In 1974, they finally decided to issue passports to rural residents of the USSR, although they were prohibited from being accepted for work in cities. Vlast columnist Evgeny Zhirnov reconstructed the history of the struggle of the Soviet leadership to preserve serfdom, which had been abolished a century earlier.
"There is a need for more accurate (passport) registration of citizens"
When Soviet schoolchildren learned poems about the “red-skinned passport,” many of them were reminded by Mayakovsky’s lines that their parents, even if they wanted, could not get a “duplicate of the priceless cargo,” since the villagers were not entitled to it by law. And also that, planning to go from his native village to somewhere further than the regional center, each collective farmer was obliged to acquire an identification card a certificate from the village council, valid for no more than thirty days .
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And that it was given exclusively with the permission of the collective farm chairman, so that the peasant enrolled in his ranks for life would not decide to leave the collective farm of his own free will.
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Some villagers, especially those who had numerous urban relatives, were ashamed of their disadvantaged position. And others did not even think about the injustice of Soviet laws, since they had never left their native village and the fields surrounding it in their entire lives. However, like many generations of their ancestors. After all, it was precisely this kind of attachment to one’s homeland that Peter I sought when three centuries ago he introduced previously unknown passports into use. With their help, the reformer Tsar tried to create a full-fledged tax and recruitment system, as well as eradicate loitering throughout Rus'. However, it was not so much about the universal registration of subjects of the empire, but about a total restriction of freedom of movement. Even with the permission of their own master, having written permission from him, the peasants could not travel more than thirty miles from their native village. And for longer trips, it was necessary to straighten a passport on a form, for which, since Catherine’s times, one also had to pay a lot of money.
Later, representatives of other classes of Russian society, including nobles, also lost freedom of movement. But still, the main restrictions concerned the peasants. Even after the abolition of serfdom, it was impossible to obtain a passport without the consent of the rural community, which confirmed that the passport applicant had no arrears in taxes or arrears in duties. And for all classes there was registration of passports and residence permits with the police, similar to the modern registration familiar to everyone. Passports, however, were quite easily forged, and in many cases their registration was almost legally evaded. But still, keeping records of ordinary people greatly facilitated control over them and all the detective work of the police.
So it was not surprising that even under the new, revolutionary government, the police decided to simplify their lives by completely recording citizens. After all, after the end of the Civil War and the introduction of a new economic policy, not only the revival of private business and trade began, but also the massive movement of citizens seeking a better life. However, market relations also implied the presence of a labor market with a freely moving workforce. Therefore, the NKVD's proposal was met without much enthusiasm in the Council of People's Commissars. In January 1923 People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Alexander Beloborodov complained to the Central Committee of the RCP (b):
“From the beginning of 1922, the N.K.V.D. was faced with the question of the need to change the existing procedure for residence permits. Decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and Council of People's Commissars of 28/VI-19. determined only introduction of work books in the cities of Petrograd and Moscow, and in other parts of the Republic no documents were introduced by this decree and only indirectly indicated (Article 3 of this decree) the existence of a passport, upon presentation of which a work book was issued. With the introduction of N.E.P. The meaning of issuing work books in Moscow and Petrograd disappeared, and at the same time, in connection with the establishment of private trade turnover and private production, the need arose for more accurate accounting of the urban population, and, consequently, the need to introduce a procedure under which accounting could be fully ensured.
Besides, practice of decentralized issuance of documents on the ground showed that these documents were issued extremely varied both in essence and in form, and the issued certificates are so simple that falsifying them does not present any difficulty, which, in turn, extremely complicates the work of the search authorities and the police. Taking into account all of the above, the NKVD developed a draft regulation, which, after agreement with the interested departments, was submitted to the Council of People's Commissars for approval on February 23, 22. At the meeting of May 26, 22, the Small Council of People’s Commissars recognized the introduction of a single residence permit in the RSFSR as inappropriate.”
After much ordeal through the authorities, the issue of passports reached the highest legislative body - the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, but even there it was rejected. But Beloborodov insisted:
“The need for an established document - an identity card is so great that the localities have already begun to resolve the issue in their own way. Projects have been developed by Petrograd, Moscow, the Turkic Republic, Ukraine, the Karelian Commune, the Crimean Republic and a number of provinces. Allowing various types of identity cards for individual provinces and regions it will extremely complicate the work of administrative bodies and create a lot of inconvenience for the population."
The Central Committee also did not immediately come to a consensus. But in the end they decided that control was more important than market principles, and from January 1 they banned pre-revolutionary documents, as well as any other papers used to confirm identity, including work books. Instead, a single identity card for a citizen of the USSR was introduced.
"The number of detainees was very significant"
However, in reality, certification was never carried out and everything came down to certificates of the established form from house managements, with the help of which it was never possible to establish real control over the movements of citizens. The Politburo commission, which considered the issue of passporting the country in 1932, stated:
"The order established by decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of June 20, 1923., modified by decree of 18.VII.1927, was so imperfect that at this time the following situation was created. Identification is not required, except in “cases provided for by law,” but such cases are not specified in the law itself. An identity document is any document, including certificates issued by the house management. These same documents are sufficient for registration and for obtaining a food card, which provides the most favorable ground for abuse, since house managements themselves carry out registration and issue cards on the basis of the documents they issue. Finally, by resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of November 10, 1930 In 2009, the right to issue identity cards was granted to village councils and the mandatory publication of lost documents was abolished. This law actually annulled the documentation of the population in the USSR."
The issue of passports arose in 1932 not by chance. After the complete collectivization of agriculture, a mass exodus of peasants to the cities began, which aggravated the food difficulties that were growing year by year. And it was precisely to cleanse the cities, primarily Moscow and Leningrad, of this alien element that the new passport system was intended. A single identity document was introduced in cities declared regime, and passportization simultaneously served as a way to clear them of runaway peasants. Passports, however, were not issued not only to them, but also to enemies of the Soviet regime, those deprived of voting rights, repeatedly convicted criminals, as well as all suspicious and socially alien elements. Refusal to issue a passport meant automatic eviction from the regime city, and for the first four months of 1933, when the certification of the two capitals took place, in Moscow the population decline was 214,700 people, and in Leningrad - 476,182.
During the campaign, as usual, numerous mistakes and excesses occurred. Thus, the Politburo instructed the police that old people whose children received passports should also be issued them, even despite belonging to the propertied and ruling classes before the revolution. And to support anti-religious work, they allowed the certification of former clergy who voluntarily renounced their rank.
In the three largest cities of the country, including the then capital of Ukraine, Kharkov, after passportization, not only the criminal situation improved, but there were also fewer eaters.
In the three largest cities of the country, including the then capital of Ukraine, Kharkov, after passportization, not only the criminal situation improved, but there were also fewer eaters. And the supply of the passported population, although not very significant, has improved. The heads of other large cities in the country, as well as the regions and districts surrounding them, could not help but pay attention to this. Following Moscow passporting was carried out in a hundred-verst area around the capital. And already in February 1933 to the list of cities, where priority certification was carried out, included, for example, a building under construction Magnitogorsk.
As the list of regime cities and localities expanded, the opposition of the population also expanded. Citizens of the USSR, left without passports, acquired fake certificates, changed their biographies and surnames, and moved to places where passporting was yet to be done and they could try their luck again. And many came to regime cities, lived there illegally and earned their living by working at home on orders from various artels. So even after the end of passportization, the cleansing of regime cities did not stop. In 1935, the head of the NKVD Genrikh Yagoda and the USSR prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky reported to the Central Committee and the Council of People's Commissars about the creation of extrajudicial "troikas" for violators of the passport regime:
“In order to quickly clear the cities that fall under Article 10 of the Passport Law from criminal and declassed elements, as well as malicious violators of the Passport Regulations, the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR on January 10, 1935 ordered the formation of special troikas locally for resolution of cases of this category. This measure was dictated by the fact that the number of persons detained in these cases was very significant, and the consideration of these cases in Moscow at the Special Meeting led to excessive delay in the consideration of these cases and to overloading of places of pre-trial detention."
