PASSPORT SYSTEM

For the first time since the revolution, the Soviet regime introduced an internal passport system in December 1932. Most rural residents were not given passports, and peasants acquired the automatic right to a passport only during the 1970s. The OGPU/NKVD (Soviet military intelligence service and secret police), which administered the passport system, initially issued these documents to persons over sixteen years of age who lived in towns, workers' settlements, state farms, and construction sites. They were required to obtain and register their passport with the police, who would then issue the necessary residence permit.

People who did not qualify for a passport were evicted from their apartments and denied the right to live and work within city limits. The categories of people who were denied a passport and urban residence permit included: the disenfranchised, kulaks or the dekulakized, all persons with a criminal record, persons not engaged in socially useful work, and family members of the aforementioned categories. The stated purpose of the new passport system was to relieve the urban population of persons not engaged in socially useful labor, as well as hidden kulak, criminal, and other antisocietal elements.

Some scholars note that the passport law emerged in response to the massive urban migration that followed the 1932 famine. The resulting movement of peasants from the countryside into the cities strained the urban rationing and supply systems. The selective distribution of passports offered a solution to this crisis by restricting urban residency and limiting access to city services and goods. Other scholars emphasize that the passport system was established to manage the urban population. Passports emerged as an instrument of repression and police control. By issuing passports, the state could more precisely identify, order, and purge the urban population. Nonetheless, scholars agree that the system of internal passports and urban residence permits sought to remove unreliable elements from strategic cities, limit the flow of people into these cities, and relieve the pressure on the urban rationing and supply systems.

Passports categorized the Soviet population into distinct groups with varying rights and privileges. The internal passport recorded citizens' social position or class, occupation, nationality, age, sex, and place of residence. The identity fixed on a person's passport determined where that individual could work, travel, and live. Only those with certain social, ethnic, and occupational identities were allowed residency in privileged cities, industrial sites, and strategic border and military areas. The passport also tied individuals to geographic areas and restricted their movements.

In the process of assigning passports, Soviet police removed dangerous, marginal, and anti-Soviet elements from the major cities. Many people fled the cities as passports were being introduced, fearful that they would arrested by the police as socially harmful elements. Passportization operations were also used to purge the western borderlands of Polish, German, Finnish, and other anti-Soviet groups.

In the initial phases, the internal passport and urban registration system often functioned in an irregular and erratic manner. Many people circumvented the system by forging passports, and others lived in towns without a valid passport.

See also: famine of 1932-1933; kulaks; migration; state security, organs of

bibliography

Alexopoulos, Golfo. (1998). "Portrait of a Con Artist as a Soviet Man." Slavic Review 57:774–790.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. (1994). Stalin's Peasants. New York: Oxford University Press.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. (1999). Everyday Stalinism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kessler, Gijs. (2001). "The Passport System and State Control over Population Flows in the Soviet Union, 1932–1940." Cahiers du monde Russe 42:477–504.

Golfo Alexopoulos