Passport system in the Soviet Union
The passport system of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was an organisational framework of the single national civil registration system based upon identification documents, and managed in accordance with the laws by ministries and other governmental bodies authorised by the
1917–1932
The foundations of the passport system of the
Personal Identification
"Metrika" (Russian: метрика), an excerpt from the birth registration books (Russian: Метрическая книга), was a kind of identity document available to everybody.
On 18 December 1917 the
As it was before the revolution, the "metriks" records (both in the books and in the excerpts given to the parents) contained such critical identification information as: date and place of birth, name and sex of a child, full names of his parents (if known). By default, a child inherited a surname of his or her father (if known), mother (if single); however both parents were not limited in their choice. Unlike the pre-revolutionary "metriks", civilian documents of new Soviet authorities said nothing of parents' religion. Also, due to the non-clerical status of the birth registration, information about "vospriemniki" (godfather and godmother) also disappeared from this document.
The system originates in the Decree of the
The Small Soviet Encyclopedia released in May 1930 seems to be the last encyclopedical source which fixed the early post-revolutionary nihilistic treatment of the passport system as a tool of the so-called "police state" where it provides "police supervision and taxation system". Stating that the whole concept of the "passport system" is unknown to the Soviet system of rights, the author insists that the passport system is also burdensome to the contemporary bourgeois (i.e. non-socialist) states which tend to simplify or even abolish this system.[3]
Soviet passports did not identify gender, although patronymics are gendered. In the early days they recorded "social origin" and "social position". They recorded nationality, which might include what in other contexts would be regarded as ethnicity, such as Jewish or Crimean Tatar. If both parents had the same this was that of the children. If it differed the child could choose which nationality to adopt at the age of 16. Children were normally listed in the passport of their mother. Men's passport might include liability for child support.[4]
1933–1991
On 27 December 1932 the USSR
Passports were introduced for urban residents,
The implementation of the passport system was based on the USSR Sovnarkom decree dated April 22, 1933 About the Issue of Passports to the USSR Citizens in the territory of the USSR. The document declared that all citizens at least sixteen years old residing in cities, towns, and urban workers' settlements, as well as those residing within one hundred kilometres (62 miles) of
On 10 September 1940 the USSR Sovnarkom decreed the Passport Statute (Russian: Положение о паспортах, romanized: Polozhenye o pasportakh). It enabled special regulations concerning the propiska in the capital cities of the different republics, krais, and oblasts, in state border areas, and at important railroad junctions.
On 21 October 1953 the
After the First Congress of Collective Farm Workers in the summer of 1969, the Council of Ministers of the USSR relieved rural residents from procedural difficulties in obtaining a Soviet passport.
On 28 August 1974 the USSR Council of Ministers issued a new Statute of the Passport System in the USSR and new rules of propiska.[7] The latter rules remained in effect until 23 October 1995. However "blanket passportisation" started only in 1976 and had finished by 1981.
See also
- Soviet Union passport
- Russian passport
- Internal Passport of Russia
- Propiska in the Soviet Union
Notes
References
- ^ Борисенко В. Паспортная система в России: история и современность [The Passport System in Russia: History and Modernity] (doc) (in Russian).
- ^ Декрет ВЦИК, СНК РСФСР от 18 декабря 1917. О гражданском браке, о детях и о ведении книг актов состояния [On civil marriage, on children, and on the book registration of acts of civil status] (in Russian). СУ РСФСР. — 1917. — № 11. — ст. 160.
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ Паспорт [Passport]. Малая Советская Энциклопедия (in Russian). Vol. т. 6. (1 ed.). М.: Акционерное общество „Советская Энциклопедия”. 1930 [April 30, 1930]. col.342–343.
Паспортная система была важнейшим орудием полицейского воздействия и податной политики в т.н. «полицейском государстве»… Особо тягостная для трудовых масс, паспортная система стеснительна и для гражданского общества буржуазного гос-ва, к-рое упраздняет или ослабляет её. Советское право не знает паспортной системы.
- ^ Fitzpatrick, Sheila (22 September 2022). "Diary - File selves". London Review of Books. Retrieved 3 October 2022.
- ^ Постановление ЦИК и СНК СССР от 27.12.1932 об установлении единой паспортной системы по Союзу ССР и обязательной прописки паспортов
- ^ Aldous, Richard; Kotkin, Stephen (8 November 2017). "Terrible Talent: Studying Stalin". The American Interest.
There is a story about how Stalin blocked peasants' movement from the regions of starvation to the areas where there might have been more food. [...] The regime's motivation for this was to prevent the spread of disease that accompanied the famine that the regime caused, however unintentionally.
- ^ Постановление Совета Министров СССР от 28.08.1974 № 677
Further reading
- Борисенко В. Паспортная система в России: история и современность [The Passport System in Russia: History and Modernity] (doc) (in Russian).—Dead link.
- Развитие паспортной системы в условиях укрепления административно-командной системы в СССР… [Development of the Passport System…] (in Russian). Russian Federation (MIA).
- Dzhuvaha, V. (28 March 2008). Безпаспортне кріпацтво [Passportless serfdom] (in Ukrainian). Tyzhden. Retrieved 25 August 2013.
- Baiburin, Albert (November 2021), The Soviet Passport: The history, nature and uses of the internal passport in the USSR, Polity