On the document, Stalin wrote a resolution: “The “quickest” cleansing is dangerous. It is necessary to clean up gradually and thoroughly, without pushes and excessive administrative enthusiasm. A one-year deadline for the end of the cleansing should be determined.” By 1937, the NKVD considered the comprehensive cleansing of cities complete and reported to the Council of People's Commissars:
"1. In the USSR, passports were issued to the population of cities, workers' settlements, regional centers, new buildings, MTS locations, as well as all settlements within a 100-kilometer strip around Moscow, Leningrad, a 50-kilometer strip around Kyiv and Kharkov; 100 -kilometer-long Western European, Eastern (Eastern Siberia) and Far Eastern border strip; esplanade zone of the Far East and Sakhalin Island and workers and employees (with families) of water and railway transport.
2. In other non-passported rural areas, passports are issued only to the population going to work as migrant workers, for study, for treatment and for other reasons.”
Actually, this was the second in priority, but the main purpose of passportization. The rural population left without documents could not leave their homes, since violators of the passport regime faced “troika” marks and imprisonment. And it was absolutely impossible to obtain a certificate to travel to work in the city without the consent of the collective farm board. So the peasants, as in the days of serfdom, found themselves tightly tied to their homes and had to fill the bins of their homeland for meager grain distributions for workdays or even for free, since they were simply left with no other choice.
Passports were given only to peasants in the border restricted zones (these peasants in 1937 included collective farmers from the Transcaucasian and Central Asian republics), as well as to residents of rural areas of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia annexed to the USSR.
"This order is not justified in any way"
In subsequent years, the passport system only became more stringent. Restrictions were introduced on residence in restricted cities for all non-working elements, with the exception of pensioners, disabled people and dependents of workers, which in reality meant automatic deprivation of registration and eviction from the city of any person who lost his job and did not have working relatives. Appeared and the practice of being assigned to hard work by confiscating passports. For example, since 1940, miners' passports were confiscated in personnel departments, issuing instead special certificates, the holders of which could neither get a new job nor leave their designated places of residence.
Naturally, the people looked for loopholes in the laws and tried to break free. The main way to leave the native collective farm was recruitment for even more difficult work.– logging, peat development, construction in remote northern areas. If orders for labor came down from above, the collective farm chairmen could only drag their feet and delay the issuance of permits. True, a recruited person’s passport was issued only for the duration of the contract, a maximum of a year. After which the former collective farmer tried by hook or by crook to extend the contract, and then become a permanent employee of his new enterprise.
Another effective way to obtain a passport is early sending of children to study at factory schools and technical schools. Everyone living on its territory, starting from the age of sixteen, was voluntarily and forcibly enrolled in the collective farm. And the trick was for the teenager to go to school at the age of 14-15, and then there, in the city, receive a passport.
However For many years, the most reliable means of getting rid of collective farm bondage remained military service. Having given their patriotic duty to their homeland, rural boys went in droves to factories, construction sites, the police, and remained for long-term service, just so as not to return home to the collective farm. Moreover, their parents supported them in every possible way.
It would seem that the end of the collective farm yoke should have come after the death of Stalin and the coming to power of a man who loved and understood the peasantry Khrushchev. But “dear Nikita Sergeevich” did absolutely nothing to change the passport regime in the countryside, apparently understanding that, having received freedom of movement, the peasants would stop working for pennies. Nothing changed after Khrushchev’s removal and the transfer of power to the triumvirate - Brezhnev, Kosygin and Podgorny. After all, the country still needed a lot of cheap bread, and they had long forgotten how to get it otherwise than by exploiting the peasants. That is why in 1967 the proposal of the first deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers and the main person responsible for agriculture Dmitry Polyansky The country's top officials were met with hostility.
“According to the current legislation,” wrote Polyansky, “the issuance of passports in our country applies only to persons living in cities, regional centers and urban-type settlements (aged 16 years and older). Those who live in rural areas do not have the right to receive this basic document proving the identity of a Soviet citizen. Such a procedure is currently not justified in any way, especially since on the territory of the Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian SSR, Moscow and Kaliningrad regions, some areas of the Kazakh SSR, Leningrad region, Krasnodar and Stavropol territories and in the border zone, passports are issued to everyone living there, regardless of whether they are city dwellers or villagers.In addition, according to established practice, passports are also issued to citizens living in rural areas if they work in industrial enterprises, institutions and organizations or in transport, and also materially responsible workers on collective and state farms. According to the Ministry of Public Order of the USSR, the number of people now living in rural areas and not having the right to a passport reaches almost 58 million people(aged 16 years and older); this amounts to 37 percent of all citizens of the USSR. The lack of passports for these citizens creates significant difficulties for them in exercising labor, family and property rights, enrolling in studies, receiving various types of postal items, purchasing goods on credit, registering in hotels, etc... One of the main arguments for the inappropriateness of issuing passports citizens living in rural areas sought to curb the mechanical growth of the urban population. However, the certification of the entire population carried out in the above-mentioned union republics and regions showed that the fears in this regard were unfounded; it did not cause an additional influx of population from the countryside to the city. In addition, such an influx can be regulated if rural residents have passports. The current passport procedure, which infringes on the rights of Soviet citizens living in the countryside, causes them legitimate grievance. They rightly believe that such an order means for a significant part of the population unjustified discrimination, which must be ended."
When voting on the Politburo resolution proposed by Polyansky, its most venerable members - Brezhnev and Suslov - did not support the project, and the no less influential Kosygin proposed to discuss the issue further. And after disagreements arose, according to Brezhnev’s established procedure, any problem was removed from consideration for an indefinite period of time.
However, the question arose again two years later, in 1969, and it was raised Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR Nikolai Shchelokov, faced, like his predecessor Beloborodov, with the need to organize an accurate census of all citizens of the country. After all, if for every passported citizen of the country the police kept a photograph along with his data, then it was not possible to identify the performers from the villages who committed the crimes. Shchelokov, however, tried to present the matter as if we were talking about issuing new passports to the entire country, during which injustice against peasants could be eliminated.
“The publication of a new Regulation on the passport system in the USSR,” said a note from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the CPSU Central Committee, “is also caused by the need for a different approach to resolving a number of issues related to the passport system in connection with the adoption of new criminal and civil legislation. In addition, this time, according to the existing Regulations, only residents of urban areas have passports, the rural population does not have them, which creates great difficulties for rural residents (when receiving postal items, purchasing goods on credit, traveling abroad on tourist vouchers, etc.). changes in the country, the growth of the well-being of the rural population and the strengthening of the economic base of collective farms prepared the conditions for the issuance of passports to the rural population, which will lead to the elimination of differences in the legal status of citizens of the USSR in terms of documenting their passports. At the same time, the current passports are produced according to models approved yet. in the thirties, are morally outdated, their appearance and quality cause fair criticism from workers."
Shchelokov was part of Brezhnev’s inner circle and could count on success. However, now Podgorny, who voted for Polyansky’s project, came out sharply against it: “This event is untimely and far-fetched.” And the issue of passporting collective farmers again hung in the air.
