Abstract One of the main conditions for post‐communist countries to attain membership of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was that national laws should be brought into line with international human rights standards, with special attention to political rights for minority groups. In the case of the Baltic States, the national elites played a major role in the process leading to more liberal citizenship laws towards the Russian‐speaking minority. However, was the changing of formal institutions a manifestation of a liberalization of the national elites’ orientations towards this minority? The article argues that instrumental elite strategies explain why nationalist attitudes seem to prevail both before and after membership, despite less restrictive laws and internationally‐orientated elites.