position in Russia. I conclude with more conceptual observations around the legally productive relationship between de jure and de facto statelessness. Statelessness in post-Soviet space A lot has been said about the statelessness phenomenon upon the collapse of the Soviet Union (Buckley, Blair A. Ruble, & Hofmann, 2008; Pilkington, 1998); this statelessness is ‘sticky’, it is unlikely to disappear within one generation, but continues as one of the many Soviet legacies (Levin, 2018). The late 1980’s with their ‘extremist politics, volatile economics and bewildering legislation’ (Kurkchiyan, 2003: 26) saw an increase in ethnic tensions in the different corners and contexts of the crumbling Soviet Union. The USSR was undergoing radical political transformations and its citizens responded ‘with their feet’ (Hirschman, 1970) – some moved for safety (Pilkington, 1998), while others moved for schooling, jobs, or marriage. When ‘the music finally stopped’, and Soviet documents were being replaced by postSoviet passports (Levin, 2018: 26), two forms of citizenship policy emerged. Oxana Shevel distinguished between provisions that ‘granted preferential treatment to coethnics’6 (Shevel, 2009: 273) and ‘zero-option’ policies, where, whoever was on the territory of a newly independent post-Soviet republic, would automatically receive the new citizenship.7 The exclusionary citizenship policy based on jus sanguinis, and privileging ethnicity over longterm residence, is well documented in the literature (Brubaker, 1992; Chinn & Truex, 1996). This policy made thousands of former Soviet residents of Russian nationality in Estonia and 6 Not only in Estonia and Latvia but also Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Lithuania and Turkmenistan (Shevel 2009: 274). 7 The latter citizenship policy without provisions for coethnics was in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan (Shevel 2009: 274). 6