Only in 1973 did things move forward. Shchelokov again sent a note to the Politburo on the need to change the passport system, which was supported by all the heads of the KGB, the prosecutor's office and the justice authorities. It might seem that for the only time in the entire history of the USSR, Soviet law enforcement agencies protected the rights of Soviet citizens. But it only seemed so. The review from the department of administrative bodies of the CPSU Central Committee, which oversaw the army, the KGB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the prosecutor's office and the judiciary, said:
“According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, there is a need to solve a number of issues of the passport system in the country in a new way. In particular, it is proposed to passport not only the urban, but also the entire rural population, which currently does not have passports. This concerns 62.6 million rural residents over the age of 16, which is 36 percent to the total population of that age. It is assumed that the certification of rural residents will improve the organization of population registration and will contribute to a more successful identification of antisocial elements. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that the implementation of this measure may affect in some areas the processes of migration of the rural population to the cities."
The Politburo commission created to prepare passport reform took into account the interests of all parties, worked slowly and prepared its proposals only in the following year, 1974:
“We would consider it necessary to adopt a new Regulation on the passport system in the USSR, since the current Regulation on Passports, approved in 1953, is largely outdated and some of the rules established by it require revision... The project provides for issuing passports to the entire population. This will create more favorable conditions for citizens' exercise of their rights and will contribute to a more complete accounting of the movement of the population. At the same time, for collective farmers, the existing procedure for hiring them at enterprises and construction sites is preserved, that is, if they have certificates of their leave from the collective farm boards."
As a result, the collective farmers received nothing but the opportunity to take the “red-skinned passport” out of their trouser legs. But at the meeting on security and cooperation in Europe held in Helsinki in 1974, where the issue of human rights in the USSR was debated quite sharply, no one could reproach Brezhnev for the fact that sixty million people were deprived of freedom of movement. And the fact that they both worked under serfdom and continued to work for pennies remained a minor detail.
Evgeny Zhirnov
By decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, passports began to be issued to all villagers only in 1976-81.
http://www.pravoteka.ru/pst/749/374141.html
Resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers of August 28, 1974 N 677
"On approval of the regulations on the passport system in the USSR"
The Council of Ministers of the USSR decides:
1. Approve the attached Regulations on the passport system in the USSR, a sample passport of a citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics *) and a description of the passport.
Enact the Regulations on the Passport System in the USSR, with the exception of paragraphs 1-3, 5, 9-18 concerning the issuance of new passports, from July 1, 1975 and in full from January 1976.
Instructions on the procedure for applying the Regulations on the passport system in the USSR are issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR.
In the period from July 1, 1975 to January 1, 1976, issue old-style passports to citizens in accordance with the Regulations on Passports, approved by the resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of October 21, 1953, taking into account its subsequent additions and changes.
Establish that until citizens exchange old-style passports for new-style passports, the previously issued passports remain valid. At the same time, ten-year and five-year old-style passports, the validity of which will expire after July 1, 1975, are considered valid without an official extension of their validity until exchanged for new-style passports.
Citizens living in rural areas who were not previously issued passports, when traveling to another area for a long period of time, passports are issued, and when leaving for up to one and a half months, as well as in sanatoriums, rest homes, for meetings, on business trips or when they are temporarily involved in sowing, harvesting and other work, the executive committees of rural, town Councils of Workers' Deputies issue certificates certifying their identity and the purpose of their departure. The form of the certificate is established by the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.
3. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, with the participation of interested ministries, departments of the USSR and the Councils of Ministers of the Union Republics, should develop and approve measures to ensure the work on issuing passports of a new type within the established time frame.
The Councils of Ministers of the Union and Autonomous Republics and the executive committees of local Soviets of Working People's Deputies to assist the internal affairs bodies in organizing and carrying out work related to the issuance of new passports, and to take measures to improve the placement of passport service workers, as well as to create the necessary conditions for them to serve population.
4. Oblige the ministries and departments of the USSR and the Councils of Ministers of the Union Republics to take additional measures to ensure that subordinate enterprises, organizations and institutions comply with the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR of February 25, 1960 N 231 “On measures to eliminate clerical and bureaucratic distortions in the registration of workers to work and resolve the household needs of citizens" and eliminate the existing cases of requiring citizens to provide various types of certificates, when the necessary data can be confirmed by presenting a passport or other documents.
Chairman
Council of Ministers of the USSR
A. Kosygin
Business manager
Council of Ministers of the USSR
M. Smirtyukov
Position
about the passport system in the USSR
(approved by Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated August 28, 1974 N 677)
(as amended January 28, 1983, August 15, 1990)
I. General provisions
1. The passport of a citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is the main document certifying the identity of a Soviet citizen.
All Soviet citizens over 16 years of age are required to have a passport of a citizen of the USSR.
Military personnel and Soviet citizens who have arrived for temporary residence in the USSR and permanently reside abroad live without these passports.
Identification documents for military personnel are identity cards and military tickets issued by the command of military units and military institutions.
The identification documents of Soviet citizens who have arrived for temporary residence in the USSR and are permanently residing abroad are their general foreign passports.
Foreign citizens and stateless persons reside on the territory of the USSR according to documents established by the legislation of the USSR.
See the text of the paragraph in the previous edition
…
http://ussr.consultant.ru/doc1619.html
DECISION of the USSR Council of Ministers of August 28, 1974 N 677 "ON APPROVAL OF THE REGULATIONS ON THE PASSPORT SYSTEM IN THE USSR"
Source of publication: "Code of Laws of the USSR", vol. 10, p. 315, 1990, "SP USSR", 1974, N 19, art. 109
Note to the document: ConsultantPlus: note.
When applying a document, we recommend additional verification of its status taking into account the current legislation of the Russian Federation
Name of the document: DECISION of the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated August 28, 1974 N 677 “ON APPROVAL OF THE REGULATIONS ON THE PASSPORT SYSTEM IN THE USSR”
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Lyskov Dmitry 04/24/2019 at 20:39
In 2008, the TV Center channel aired a youth talk show on the topic “Does communism have a future?” Doctor of Historical Sciences, member of the human rights society "Memorial" Irina Shcherbakova, a researcher, in her words, of the Soviet period, acted as a specially invited historian. The Memorial society itself has long and fruitfully been engaged in writing the history of repression in the USSR, using its own, not fully understandable to the common man and very controversial methodology, suggestive of ideological predetermination.
As a separate “killer” argument proving the inhumane nature of the Soviet project, the researcher spoke about the fate of the peasants - even passports were issued to collective farmers in the USSR only in 1974. The doctor urged people to think about this glaring fact - before this, they say, the labor of peasants was used almost as slave labor on plantations.
The statement had a definite effect. Many in the studio, it turns out, didn’t even know about this (they hadn’t read the perestroika-era “Ogonyok” due to their youth) and were sincerely horrified: how could this be?! At the same time, it did not occur to anyone to ask the historian what exactly did the peasants without a passport suffer from? For example, people live in the USA without passports, and nothing. What exactly were the Soviet citizens deprived of, deprived of their “crust”?
For some reason, the doctor herself forgot to mention this, and no one in the studio reminded me either, but it would have been worth it, because if you take on a problem, you should consider it comprehensively, and not create an ideological bogeyman out of it. Now, of course, it is difficult to imagine life without a passport, document checks on the street (by the way, a child of democracy, unthinkable in the USSR), air tickets, a clinic and much more - everything is tied to the citizen’s main document.
But passports didn’t always exist. This means that the attitude towards them and the need for their use were different at different times. It is absurd to be indignant, for example, at the lack of foreign passports among the rural population of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century - entire generations of our ancestors spent their entire lives in one village, outside the outskirts, in the nearest grove, the world began with a capital letter, and a trip to a fair in the county center was a universal event, They had been preparing for it for months.
