Russia - Nationality on birth certificates

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Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 10:52:50 +0300 (EET DST)
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Subject: Russia - Nationality on birth certificates

From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>

Original sender: Felix Corley <[email protected]>

Russia - Nationality on birth certificates


Jamestown Foundation Monitor
July 9, 1998
 
GOVERNMENT PROFFERS OLIVE BRANCH ON NATIONALITY ISSUE

Russia's Justice Minister Pavel Krasheninnikov says that the
government has approved a proposal by his ministry to amend the Law on
the Status of Citizens. The amendment would allow Russian citizens to
include retroactively their nationality (that is, their ethnic
identity) in their birth certificates. The decision whether to make
the insertion would be entirely voluntary, Krasheninnikov said, but
those who so wished could make the addition after reaching the age of
majority (eighteen). There are no plans to reinstate the entry for
nationality in Russian internal passports (identity documents). The
government clearly hopes, however, that allowing ethnic origin to be
inserted in birth certificates will calm the continuing uproar over
Russia's new passports, which were introduced last year. In a
departure from Soviet practice, the new passports provide no space for
nationality. This has provoked enormous resentment in ethnic republics
such as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, where the authorities have
refused to issue the new documents. Whether Krasheninnikov's proposal
will soothe ruffled feathers in Tatarstan is not clear: the
authorities in the republic have also called for Russia's new
passports to be printed in Tatar as well as Russian. 

(Novye izvestia, July 4)

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