Recent Soviet Citizenship Legislation

Abstract

For the fifth time in the 56 years of its existence as a federal state, the Soviet Union has promulgated a new general Law on the Citizenship of the U.S.S.R.1 Previous general laws on U.S.S.R. citizenship were unveiled in 1924, 1930, 1931 and 1938. Prior to 1924 and in between the subsequent successive general laws, Soviet governments at both the federal and union-republic levels adopted organic statutes to regulate particular aspects of citizenship.2 A close analysis of the provisions of these individual statutes shows that the Soviet government has slowly but steadily retrenched from the international to the national concept of citizenship. A state which only 61 years ago held itself out to the rest of the world as a haven for the oppressed toilers of all countries and as a free proletarian state in which all workers and peasants, regardless of citizenship, could come and enjoy the rights and privileges of Soviet citizenship, has now devised an extremely complicated network of exclusionary rules that have not only made it more difficult for the proletarians of the world to acquire Soviet citizenship, but also, and perhaps more importantly, have made it legally impossible for those Soviet toilers who wish to divest themselves of Soviet citi-