Actually, the passport system we are familiar with today did not exist at all until the 20th century. Since the 15th century, in Germany, and then in other European countries, the passport appeared in the form of a “travel document” and served the purpose of separating wealthy travelers from vagabonds and robbers. There were “plague passports” (for residents of plague-ridden territories to prevent the spread of the disease), “military passports” (for catching deserters).
During the Time of Troubles, a “travel certificate” appeared in Russia, and under Peter I, “travel certificates” became mandatory for travelers - this was due to the introduction of conscription and poll tax. Later, the passport began to be used as a kind of “tax return”; the payment of taxes or taxes was noted in it with special marks. A passport was not needed at the place of residence; one should have been obtained only when leaving 50 miles from home and for a period of more than 6 months.
It only needs to be added that only men received passports; women were included in their spouse’s passport. The entry in the Russian passport of the 1912 model looked like this: “He has his wife Efrosinya, 20 years old.”
Thus, we see that until 1917, passports both in Russia and in Europe were by no means a mass document; their role gradually changed, but still was reduced mainly to a “travel certificate”, that is, a document certifying a person’s good morals and law-abidingness who left their place of residence.
This problem can be looked at from the other side; thus, liberal researchers assess the role of the passport as a tool of a “police state” that introduces control over a citizen and restricts his freedom of movement. The passport system makes a person dependent on the official who issues the passport, which does not exclude bureaucratic arbitrariness in relation to a particular individual. In this sense, the ideal is considered to be the United States, where an internal passport system has never existed.
“France became the founder of a unified passport system for the entire population of the country. This happened during the Great French Revolution of 1789-1799. With the introduction and strengthening of this system, the concept of a “police state” arose, which strictly controls citizens.”, writes the team of authors of the liberal project “School is a legal space” in the methodological manual “The right to life, freedom, property. Conversations between a teacher and 8th grade students.”
From this point of view, it becomes completely unclear what the crime of the communists was, leaving peasants without passports until the second half of the 20th century. Shouldn't it, on the contrary, be considered a crime to issue them passports in 1974? However, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, let’s deal with Irina Shcherbakova’s passport problem to the end.
Let's find out how the situation arose in which a significant part of the USSR population found itself without passports. It would seem that the Soviet regime should have immediately enslaved its citizens according to the French scenario - after all, volumes have been written and hundreds of hours of television programs have been filmed about the Red Terror, total control, and the Bolsheviks who came to power at bayonets.
However, surprisingly, the Bolsheviks did not restore the passport system of Tsarist Russia and did not create their own. During the first 15 years of Soviet power in the RSFSR, and then in the USSR, there was no single passport at all. The restoration of the passport system began only in 1932, when the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution "On the establishment of a unified passport system in the USSR and the mandatory registration of passports."
The resolution specifies the reasons for certification: " Establish a unified passport system throughout the USSR based on the regulations on passports" - "In order to better account for the population of cities, workers' settlements and new buildings and to relieve these populated areas from persons not associated with production and work in institutions or schools and not engaged in socially useful labor (with the exception of the disabled and pensioners), as well as for the purpose of clearing these populated areas places from hiding kulak, criminal and other antisocial elements".
The document indicates the priority of certification - " covering primarily the population of Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov, Kyiv, Odessa... [further list of cities]"and the errand" the governments of the union republics to bring their legislation into conformity with this resolution and the regulations on passports ".
If you read the document, it becomes clear that passports were introduced primarily to record the population of cities and workers' settlements, as well as to combat crime. The document did not provide for the introduction of passports in rural areas at all (however, it was not denied). At the same time, it is unlikely that anyone will challenge the disparate crime situation between the city and the countryside - the indicators are clearly not in the city’s favor. The village in the USSR was born with one local policeman from local residents.
Certification, both for the purpose of registering the population and for the purpose of fighting crime, introduced the concept of “registration at the place of residence.” A similar control tool - with cosmetic changes - has been preserved in Russia to this day under the name "registration". It still causes a lot of controversy, but few doubt its effectiveness in fighting crime.
Registration (or registration) is a tool for preventing uncontrolled migration of the population; in this regard, the Soviet passport code is a direct descendant of the pre-revolutionary and generally European passport system; as we see, the Bolsheviks did not invent anything new.
Actually, the childishly naive demands of Academician Sakharov to allow free immigration from Afghanistan to the USSR for the sake of the triumph of democracy could still inspire certain segments of the population in the 80s. Now people who experienced “democracy” in the 90s no longer need to explain the meaning and purpose of restrictive measures on the part of the Soviet authorities.
However, it is precisely the lack of freedom of movement that supporters of the “offended collective farmers” of the USSR period still refer to. “But here’s what’s interesting,” write the authors of the textbook “Conversations between a teacher and 8th grade students” already cited above: passports were introduced only for residents of cities, workers’ settlements and state farms. The peasants, who began to be called collective farmers, were even deprived of the right to have a passport. And without it, they found themselves chained to their village, to their collective farm, they could not freely go to the city, since it was impossible to live there without registration."
The article about collective farms from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, brings the situation to the point of complete absurdity: " When the passport system was introduced in the USSR in 1932, collective farmers were not issued passports so that they could not move to the cities. To escape from the village, collective farmers entered higher educational institutions and pursued a military career".
Just think what the totalitarian Soviet regime brought the ordinary peasant to: he forced him to enter universities and pursue a military career! How did they get into universities without a passport?
It turns out it's elementary. Those wishing to study at a vocational school, enter college, “pursue a military career,” work in newly created enterprises, etc., were still issued passports. There was a certain problem of “just moving to the city” - for two reasons, and both depended not on the presence of a passport, but on the presence of the institution of registration. The state considered it its responsibility to provide every person with housing and a job. The workplace, in addition, required a certain qualification (and here anyone could improve their qualifications at a school or university, there were no restrictions).
Without work and housing, where will a “just arrived” person without qualifications and education go? Actually, we see this every hour on the streets of Moscow - with Tajiks living in garbage chute bunkers, numerous homeless people and beggars who agree to any kind of work, including criminal work. Yes, there is free economic migration, and everyone can, having sold a house in the village, try their luck in the capital - for example, to join the number of beggars at the Kursky station.
Perhaps the Soviet system will seem inhumane to many, deprived of freedom and too organized. But the alternative is before our eyes, we have the opportunity to compare. Which system is more humane - one that provides guaranteed housing and employment, or an ephemeral “dream of success” - everyone decides for himself.
On December 27, 1932, in Moscow, the Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR M.I. Kalinin, the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR V.M. Molotov and the Secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR A.S. Enukidze signed Resolution No. 57/1917 “On the establishment of a unified passport system in the USSR and mandatory registration of passports.”
The timing was not chosen by chance: the rural population was uprooted from their native soil and scattered throughout the country. Millions of people who were “dispossessed” and fled in fear from the countryside from “collectivization” and unsustainable grain procurements had to be identified, taken into account, distributed into streams depending on their “social status” and assigned to government jobs. It was necessary to skillfully take advantage of the fruits of the “victory” achieved during the “radical change”, consolidate this new state - the dispersion of people, prevent them from returning to their native places, and end the forced division of Russian society into “pure” and “impure”. Now every person had to be under the watchful eye of the OGPU.
The regulations on passports established that “all citizens of the USSR over the age of 16, permanently residing in cities, workers’ settlements, working in transport, on state farms and on new buildings, are required to have passports.” From now on, the entire territory of the country and its population were divided into two unequal parts: the one where the passport system was introduced, and the one where it did not exist. In passportized areas, the passport was the only document “identifying the owner.” All previous certificates that previously served as residence permits were cancelled. Mandatory registration of passports with the police was introduced “no later than 24 hours upon arrival at a new place of residence.” Discharge also became mandatory for everyone who left “the boundaries of a given locality completely or for a period of more than two months”; for everyone leaving their previous place of residence, exchanging passports; prisoners; those arrested and held in custody for more than two months.
