The Russian Federation has been an exception among the states that emerged from the former Soviet Union when it comes to granting Russian nationality. The most common criterion among the said states has been very restrictive regarding the granting of nationality, which has led to a great number of stateless persons (vid. Minorities Deprived of the Right to Vote in Latvia). On the contrary, the Federation has established a broad criterion that prevents the numerous negative consequences of being stateless, among others, not recognising the right to active and passive suffrage.
However, various international organisations have issued warnings regarding an example that could, at times, distort this generous legal criterion in practice: nationals of the former USSR have been forced to emigrate to Russia from their places of residence in any other of the states that emerged from it.
These are complex situations that do not always have an easy solution in Russian regulations. Specifically, in the Law on Refugees; the Law on Forced Emigrants; the Law that regulates the right of the Russian citizens to freedom of movement and the right to choose their place of temporary or permanent residence within the Russian Federation (promulgated on 25 June 1993) and even in the Law on Nationality of the Federation itself, promulgated on 28 November 1991 and reformed on 17 June 1993. In principle, the procedure to obtain Russian nationality is relatively simple for any citizen of the former USSR: a registration system is sufficient. However, article 19 of the Law on Nationality demands that applicants provide proof of regular residence in Russia by means of prior registration in the place where they hand in their application for nationality.
The Ministry of the Interior often interprets the requirement of regularity as the need for a certificate of permanent residence prior to the application, which makes it difficult to acquire nationality. The consequence is that these people are excluded from the aid for forced emigrants, apart from their deprivation of all the rights nationality entitles them to, among these, the right to vote. This is definitely an example of how the difficulty in certifying a requisite, based on a restrictive administrative interpretation, can hamper the recognition of a right with a chain of negative consequences for the person concerned.
