Executive Summary:
- A large new nationality is emerging in the Russian Federation, a more than 800,000-strong group now called “Russian citizens of Tajik origin,” which Moscow is struggling to manage and that challenges how the Russian government will deal with others.
- Culturally and linguistically Tajik but legally Russian, Russian citizens of Tajik origin cannot easily be forced to leave, forced to assimilate, or blocked from forming ethnic enclaves except at the price of Moscow’s relationship with Tajikistan and its base there.
- Moscow is addressing these problems by promoting the political careers of some Russian citizens of Tajik origin. This approach may help in the short term but is likely to trigger larger problems in the future.
More than 800,000 Tajiks have taken Russian citizenship over the last decade under a 1996 agreement that gives them a more or less automatic right to that status. This allows them to live without restrictions in the Russian Federation and to vote in Russian elections (see EDM, July 23). The group is now so large—bigger than all but a handful of non-Russian nationalities of the Russian Federation—that some are now referring to it as a new nationality. “Russian citizens of Tajik origin” are culturally and linguistically Tajik, at least in private, but full-fledged citizens of the Russian Federation in public (Stan Radar, October 2). This group is a subset of the much larger group of ethnic Tajiks living and working in the Russian Federation, many of whom lack Russian citizenship. Moscow can and has stripped some Tajiks of Russian citizenship and deported them to Tajikistan, as well as adopted other harsh measures to get them to leave, especially in the wake of the Crocus City shopping center bombings in March 2024. The Russian government, however, has learned it can do so only at the cost of relations with Tajikistan. The former Soviet republic in Central Asia still hosts an important Russian military base and has reacted sharply to such Russian actions, despite remaining heavily dependent on remittances from Tajiks working in the Russian Federation (see EDM, May 2, October 22, 2024; Window on Eurasia, August 11, 2024).
As a result, Russian citizens of Tajik origin are becoming more important. Moscow is seeking to integrate them by encouraging their participation in Russian legislatures at all levels and even celebrating the re-election of a member of this new national community to the Russian State Duma (Stan Radar, October 2). In the short term, that may help Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime reduce anger in Dushanbe and among members of this nationality in Russia. These actions suggest that Moscow views Russian citizens of Tajik origin as a group deserving a special status. Precisely because of that, however, this latest Moscow move may backfire. Russian citizens of Tajik origin could become more politically conscious, and demand and expand efforts to form the ethnic enclaves that many Russians fear are undermining the common legal space of their country (see EDM, April 10, 2025). If so, the Putin regime is likely to respond with repression. That will not only harm Moscow’s ties with Tajikistan and its base in that country as well as its relations with the Russian citizens of Tajik origin but also affect the attitudes and strategies of the other non-Russian peoples of the Russian Federation who may lack some of that group’s resources but who want many of the same things (Window on Eurasia, September 27, 2023; see EDM, May 2, 2024; Radio Svoboda, March 2).
One reason this new nationality has attracted relatively little attention so far is that its members live widely dispersed across the country, in various industrial centers, rather than concentrated in the capitals. The Russian government has stopped publishing data on both the location of these ethnic Tajiks and on their participation as candidates in elections. Those shortcomings, however, are compensated in part by an interview Mukim Mayboliyev, the head of the Tajik community in Tver oblast, gave to Tajikistan journalist Bakhtiyor Khamdamov of the StanRadar portal and also by that outlet’s coverage of the recent re-election of Rakhim Azimov as a United Russia deputy in the Russian State Duma (Stan Radar, October 2).
According to Mayboliyev, “Tajiks who have taken Russian citizenship are ever more actively participating in the social and political life of the country.” This pattern is especially noticeable among those born in Russia or who grew up there. Such people, he continues, “are preserving Tajik culture, language, and customs at home but outside the home are ever more confidently taking part in the life of their new motherland.” These people are equally comfortable in Tajik and Russian life and see no need to choose. Instead, they combine these two cultures into a single, distinctive whole. Mayboliyev suggests dominance elsewhere, something Moscow would likely welcome. This symbiotic combination almost certainly means these cultures will sometimes play roles beyond their accustomed ones, affecting how Tajiks behave in both places, a development neither Moscow nor Tajiks with Russian citizenship may like at all.
According to the Tver activist, the Tajik community in Tver works closely with the oblast administration. Khamdamov suggests, however, that it is still too early “to speak about massive political representation” of the community there or elsewhere in the Russian Federation. No data is available on how many Tajiks now serve in regional or municipal legislatures or governments. Moscow does not collect, or at least release, such data, and information about birthplace alone is not a good indicator of nationality. For example, the Tajik journalist notes that Viktor Bout, the notorious arms dealer who was imprisoned and then released in the United States and who now serves in the Ulyanovsk legislature, was born in Dushanbe but is in no way connected with Tajik culture. “It is possible,” Khamdamov continues, “that there are more people with Tajik roots in local governments,” but that cannot be confirmed, which he says may be a good thing because it means that their participation in politics is not based on ethnicity but on the ideas they support (Stan Radar, October 2).
The journalist mentions Rakhim Azimov, a Russian citizen of Tajik origin in the Russian State Duma. Born in 1964 in Shurab, a small city in northern Tajikistan, he studied in Leningrad and worked in the Kirov oblast government. In 2015, he became a deputy in the region’s legislative assembly. In 2016, he was elected to the Russian Duma as a United Russia deputy. In 2021, he was re-elected, and last month, he was re-elected again. Tajik media outlets, Khamdamov says, have written that Azimov has not forgotten Tajikistan or Shurab and has even helped build a school in the city where he was born. “Azimov has shown that it is possible to follow such a path,” the Tajik journalist says, concluding that others among the rising generation of Russian citizens of Tajik origin are likely to do the same.
For now, there is little evidence that Russian citizens of Tajik origin have become a fully self-conscious nation. If Russia enters a new period of turbulence during the looming succession struggle, that will likely change quickly, affecting not only its members but also other non-Russians in the Russian Federation, Moscow’s relationship with Tajikistan, and thus the future of the Russian state itself.
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