(from Albert V.)
Passport of Rostropovich shown in video…

As you all know the wedding of Prince Albert II of Monaco and Charlene Wittstock took place these days. I watched the ceremony on TV and find some research on Monaco (especially their citizenship and passports). And it’s very interesting that Mstislav Rostropovich (famous Soviet and Russian cellist and conductor) had Monegasque passport ! His wife Galina Vishnevskaya (Russian soprano opera singer) also posess such passport. Please see a video clip where Mr. Rostropovich is showing his Monegasque passport. It’s a part of a documentary about his life (Elegy of Life).

The passport contains several Japanese visas issued in Paris and Moscow, one Russian visa, one Taiwanese visa, and many European, Russian and Japanese stamps. I made some research (in Russian language sources) and find out that Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya left the USSR in 1978 and their Soviet citizenship was revoked. They became stateless persons and didn’t have any travel documents (they needed to travel extensively with concerts to earn money). Dozen of well-respected Western countries had offered them citizenships but they accepted offer of Grace Kelly only and got Monegasque Service Passports where their citizenship was unspecified (you can see the same in Rostropovich modern passport with “unspecified’ word in the field of nationality and XXX in machine-readable zone). The reason why they accepted proposal of Princess Grace was the fact that they wanted to be citizens of the world (not to be citizens of any specific country), they personally knew the family of Prince and Princess of Monaco and their first performance abroad was in Monte-Carlo. In 1990 Gorbachev signed an order to return Soviet citizenship to Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya but they rejected the offer. And all these years they were stateless persons using service passports of Monaco to travel. Thank you Albert for sharing this interesting article which was well researched.