ABSTRACT
On 26 February 1992, less than six months since the proclamation of Estonian independence and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a Resolution on Citizenship was passed in Estonia, creating considerable uncertainty for the country’s large Russian-speaking population. 1 The Resolution denied automatic citizenship to any person living in Estonia who had not been an Estonian citizen (or a direct descendant of an Estonian citizen) prior to 1940, when the territory of Estonia was brought under Soviet control. The vast majority of Estonia’s Russian-speakers, who had either been born in or had moved to Estonia in the Soviet era, were transformed overnight into aliens. Estonian politicians denied charges of discrimination by appealing to the principle of ‘legal continuity’: the aim of the Resolution, they argued, was to reconstruct the citizenry of pre-war Estonia, the existence of which had been ‘illegally terminated’ by the Soviet ‘annexation’ of 1940. Anyone who entered Estonia in the Soviet period was therefore an immigrant and should apply for naturalisation accordingly. However, by imposing Estonian language requirements on the process of naturalisation, the new legislation denied Russian-speakers, whose knowledge of Estonian was minimal, the chance to become citizens for many years to come. In 1989, only 13.7 per cent of the Russian-speaking population deemed themselves fluent in Estonian. 2
