Introduction Mr Noe Georgiyevich Mskhiladze was born in the Georgian Republic of the USSR in 1972. In 1988, he came to St Petersburg (then Leningrad) to study at a professional technical high school. Upon the completion of his studies he left for Georgia, however the following year he returned to Russia, married a Russian citizen, and has not left St Petersburg ever since. Mr Mskhiladze was not necessarily a law-abiding citizen. Because of his several criminal offences, he could not obtain Russian citizenship upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.1 His USSR passport expired while he was in custody, and Mr Mskhiladze found himself in the position of a stateless person. He led a relatively uneventful life in St Petersburg: he worked in the shadow economy, accessed healthcare privately and was trying to make ends meet like the vast majority of post-Soviet citizens. The difference was that Mr Mskhiladze’s official identity documents placed him in a world that no longer existed. Towards the end of 2015, the Federal Migration Service (FMS)2 stopped Mr Mskhiladze during a routine documents check. Mr Mskhiladze could only show to the authorities his expired Soviet passport. The FMS insisted on treating Mr Mskhiladze as an ‘ordinary immigration law offender’ (Kubal, 2016). While the court noted Mr Mskhiladze was a former USSR national, it sentenced him to expulsion and placed him in a detention centre for foreigners. Mr Mskhiladze was ready to leave for Georgia, but could not do it, 1 In 1991, it was relatively easy to become a Russian citizen. No residency requirements, knowledge of Russian language or culture, income level or renunciation of previous citizenship – which, since 2002, became the conditions for citizenship – were required. The only condition was a clear criminal record (Shevel 2012: 132). 2 Federal Migration Service (FMS) was a Russian immigration enforcement agency. It was disbanded as an independent organization by Presidential Decree No. 156 as of 5 April 2016. Its functions were transferred to the newly established Main Directorate for Migration of the Ministry of Interior (GUVM MVD). . 2