The paper, devoted to the institutions of citizenship in Russia and citizenship in the USSR, presents issues related to the trends of international migration policy over a long historical period. Despite the inevitable fluctuations, with the beginning of the reforms of Peter I, the policy of citizenship in Russia becomes part of the state policy in the field of modernization and strengthening of Russia’s defense capability. In the long term, the policy of citizenship in Imperial Russia up to the February revolution can be defined as keeping the population out of Russian citizenship and attracting foreigners in certain periods. Episodic were the measures aimed at returning former subjects to Russia. This approach corresponded to the populationist concept of population, which is explained by the constant expansion of the territory of Russia. The liberal law of 1864, which defined the position of foreigners in Russia, contributed to the influx of foreign investment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The consequences of the law of 1864 were reflected in the strengthening of land and national contradictions. The state’s policy on emigration of Jews from Russia, which became widespread at the beginning of the XX century, also contributed to the growth of tension. the policy on citizenship and international migration changed fundamentally after October 1917 as a result of the ban on renouncing the citizenship of the RSFSR and the return to the USSR of the main part of the "white emigration". At the same time, accelerated industrialization determined the need to attract people to the USSR in the late 1920s and 1930s. foreign specialists, and the international political situation — the influx of political emigrants to the USSR. On the agenda in the 1930s, judging by the legislation, the issues of deprivation of Soviet citizenship were relevant. After world war II, citizenship issues were similar to those that were the focus of attention after world war I and the civil war. It was about large-scale repatriation of Soviet prisoners of war and displaced persons who found themselves outside the USSR, population movements (options) as a result of the revision of state borders, and the return of prisoners of war who were on the territory of the USSR. The" warming " of international relations in the 1950s and 1970s objectively meant the expansion of the USSR’s international relations. A number of laws passed in the 1970s and 1980s actually extended the isolation of the USSR, although these laws failed to stop the growing emigration potential of Soviet Jews, as well as of a number of other nationalities. It is also characteristic that in these years the laws regulating the situation of foreigners and stateless persons in the USSR were adopted in conditions when the statistics of these categories of the population were not available for analysis. Against the backdrop of strong experience in the development and application of legislation governing relations between the state and the population in the area of acquisition and renunciation of citizenship in the form of an unbroken chain of laws, regulations, comments to the laws on citizenship and international migration in many countries around the world fear, the uniqueness of Russia is the existence of two approaches — pre-revolutionary and Soviet. This experience should not be underestimated when choosing a citizenship policy in the future.
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