In addition to brief information about the owner (first name, patronymic, last name, time and place of birth, nationality), the passport indicated: social status (instead of ranks and titles of the Russian Empire, Soviet Newspeak established the following social labels for people: “worker”, “collective farmer”, “ individual peasant”, “employee”, “student”, “writer”, “artist”, “artist”, “sculptor”, “handicraftsman”, “pensioner”, “dependent”, “without specific occupation”), permanent residence and place of work, completion of compulsory military service and a list of documents on the basis of which the passport was issued. Enterprises and institutions had to require passports (or temporary certificates) from those hired, noting the time of enrollment in them. The Main Directorate of the Workers' and Peasants' Militia under the OGPU of the USSR was instructed to submit instructions to the Council of People's Commissars on “implementing the resolution” within ten days. The minimum period for preparing the instructions, which is mentioned in the resolution, indicates: it was drawn up and agreed upon at all levels of the highest party and state apparatus of Soviet power long before December 1932.
Most Soviet-era legislative documents regulating basic issues of people's lives were never fully made public. Numerous decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the corresponding acts of the union republics, resolutions of the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee of the Party, circulars, directives, orders of the People's Commissariats (ministries), including the most important ones - internal affairs, justice, finance, procurement - were marked “Not for publication.” ”, “Do not publish”, “Not subject to disclosure”, “Secret”, “Top secret”, etc. The legislation had, as it were, two sides: one in which the legal norm was defined openly and publicly - “for the people”. And the second, secret, which was the main one, because it prescribed to all government bodies how exactly the law should be understood and practically implemented. Often the law deliberately, as in the resolution we cited of December 27, 1932, contained only general provisions, and its implementation, that is, the practice of application, was disclosed in secret by-laws, instructions, and circulars issued by the interested department. Therefore, Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 43 of January 14, 1933 approved the “Instructions on the issuance of passports,” which had two sections - general and secret.
Initially, it was prescribed to carry out passportization with mandatory registration in Moscow, Leningrad (including a hundred-kilometer strip around them), Kharkov (including a fifty-kilometer strip) during January - June 1933. In the same year, it was planned to complete work in the remaining regions of the country that were subject to passportization. The territories of the three above-mentioned cities with one hundred to fifty kilometer strips around them were declared restricted. Later, by resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 861 of April 28, 1933, “On the issuance of passports to citizens of the USSR on the territory of the USSR,” the cities of Kyiv, Odessa, Minsk, Rostov-on-Don, Stalingrad, Stalinsk, Baku, Gorky, Sormovo, Magnitogorsk were classified as sensitive cities , Chelyabinsk, Grozny, Sevastopol, Stalino, Perm, Dnepropetrovsk, Sverdlovsk, Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Nikolsko-Ussuriysk, Spassk, Blagoveshchensk, Anzhero-Sudzhensk, Prokopyevsk, Leninsk, as well as settlements within the hundred-kilometer Western European border strip of the USSR. In these areas it was prohibited to issue passports and reside to persons in whom the Soviet government saw a direct or indirect threat to its existence. These people, under the control of the police, were subject to deportation to other parts of the country within ten days, where they were given the “right of unhindered residence” with the issuance of a passport.
The secret section of the above-mentioned instructions of 1933 established restrictions on the issuance of passports and registration in sensitive areas for the following groups of citizens: “not engaged in socially useful labor” in production, in institutions, schools (with the exception of the disabled and pensioners); “kulaks” and “dispossessed” people who fled from villages (“escaped”, in Soviet terminology), even if they “worked in enterprises or were in the service of Soviet institutions”; “defectors from abroad”, that is, those who unauthorizedly crossed the border of the USSR (except for political emigrants who have the appropriate certificate from the Central Committee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs); arrived from other cities and villages of the country after January 1, 1931 “without an invitation to work in an institution or enterprise, if they do not currently have certain occupations, or although they work in institutions or enterprises, they are obvious flyers (that’s what those who often changed places were called work in search of a better life. - V.P.), or were subject to dismissal for disorganization of production,” that is, again, those who fled from the village before the start of “complete collectivization”; “disenfranchised” - people deprived of voting rights by Soviet law - the same “kulaks” who “use hired labor”, private traders, clergy; former prisoners and exiles, including those convicted even of minor crimes (the resolution of January 14, 1933 provided a “non-public” special list of these persons); family members of all the above groups of citizens.
Since the Soviet national economy could not manage without specialists, exceptions were made for the latter: they were issued passports if they could provide “certificate of their useful work from these enterprises and institutions.” The same exceptions were made for “disenfranchised” if they were dependent on their relatives who served in the Red Army (these old men and women were no longer considered dangerous by the Soviet authorities; in addition, they were hostages in case of “disloyal behavior” of military personnel), as well as for clergy “performing functions of maintaining existing churches,” in other words, under the complete control of the OGPU.
Initially, exceptions were allowed for those not engaged in “socially useful labor” and those deprived of voting rights who were natives of regime areas and permanently lived there. Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 440 of March 16, 1935 canceled such a temporary “concession” (we will discuss this in more detail below).
For registration, new arrivals in restricted areas had to submit, in addition to a passport, a certificate of availability of living space and documents certifying the purpose of the visit (an invitation to work, a recruitment agreement, a certificate from the collective farm board about “vacation” leave, etc.). If the size of the area for which the visitor was going to register was less than the established sanitary norm (in Moscow, for example, the sanitary norm was 4 - 6 sq. m in dormitories and 9 sq. m in state houses), then he was denied registration.
So, initially there were few regime areas - this was a new thing, the OGPU did not have enough hands for everything at once. And it was necessary to let people get used to the unfamiliar bond of serfdom, to direct spontaneous migration in the direction desired by the authorities.
By 1953, the regime had already spread to 340 cities, localities and railway junctions, to the border zone along the entire border of the country ranging from 15 to 200 kilometers wide, and in the Far East - up to 500 kilometers. At the same time, Transcarpathian, Kaliningrad, Sakhalin regions, Primorsky and Khabarovsk territories, including Kamchatka, were completely declared regime areas. The faster the city grew and the more industrial facilities that were part of the military-industrial complex were built in it, the sooner it was transferred to a “regime” one. Thus, from the point of view of the freedom to choose a place of residence in one’s home country, industrialization led to the rapid forced division of the entire territory into large and small “zones”. Regime cities, “cleansed” by the Soviet government of all undesirable “elements,” gave their residents guaranteed income, but in return they demanded “hard work” and complete ideological and behavioral submission. This is how a special type of “urban man” and “urban culture” was developed, loosely connected with its historical past.
This terrible misfortune was deeply understood and truthfully described back in 1922 - ten years before the introduction of the passport system! - Russian poet Sergei Yesenin: “City, city, you are in a fierce battle / Baptized us as carrion and scum. / The field is freezing in long-eyed melancholy, / Choking on telegraph poles. / The devil’s neck has a sinewy muscle, / And the cast-iron rope is light for her. / Well, so what? After all, it’s not the first time for us / And to loosen and disappear.” The poet gave a historically accurate, extremely truthful and religiously meaningful picture of the devastation of the Russian land, although most people today, reading these poems, are not inclined to attach serious importance to prophetic foresight - they view the poet’s words as a lyrical longing for the “fading village.”
