Constructing Post-Soviet Boundaries: Institutionalization of Russian Border Control and Its Relations with Central Asian Countries

Central Asia and the Caucasus

Abstract

Russia has still played a key role for regional security of the former Soviet Union including Central Asia in order to maintain its military presence and to protect Russian people in there. Furthermore, an old-yet-new goal of the Russian engagement policy is emerging: how to cope with influx of threats beyond the border. In this context, Russia is trying to reorganize its ministries or agencies in charge of these issues for strict border control like Federal Border Service, Federal Migration Service, Federal Security Service, and so on. In this article author also describes several examples of understanding on boundary from Russian side like Sergey Baburin and Dmitri Trenin, and the trend of revise of the Law on Border, the Law on Citizenship, the Law on Migration, and other presidential decrees relating boundary issues.
Border control policies of each Central Asian countries also affect issues on Russian citizenship and its migration control. Such interaction would change the concept of boundary among countries of the former Soviet Union comprehensively. However, there is a dilemma for Russia whether to be strict control of migration for their security or to mitigate it for keep domestic work forces. Each Central Asian countries, especially Tajikistan, share an interest with Russia to send labor migrants to Russia for their economical reason. Russian government welcomes the legal labor migrants on the one hand; it takes border control strictly on the other, especially under the Putin administration, to reduce illegal migration by the reform of visa and migration control regime. Although most of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries (except Tajikistan and Turkmenistan) deny the dual citizenship with Russia, Russia pursues its policy of the dual citizenship as remains of boundary concept of the Soviet Union. Central Asian countries, however, try to reduce such Russian influence to keep their sovereignty. Kazakhstan is vulnerable on this problem because of the inside Russian population, accounting for almost 30per cent of Kazakhstan citizen. In Turkmenistan, April 2003, dual citizenship became sensitive diplomatic issue with Russia when President Niyazov decided to ban the dual citizenship in its territory.
As we see in these Russian policies, Russia does not break the legacy of the Soviet Union yet. Putin administration should manage its traditional, bureaucratic and coercive institutions to protect Russian border that were constructed during the Soviet period to defense its autarchic regime. However, Russian boundary policy also symbolizes its position to keep leading role in CIS countries to adapt the trend of globalization. Moreover, Russia pushes forward its national security against challenge and threat from the weak or failed states surrounding Russia while policies of Central Asian countries on border control and migration are fluid for searching a new strict system.