Citizenship, Territoriality and Post-Soviet Nationhood: The Politics of Birthright Citizenship in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova.

• Author: Tabachnik, Maxim

Citizenship, Territoriality and Post-Soviet Nationhood: The Politics of Birthright Citizenship in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova, written by Maxim Tabachnik and published in 2019, makes a valuable contribution to the literature on nationalism and citizenship. Drawing upon the profound findings of his Ph.D. research, Tabachnik analyzes the citizenship policies of three post-Soviet states with frozen conflicts: Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh), Moldova (Transnistria), and Georgia (Abkhazia/South Ossetia). Tabachnik refers to those states as a buffer zone between Russia and the West. The main argument of the book is two-fold: first, the author criticizes the classic dichotomy of nationalism as civic/ethnic; instead, he proposes a new dichotomy of nationalism with a specific focus on territorial instead of civic nationalism. Second, he argues that "citizenship policies of territorial nationalism in the three countries with frozen conflicts have been conditioned not by liberal-democratic development associated with civic nationalism but three factors: territorial integrity concerns, historical collective identity, and geopolitics of dual citizenship" (p. 3).

The book consists of three main parts. The first introduces Tabachnik's way of understanding the concept of nationalism as territorial and ethnic in line with the pre-modernist school. He argues that in the post-Soviet space (PSS), Azerbaijan and Moldova adopt a territorial definition of the nation, instead of the ethnic one adopted by most of the states, such as Georgia. Based upon this distinction, Tabachnik focuses on two birthright citizenship policies: unconditional/conditional jus soli (citizenship by birth) and jus sanguinis (citizenship by blood). The author's main aim is to figure out why states implement different kinds of citizenship policies.

Before going into in-depth analysis, Tabachnik provides a well-structured critical approach toward the existing academic literature on nationalism and citizenship policies with a specific focus on modern and pre-modern schools of thought. He proposes a reinvention of the traditional dichotomy of ethnic/territorial since it does not suit the realm of the post-Soviet region. Tabachnik also explains the relationship between nationalism and citizenship policies: "similar to nationalism, the foundation for citizenship has also vacillated between ethnicity and territory throughout history" (p. 37). He gives examples of territorial and ethnic...