...For the same purposes, “certification in railway transport” was carried out, which was carried out in three stages - from August 1933 to February 1934. Initially, certification was carried out on the Oktyabrskaya, Murmansk, Western, South-Western, Ekaterininskaya, Southern, Ussuriysk and Transbaikal railways. Then on the Transcaucasian, North Caucasian, South-Eastern, Perm, Samara-Zlatoust and Ryazan-Ural, and lastly on the Central Asian, Turkestan-Siberian, Tomsk, Omsk, Moscow-Kazan, Northern and Moscow-Kursk roads. A series of secret orders of the OGPU set the main task when issuing passports to workers and employees of railway transport to “carefully identify and accurately establish their social status.” To do this, it was proposed to use not only the materials of operational records that were kept on all open and secret “enemies of Soviet power” in the OGPU and the police, but also data received from voluntary assistants - political departments, trade unions, party organizations and “individuals”, that is secret informants (in common parlance - informers). As a result of the measures taken, the transport authorities of the OGPU identified and “weeded out” (a term used by the police) those whose position was defined by the Soviet authorities as socially alien and hostile. This action consolidated the division of the country into “zones.”
The next stage of passportization turned the territory “near the railways” into a restricted area. By order of the NKVD of the USSR No. 001519 of December 27, 1939, implementing another secret resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, all heads of the road and transport departments of this People's Commissariat were ordered to “immediately begin preparing the seizure of anti-Soviet and criminal elements living in temporary residential buildings near the railways.” From all these buildings (dugouts, “Shanghai”, “Chinese”, as they were designated in the order) in a strip of two kilometers from the railways, people were evicted, and the buildings themselves were demolished. Thirty-eight railways of the USSR (excluding the roads of Western Ukraine and Belarus), including 64 railway and 111 military-economic junctions, were in full swing. The “operation” - that’s what this action was called in the order - was carried out according to a proven scenario: lists were drawn up “for all identified anti-Soviet and criminal elements” (using investigative and archival materials and secret interrogations) and people who had previously been expelled from their homes, but those who survived during the “building of the foundations of socialism” were forcibly sent by decisions of Special Meetings to “remote areas” and “corrective labor camps.” Both railroad buildings and those that belonged to people who did not work in transport were demolished. According to the USSR Prosecutor V. Bochkov, “in Chelyabinsk, many working families live in the open air, in barns and entryways. Due to the lack of a specific place of residence, children remain outside of schools. Diseases begin among them. Some of the workers left homeless petition the administration of their enterprises for dismissal in order to find work with housing. Their requests remain in most cases unsatisfied.” To stop the spontaneous flight of people, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR sent a circular to the Union Council of People's Commissars obliging city and district Councils, together with the directors of enterprises, to “immediately provide housing for workers and employees evicted from temporary housing.” However, these instructions remained, as a rule, on paper, and the Soviets did not have the necessary housing stock in reserve...
Village residents were subjected to especially humiliating enslavement, since, according to the above-mentioned resolutions of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 57/1917 of December 27, 1932 and No. 861 of April 28, 1933, in rural areas passports were issued only on state farms and in territories declared “regime.” The rest of the villagers did not receive passports. Both regulations established a long, fraught procedure for obtaining passports for those wishing to leave the village. Formally, the law determined that “in cases where persons living in rural areas leave for long-term or permanent residence in an area where a passport system has been introduced, they receive passports from the district or city departments of the workers’ and peasants’ militia at the place of their previous residence for a period of for one year. After the expiration of the one-year period, persons who arrived for permanent residence receive passports at their new place of residence on a general basis” (clause 3 of the resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 861 of April 28, 1933). In fact, everything was different. On March 17, 1933, the resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR “On the procedure for otkhodnichestvo from collective farms” obliged the collective farm boards to “exclude from the collective farm those collective farmers who, without permission, without an agreement with economic authorities registered with the collective farm board (that was the name of the representatives of the administration who traveled on behalf of Soviet enterprises villages and concluded agreements with collective farmers. - V.P.) abandon their collective farm.” The need to have a contract in hand before leaving the village is the first serious barrier for otkhodniks. Expulsion from the collective farm could not greatly frighten or stop the peasants, who had learned firsthand the severity of collective farm work, grain procurements, payment for workdays, and hunger. The obstacle was different. On September 19, 1934, the closed resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 2193 “On the registration of passports of collective farmers-otkhodniks entering work in enterprises without contracts with economic authorities” was adopted. The traditional term “otkhodniks” camouflaged the mass exodus of peasants from collective farm “reservations.”
The resolution of September 19, 1934 determined that in certified areas, enterprises can hire collective farmers who retired without an agreement with economic authorities registered with the collective farm board, “only if these collective farmers have passports received at their previous place of residence and a certificate from the collective farm board about his consent to the collective farmer’s departure.” Decades passed, instructions and regulations on passport work changed, people's commissars, and then interior ministers, dictators, bureaucrats changed, but this decision - the basis for assigning peasants to collective farm work - retained its practical force.
Although the October 1953 regulation on passports legalized the issuance of short-term passports to “otkhodniks” for the “duration of the contract,” collective farmers were well aware of the relative value of these documents, considering them as a formal permit for seasonal work. In order not to get involved with the police, they took certificates from the board of collective farms and village councils. But five years after the introduction of so-called short-term passports for collective farmers, the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs noted in 1958 numerous facts “when citizens recruited in rural uncertified areas for seasonal work are not provided with short-term passports.”
As peasants found the smallest loopholes in the passport laws and tried to use them to escape from the village, the government tightened the law. Circular of the Main Police Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR No. 37 of March 16, 1935, adopted in accordance with the resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 302 of February 27, 1935, prescribed: “Persons living in rural undocumented areas, regardless of where they are going (even if they are traveling to an unpassported rural area), they are required to obtain passports before leaving, at their place of residence for a period of one year.” The authorities, of course, understood that peasants were wandering from village to village in search of a place where it was easier to escape to the city. For example, people learned that a large tractor plant was being built in Chelyabinsk and, therefore, increased organizational recruitment would be carried out in the surrounding villages and regions. And many flocked to the countryside closer to this city to try their luck.
True, Chelyabinsk, like another city in this region - Magnitogorsk - was classified as “regime” and people with an origin “socially alien” to the Soviet regime had almost no chance of registering there. Such people should have looked for a place out of the way, gone to where no one knew them, and there tried to get new documents in order to hide the past. In any case, moving for permanent residence from one rural area to another until March 1935 was, as it were, a “legal” way of escape, not prohibited by law.
But after the adoption of the above-mentioned circular, local authorities were obliged to remove migrants who did not have passports from the village. The circular did not explain exactly where undocumented fugitives should be sent, that is, it provided complete freedom of action for the arbitrariness of local authorities.
Let’s imagine the psychological state of a person who was subject to “removal.” To return to your native village means not only to once again pull the tired collective farm burden, but also to deprive yourself of all, even illusory, hopes for a peaceful life. After all, the very fact of escaping from the collective farm could hardly have gone unnoticed by the village authorities. This means that there was only one way out: to run further, to where, as it seemed, the mousetrap had not yet slammed shut, where at least the slightest hope loomed. Therefore, the true meaning of the circular was to secure for fugitive peasants who do not have passports their “illegal position” anywhere in the USSR, to turn them into involuntary criminals!
In the villages and villages there remained those who relied on Soviet power, who decided to serve it faithfully, who intended to make a career out of the humiliation and enslavement of their fellow villagers, who wanted to build a better life for themselves through the exploitation of ordinary collective farmers. There remained those fooled by the regime and those who, due to age, family circumstances or physical injury, could not escape. Finally, there were those who realized already in 1935 that there was nowhere to hide from the Soviet regime.
