SUMMARY:

Among the fundamental problems brought about by the 1917 Revolution and the dissolution of the Russian Empire was the need to differentiate common imperial subjecthood into new national citizenships and bring would-be citizens scattered across the old imperial space to their national states. To this end, a series of international treaties concluded in 1920–1921 between Soviet Russia and its neighbors, from Finland to the Ottoman Empire, stipulated the rules for choosing a new national citizenship. The article focuses on the results of the 1920 Treaty of Tartu between the Estonian Republic and the RSFSR, and more specifically, on one particular group seeking to acquire their Estonian citizenship. At the turn of the twentieth century, and especially with the start of the Stolypin reforms, thousands of landless Estonian peasants relocated to Russia’s Asiatic territories that were open for agricultural colonization, including the Kazakh Steppe. Estonian farmers prospered in the new socioeconomic environment, but after the Treaty of Tartu they began applying en masse for Estonian citizenship.
Using the archival holding of the Estonian Repatriation Commission and putting together a database that includes some 1,600 Estonian farmers who resided in the territory of would-be Kazakhstan, the author reconstructs the complicated logistics for acquiring Estonian citizenship and the purpose of doing so. Unlike Poland and, to a degree, Lithuania, the Estonian Republic qualified as a potential citizen anyone born on the territory that would have become Estonian by 1920 or even anyone just registered with a territorial commune or a legal estate on that territory in the past. An additional veto process helped filter applicants for citizenship who were deemed undesirable, particularly for political reasons. The Estonian government also tried to discourage legitimate applicants, including ethnic Estonians, who might become economic burdens on the country and contribute to social tensions. Well aware of the lack of any available land resources in Estonia, Estonian farmers from the Akmola and Semipalatinsk regions in the Kazakh Steppe still applied for Estonian citizenship. The author explains their unanimous enthusiasm about acquiring this citizenship by their hopes to avoid the draconian Soviet food procurement campaigns as foreign nationals. This hope proved illusory, as the local Soviet authorities showed even less concern about legal matters than the central government. Nevertheless, even after obtaining Estonian citizenship, few farmers actually moved to Estonia. The inauguration of the New Economic Policy in 1921 somewhat eased the pressure on Estonian colonists, while the difficulty of relocation and the need to leave behind most of their property was a strong deterrent to emigration. The majority of Estonian farmers eventually took Soviet citizenship, which suggests that their primary motive in opting for a national citizenship was pragmatic rather than ideological.