A Privilege That Can Be Withdrawn: Regulation of Exit in Russia and Other Post‐Soviet Republics

ABSTRACT The former Soviet Union's restrictions on citizens' foreign travel or emigration were notoriously draconian. Yet what replaced them in the fifteen independent states of the post‐Soviet region has not been well analysed. Outside the Baltic republics, the monolithic and prohibitive policies of the Soviet past have given way to a patchwork of restrictions with more complex motivations reflecting the diversity of contemporary Eurasian states. However, while many more people in the region can travel abroad when they wish, exit remains a privilege, rather than an enforceable right. Post‐Soviet states' exit policies increasingly resemble those in other primarily authoritarian contexts around the world, albeit somewhat marked by Eurasian regimes' high levels of both coercive capacity and informality and the weakness of labour and the left. We conclude that the USSR's fixation on preventing exit was historically exceptional as a policy on foreign travel, rather than paradigmatic, and severely limited the regime's own migration policy options. In a paradox, the relaxation of blanket prohibitions has only increased the post‐Soviet state's freedom to tailor restrictions on exit to its interests far more effectively than the USSR ever could.