (present-day Belarus) and was itself subordinate to a division with its head office in Dolgoprudnyy (in the Moscow Region, Russia). The enterprise in question was an all-Union enterprise (предприятие всесоюзного значения) and was thus governed by federal law and under the authority of the USSR central government. The applicant’s salary was paid by monthly post-office giro transfer, from Kyiv and Moscow. Notwithstanding her successive reassignments, the applicant continued to work at the recycling plant in Olaine. Furthermore, throughout this period she remained affiliated to the same local unit of the centralised Soviet trade union for workers in the chemical industry. 12. On 4 May 1990 the Supreme Council (the legislative assembly at the time) adopted the Declaration on the Restoration of the Independence of the Republic of Latvia. On 21 November 1990 the Environmental Protection Monitoring Department was abolished. As the enterprise had become autonomous, the applicant came under the direct authority of the plant’s management. 13. In August 1991 Latvia’s independence was fully restored. Subsequently, in December 1991 the Soviet Union, the State of which the applicant had hitherto been a national, ceased to exist. The applicant therefore became stateless. Following the enactment on 12 April 1995 of the Act on the status of former USSR citizens without Latvian or other citizenship, the applicant was granted the status of “permanently resident non-citizen” (nepilsone).