The former USSR countries’ visa-free travel rating tells us about the main socio-political trends in these states. What is curious – the closer a country is to Europe in terms of geography, the higher its visa-free travel rating.

Henley & Partners, a Swiss consultant in residency planning, has published a Visa Restrictions Index. In fact, it is a list of the countries ranked according to the number of the states their citizens can enter without a visa. The list consists of 219 countries and territories (thus, 217 is the maximum possible index value).

Germany occupies the first position on the list four years in a row. The top ten consists of the same 28 countries as it did last year. Their list is, in general, obvious and predictable. After Sweden, that occupies the second place, we have Finland, Italy, Spain, the USA, and Denmark.

Russia’s leading position among the CIS countries (not including the Baltic states that are now members of the EU) is somewhat unexpected. For the past ten years, the number of the countries Russian citizens can enter without a visa increased twice, from 55 in 2007 to 106 in 2017.

Russia’s neighbors’ ranks are as follows: Ukraine – the 58^th place, Kazakhstan – the 67^th place, Belarus – the 70^th place, Azerbaijan – the 74^th place.

The visa-free travel rating of the former USSR countries is obviously correlated to their place on the Eurasian map. The closer they are to the West, the higher their rating is. This is happening even though most of the countries are located far from Europe and, consequently, there should be no apparent connection between these facts. The colonies do not exist anymore and every state decides for itself who and under what conditions should be able to enter it.

We do not know the exact answer to this question but we will offer the following explanation.

• For obtain the maximum visa-free regime, the citizens of the country must have a real will to travel. In this case, the authorities of this country will try to receive such visa preferences by offering something in exchange.

• The demand must not simply be of the social nature, it must be of the civic nature. It means that most citizens must have a possibility to pressure the authorities to soften the visa restrictions. Elites of any country in the world are not interested in achieving this status because, for them, the problem of travel restrictions does not exist anyway (unless there are restrictions against them personally).

• The very existence of this demand and the possibility to put pressure on the authorities means that the country has a certain level of political and civic freedoms that can be expressed fully.

• The closer a country is to Europe geographically, the higher the possibility to express the civic freedoms. This is not simply geography, this is a political reality.

Note the curious exceptions. The most obvious ones are Belarus and Ukraine that are situated below Russia on the visa-free travel list.

In Ukraine, as we know, this problem had become of a political nature and the visa-free travel demand was one of the most important factors of the 2013 crisis and the events that followed. Now, three years later, after the serious political struggle and the yields to the European demands, Ukraine has a chance to obtain the visa-free regime with the Schengen states.

Belarus is even further down from Russia on the list. It means that the country is on the brink of serious political challenges because the demand for free travel will increase. At the same time, it is impossible to change this part of the system without reforming the other aspects of the political, economic, and social life.

As for Kazakhstan, it is a special case. Its visa-free travel rating is significantly higher than that of the neighboring Central Asian countries. We can see several reasons for that. The high demand for travel really does exist in the country thanks to the international social and business connections, the development of the transport infrastructure and the tourist industry. There is also the effect of the government’s efforts to increase the number of these connections in order to enhance the level of the management culture and to form the national elite in independent Kazakhstan.

Apart from that, this desire was in tune with the strategy of fitting Kazakhstan into the European collective safety systems. The Kazakh authorities wanted it for a number of reasons.

Consequently, there is the enormous (without exaggeration) statistics of exits from the country collected by the state border service. And it is endemic to Kazakhstan. According to the 2012 data (the last relatively “peaceful” year), the number of Kazakhs exiting the country for a short period of time exceeded 9 million people. Most of them (8.5 million) exited the country for “personal reasons”. Only 373.4 thousand people named tourism as their purpose for travelling which correlates to the statistics of the tourist industry.

We can assume, of course, that the data includes a large number of multiple exits made by the same socially active group. This, however, does not change the fact that the international connections are still very important for the country. This fact is especially significant because, in Kazakhstan, there is virtually no unqualified workforce emigration that usually contributes to such statistics to a great extent.

However, the fact that the importance of the international social connections is gradually decreasing due to a number of factors – economic, social, and political – is also evident from the international tourism statistics that is easily available and actively discussed. For example, according to last year’s data, the international tourism in Kazakhstan decreased by 20% which suggests the inevitable slump in the visa-free travel demand. Everyone who needs it already has it one way or another. In reality, it means that Kazakhstan is at risk to even up scores – not with Russia but with the Central Asian countries. They may still not rank equally on the visa-free travel list but the real statistics of their significant international connections may become similar.