True to the unwritten rule of concealing the most essential things from the people, the government did not publish the new decree in the press. The police circular proposed to “widely announce to the rural population” the changes in the passport law “through the local press, by announcements, through village councils, local inspectors, etc.”
The peasants who decided to leave the village in compliance with passport laws, which they knew about from hearsay, were faced with a difficult task: they had to have an agreement with the enterprise - only then could they get a passport from the police and leave. If there was no agreement, you had to bow to the chairman of the collective farm and ask for a certificate to “leave”. But the collective farm system was not created so that rural slaves would be allowed to freely “walk” around the country. The collective farm chairman well understood this “political moment” and his task - “to hold on and not let go.” We have already indicated that the formal rights to receive a passport were also reserved for residents of “non-passported areas” - as determined by the government decree of April 28, 1933. When reading this document, a normal person might get the impression that getting a passport at a district (or city) police station is a piece of cake. But only inexperienced village simpletons could think so. In the instructions for passport work itself, put into effect on February 14, 1935 by order No. 0069 of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR G. G. Yagoda, there were a lot of legal quirks, outwardly (in form) contradictory, but included in the document deliberately in order to give local kings (from the chairman of a collective farm or village council to the head of the district police department) have the opportunity for unlimited arbitrariness in relation to the ordinary collective farmer. The only “limitation” that could arise on their omnipotence was that “higher interest” when the industrial Moloch again opened its insatiable mouth wide, demanding new victims. Only then did the peasants have to be released into the city according to the so-called “organizational recruitment”. And they doomedly fell under the next cog of the machine for churning out “Soviet people” from Orthodox Russian people.
Point 22 of the passport work instructions of 1935 listed the following documents required to obtain a passport: 1) a certificate from the house management or village council from the place of permanent residence (on form No. 1); 2) a certificate from an enterprise or institution about work or service with a mandatory indication “from what time and in what capacity has he been working at this enterprise (institution)”; 3) a document on attitude to military service “for all those obliged to have one by law”; 4) any document certifying the place and time of birth (metric register, registry office certificate, etc.). Point 24 of the same instructions stated that “collective farmers, individual peasants and non-cooperative artisans living in rural areas do not submit any certificates of work.” It would seem that this clause gives the collective farmer the right not to present to the police a certificate from the collective farm board about permission to go on “waste”, otherwise why include a special clause about this in the instructions? But that was a sly appearance. In articles 46, 47, in different forms, to make it clearer, it was emphasized that all peasants (collective farmers and individual farmers) obliged to leave the village for a period of more than five days, have a certificate from the local authorities, which was practically the main document for obtaining a passport.
The peasants did not know any of this, because the instructions for passport work were an appendix to the order of the NKVD of the USSR, which was stamped “Sov. secret." Therefore, when they encountered it, a well-known legal norm sounded especially cynical to people: ignorance of the law does not exempt from punishment under it.
Let’s try to imagine the ordeal of a peasant to obtain “freedom”... As a rule, there is no contract in hand, since the state closely monitored and regulated the “organization” in the village. Depending on the situation with personnel in a particular industry, construction site, factory, mine, it then allowed state recruiters to recruit labor in villages (based on the state plan, which took into account not only the industries in need of “personnel”, but also indicated their a specific number for each department or construction site, as well as those rural areas where recruitment was allowed), then closed this loophole. This means that, first of all, the peasant should have gone to the collective farm chairman for a certificate. He refuses directly or delays, offering to wait to leave until the completion of agricultural work. Having achieved nothing on the collective farm, the peasant tries to start from the other end - first to gain consent from the village council. The chairman of the village council is the same “trembling creature” as the chairman of the collective farm, a dependent creature who values his place as a “boss” more than anything else. Naturally, he asks the peasant if he has a certificate from the board, asks to show it. If there is no certificate, the conversation is over, the circle is closed. The only option left is to bribe village officials or forge the necessary certificate. But that’s what the police are for, to check all the documents to the point, and if necessary, ask the authority that issued the certificate. This creates the ground for the merging of the local elite of power - collective farm, Soviet, police - the elite, which becomes the undivided master of the village. It robs, corrupts, humiliates the people, it was created precisely for this purpose, and the passport system provides unlimited opportunities here.
The writer V. Belov testifies to the state of mind of a Russian person, forcibly transformed into a “collective farmer”: “For rural life in the early thirties (let us add: perhaps only the 30s? - V.P.) such a concept as “copy” or “copy from a copy” was very typical. Paper or its absence could have been sent to Solovki, killed, or starved to death. And we, children, already knew this harsh truth. It’s not for nothing that we were taught to draw up documents in class... In the seventh or sixth grade, I remember, we learned by heart Nekrasov’s poem “Reflections at the Front Entrance”: “Here is the front entrance. On special days, possessed by a servile illness, the whole city approaches the cherished doors with some kind of fear.” N.A. Nekrasov called ordinary sycophancy a servile disease. But can the fear of a passportless village boy standing in front of an all-powerful official be called a servile illness? Twice, in 1946 and 1947, I tried to go to school. In Riga, Vologda, Ustyug. Every time I was turned around. I received a passport only in 1949, when I ran away from the collective farm to the Federal Zoo. But outside the village outskirts there were even more officials...”
...According to the instructions for passport work in 1935, in addition to passport books valid for three years and one-year passports, there were temporary certificates valid for up to three months. They were issued “in non-regime areas in the absence of documents necessary to obtain a passport” (paragraph 21 of the instructions). In other words, we were talking mainly about rural residents who traveled to the “certified area” for temporary (seasonal) work. With the help of this measure, the state tried to regulate migration flows and satisfy the needs of the national economy for labor, while at the same time not letting a single person out of the sight of the police for a minute.
Often they fled from the village without any documents at all. The fact that such phenomena were widespread is evidenced by the following excerpt from the circular of the USSR Central Executive Committee No. 563/3 dated March 17, 1934: “Despite the explanatory campaign carried out by the police, this requirement is not being met: there is a massive arrival of citizens from rural areas to cities without passports, which causes police measures to detain and remove visitors.” There were frequent attempts to register using fake and forged certificates of otkhodnichestvo. But, of course, this “handicraft” could not seriously resist the mechanism of the totalitarian machine, the passport noose thrown around the people’s neck.
The legal status of the peasant in the collective farm era made him an outcast in his native country. And not only he, but also his children had to live under such psychological pressure. According to the current model charter of the agricultural artel (1935), membership in the collective farm was formalized by submitting an application followed by a decision on admission at the general meeting of the artel. In practice, this rule was not observed in relation to the children of collective farmers, whom, upon reaching the age of sixteen, the board mechanically included in the lists of members of the artel without their application for admission. It turned out that rural youth could not control their destiny: they could not, of their own free will, after sixteen years, obtain a passport from the regional police department and freely go to the city to work or study. Young people of full age automatically became collective farmers and, therefore, only as such could they seek to obtain passports. We have already written about how most of these attempts ended. Formally, this practice was not legally enshrined in the charter of the agricultural artel. In fact, collective farmers became a forced class “from generation to generation.”
...Flight to the cities created the appearance of gaining freedom. Life forced rural fugitives from the Russian regions proper to the outskirts.
By 1939, the share of Russians in the following national regions had increased sharply (compared to the 1926 census): in the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic from 1.2 - 2.9 to 28.8 percent, in the North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic from 6.6 to 37 .2 percent, in the Yakut ASSR from 10.4 to 35.5 percent, in the Buryat-Mongol ASSR from 52.7 to 72.1 percent, in the Kirghiz SSR from 11.7 to 20.8 percent. Subsequently, “industrialization” only intensified this centrifugal process.
