In this chapter I describe the way that members of the ethnically mixed Russian-speaking community in Visaginas, Lithuania, view their relationship with the Lithuanian state. Anthropologists and other social researchers have demonstrated that the perception of citizenship is not universal and is shaped by sociocultural context(s) (Bloch 2013; Dagnino 2006; Stack 2012; Yalçın-Heckmann 2012). The community where I conducted my research was formed in the Soviet period and its livelihood has been closely linked to the vitality of the nearby Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant. The majority of Visaginas's population moved to Lithuania during Soviet times when the plant and settlement were being built, and many of them believed in the ideas and the future of the socialist modernisation project (Šliavaitė 2005). During the Soviet era the Russian-speaking community in the settlement were like an ‘island’ in the eastern part of Lithuania, as they had few social connections with the surrounding population (Kavaliauskas 2002; Šliavaitė 2005). When the Soviet Union broke up, Lithuania granted citizenship to all the permanent residents of the country who applied for it. However, I will argue that formal citizenship does not necessarily guarantee that new citizens will develop a sense of belonging and attachment to the national community, or that they will have common perceptions of citizenship and similar expectations of the state. After the events in Ukraine in 2014, with the annexation of Crimea by Russia, Lithuanian journalists rushed to Visaginas to interview the local residents and ask them if they thought a similar scenario was possible in this predominantly Russian-populated part of the country. The concern expressed by these journalists reveals that there is a perception among the general public in Lithuania that the Visaginas community's feelings of civic and national belonging could be ambiguous.

Residents of Visaginas have faced the situation of social uncertainty for more than a decade, starting with negotiations with the EU regarding the eventual shutdown of the nuclear power plant.