TALLINN, Estonia – Oleg Bessedin’s main travel document is called an "alien’s passport," as if it were a gag item. But it is all that he has when he ventures abroad – a reminder of his conflicted relationship with this country, and of the explosive ethnic tensions that endure across the former Soviet Union, nearly two decades after Communism’s fall.

Bessedin, 36, an ethnic Russian, was born and raised in Estonia, and lives here with his family. Legally, though, he is not Estonian, nor a citizen of anywhere else. He is among 100,000 people in Estonia, most of them ethnic Russians, who are stateless, as if they were refugees in their own homeland.

"I love my country, and I have done a whole lot for my country," Bessedin, a television producer, said. "But my country has not done a whole lot for me." He blames the Estonian authorities for ostracizing him, and they in turn blame the former Soviet masters for the mess they left behind.

Whoever is at fault, deep friction is one legacy of Soviet ethnic and demographic policies that moved millions of people around – and shifted many borders – in order to cement Kremlin control over a vast patchwork of territories. The fallout endures, and the post-Soviet countries are constantly confronting it.

Just scan recent headlines: Major rioting breaks out in areas of Kyrgyzstan that Josef Stalin gave to the Kyrgyz, but are still populated by Uzbeks; a firefight erupts over an enclave disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan; Georgia asserts that Russia wants to go to war again in support of two separatist territories, as it did two years ago; Moldova demands that Russian troops leave its own breakaway region.

Here in Tallinn, the Estonian capital, the slow burn offers a chance to see just how the process has worked – both in history and on an individual level.

Relations between Estonia’s government and its Russian minority have long been strained. And if the past is any indication, it would not take much to set off disturbances with repercussions in Moscow and Washington. In joining NATO, Estonia brought the alliance to the Russian border – much to the Kremlin’s displeasure.

In 2007, there was a brief spate of violence in Tallinn when ethnic Russians protested the removal of a Soviet war memorial. In the past year, Russia has criticized Estonia over its treatment of ethnic Russians. Estonia has expressed fears of new encroachment by Moscow and recently raised alarms after Russia stationed missiles nearby.

The citizenship policy has been perhaps the most provocative issue; in some sense, it represents the Estonian government’s pointed response to what Stalin wrought.

Before Estonia was seized by the Soviets in 1940, its population was largely ethnic Estonian; resentment was strong enough that many sided with the Germans when Hitler invaded in 1941. In subsequent decades, to assure future loyalty, the Soviet government settled many ethnic Russians and others here. Today nearly half of the people in Tallinn – not all of them ethnic Russians – speak Russian as their mother tongue.

With independence in the early 1990s, the government has reversed Russification. It mandated the Estonian language in schools and government offices. And it adopted a policy that left people like Bessedin stateless: With few exceptions, Estonia granted citizenship only to people who had it before the Soviet takeover, as well as their descendants. Latvia is the only other former Soviet republic with a similar rule.

Non-Estonians can obtain citizenship by passing a language test, but that is difficult for many ethnic Russians, who felt no need to learn Estonian during Soviet times. (There is also a civics examination, in Estonian.)

Estonian society, in other words, has undergone a turnabout, and ethnic Russians have lost their privileged status, just as the Soviet collapse has reordered ethnic relations across the Soviet space.

Yet Kristina Kallas, an analyst at the Institute of Baltic Studies in Tallinn, said she has been struck by the attitudes of many young ethnic Russians, who act as if they had the stature of their forebears.

"The memories and reflections are handed down to the next generation," Kallas said. "Even when we speak about the second or third generation of Russians in Estonia, you can see that they refuse to identify themselves or their ancestors as immigrants. It’s not just that the older generation dies, and the legacy disappears."

About 7.5 percent of Estonia’s 1.35 million people are stateless. Their "alien’s passports" allow them to enter many European countries without visas, just like Estonian citizens, though they tend to face more bureaucratic hurdles. In Estonia, they cannot vote in federal elections and or hold some jobs.

Ethnic Russians in their 30s and 40s seem most disaffected, as if adrift between cultures. Some have successfully gone through the citizenship process. But others have refused as a protest, even if they speak Estonian.

"The government is not for Estonia; it is only against Russia," said Igor Matrosov, a software engineer. "Right now, I could become a citizen. But I have been betrayed."

The government is encouraging integration by offering language classes and trying to improve job opportunities for ethnic Russians. Estonia’s president, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, has defended the citizenship rules.

"As for the language examination and history examination, these are requirements in every country," he told a Russian newspaper.

The counterargument, of course, is that elsewhere such policies are intended for immigrants. Ethnic Russians in Estonia their whole lives are not exactly immigrants. But what are they?

"We feel like we are not Russian – and we are not Estonian," said Vladimir Dzhumkov, a stateless theater director. "We are stuck in the middle. And both sides are taking advantage of us."

© 2010 The New York Times Company