Certification of the population contributed to total control over citizens. Secret surveillance has acquired a scale unprecedented in world history. Passport departments appeared in regional police departments, and passport offices appeared in city and district departments (branches). In settlements where over 100 thousand “passported population” lived, address bureaus were created. In addition to them, but for other purposes - not for registration of the population and issuing passports, but for “improving the search for escaped and escaped criminals” - by order of the NKVD of the USSR No. 0102 of September 10, 1936 in all major cities of the country (over 20 thousand inhabitants) Cluster address bureaus were organized. The Central Address Bureau (CAB) operated in Moscow. If in 1936 cluster bureaus existed in 359 cities of the USSR, then in 1937 - in 413. The remaining cities and regions of the country were each attached to a specific cluster address bureau. Thus, the entire territory of the USSR was covered by the investigation. This was disguised as “counting population movements.”
The regulations on cluster address bureaus, approved by order of the NKVD of the USSR No. 077 of August 16, 1937, established that “the main registration, registration and reference document is the arrival sheet, which is filled out when registering the entire population and for each citizen arriving in a given locality.” The arrival and departure sheets had the same name - “address sheet”. Accounting for population movements was a secondary task. Before they were placed in the file cabinet for arriving persons, all address sheets were checked in the local bureaus against the passport search book, because many lived on someone else’s or counterfeit passports. At the same time, the arrival sheets were checked against the so-called watch lists (wanted cards), which were filled out for “wanted criminals” declared on the union or local wanted list, and were stored in special filing cabinets in the cluster address bureaus. When a wanted person was discovered, this was immediately reported to “the NKVD apparatus that announced the search,” but the cards continued to be stored “as compromising material until instructions were given for their seizure and destruction.”
On January 1, 1939, a new, more advanced form of address sheets was introduced, which was not accidental. On January 17, the All-Union population census was supposed to take place. The previous census had been conducted just two years earlier. Consequently, the state did not so much need accurate information about the population as to establish the place of residence of each person. Indeed, in 1937 - 1938, a massive purge (“rotation”) of the Soviet bureaucratic layer was carried out in the country. Former leadership cadres, in an atmosphere of terror and general fear, tried to change their place of residence and obtain new documents in any way. People saw the upcoming census as a direct threat to their lives and tried to hide in advance. Therefore, the regime considered it necessary to strengthen control over the “movement of the population” in order to be able to arrest anyone at the right time. Individuals (dacha residents, vacationers in sanatoriums, holiday homes, coming on holidays, excursionists, tourists arriving for meetings, conventions and departing back) were registered temporarily on address sheets without tear-off coupons. For everyone else, registration and extract were recorded on address sheets with tear-off coupons, and then this data was sent to the department, and from there to the Central Department of National Economic Accounting of the USSR State Planning Committee (TSUNKHU). The address sheet remained with the police. In sensitive areas, such forms were filled out in two copies: one remained in the address bureau, and the other in the police department “to control the departure of those registered on time.” Additional arrival (or departure) sheets were filled out for “socially alien” and “criminal elements”, which were sent for centralized registration to cluster address bureaus. Thus, there was a double counting of “population movements” in the country. The most important one is in the police, the secondary one is in the State Planning Committee. The instructions for passport work of 1935 determined the priority in the tasks of address bureaus as follows: “a) assisting administrative bodies in finding the persons they need; b) issuing certificates of residence of citizens to institutions and individuals; c) keeping records of population movements.” Contrary to traditional ideas, the passport apparatus in the USSR existed not so much for the needs of the population as for the search for rebellious people.
Order of the NKVD of the USSR No. 230 of December 16, 1938 on the work of cluster address bureaus directly indicated that they were created to “improve the work of the police in searching for criminals,” and not to take into account the movement of the population. To solve the latter problem, the order said, there are address bureaus. In the cluster bureaus, the sheets on new arrivals were checked for the presence of “compromising information” in the person’s biography, after which, depending on the nature of the “compromising evidence,” this was reported to the head of the enterprise at the person’s place of work or “immediately to the criminal investigation department.”
The 1935 Instructions for Passport Work defined the main tasks of the police for “maintaining the passport regime” in the USSR as follows: preventing people from living without a passport and without registration; prohibition of employment or service without passports; clearing secure areas from “criminal, kulak and other antisocial elements, as well as from persons not associated with production and work”; placing all “kulak, criminal and other antisocial elements” in non-regime areas under special registration.”
The practical work of the grassroots police apparatus to carry out “special registration” was structured as follows: in the certificate of the house management or village council from the place of permanent residence (form No. 1), which was mandatory presented to the police when receiving a passport, in the column “For special marks of the RK police authorities ” all “compromising data” about the recipient of the passport were entered. Beginning in 1936, a special note began to be made in the passports of former prisoners and exiles, deprived of voting rights and “defectors”. Certificates in form No. 1 were stored in the general file cabinet of the police passport office; people placed on special register were entered into lists using a special form. “Industrialization” expanded, “complete collectivization” was completed, cities grew, political processes were fabricated, terror became more and more ferocious, the number of “criminals”, “flyers” and other “anti-social elements” increased. Accordingly, the investigation was improved, the card files of the Central and cluster address bureaus were increased.
To improve the identification of the identity of a citizen of the USSR, from October 1937, a photographic card began to be affixed to passports, the second copy of which was kept by the police at the place where the document was issued. To avoid counterfeits, the Main Police Department introduced special ink for filling out passport forms and special mastic for seals, stamps for attaching photo cards, and sent out operational and methodological “guidance” to all police departments on how to recognize counterfeit documents. In cases where, when obtaining passports, birth certificates from other regions and republics were presented, the police were obliged to first request certificate issuing points so that the latter would confirm the authenticity of the documents. To tighten measures to “maintain the passport regime,” the police, in addition to their own forces, attracted janitors, watchmen, brigade militias, “village enforcers” and other “trusted persons” (as they were called in police jargon).
The scale of surveillance of the population is evidenced by the following fact. According to the Main Police Department, at the beginning of 1946, in the regions of the Moscow region, the “agent-informative apparatus” consisted of 396 residents (including 49 paid), 1,142 agents, 24 route agents and 7,876 informants. At the same time, the head of the department, Lieutenant General Leontyev, noted that “the intelligence network in the region is large, but qualitatively still weak.” The dictionary of foreign words gives several interpretations of the concept of “resident,” but we are always talking about a person performing diplomatic, intelligence or administrative functions in a foreign state. Apparently, the communist government had enough reasons to consider Russia a foreign country.
...In 1940, passports were exchanged in Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv and other “regime” cities. As in 1936, the NKVD of the USSR demanded that the exchange be carried out “in the order of current planned work, without giving it the character of a mass campaign and without creating a special apparatus for this purpose.” The country had completed measures to enslave the bulk of the population, and the authorities did not need unnecessary fuss about this. By the end of the 30s, the Soviet leadership could rightfully declare to the whole world about “building the foundations of socialism in the USSR.” The final formation of the passport regime served as the most convincing argument for this.
In order to correctly assess the nature of changes in the legal status of the Russian people, let us briefly consider the main provisions of the passport system of Tsarist Russia. The main document was the “Charter on Passports”, published in 1903. According to it, everyone living at their place of permanent residence was not obliged to have passports. Permanent residence was understood as: for nobles, merchants, officials, honorary citizens and commoners - the place where they had real estate or household equipment or were employed in the service; for bourgeois and artisans - a city or town where they were classified as a bourgeois or craft society; for peasants - the rural community or volost to which they were assigned. In factories, plants, manufactories and mining operations, which were subject to the rules on the supervision of industrial establishments, all workers were required to have passports, even in cases where the enterprise was located in the place of permanent residence of these workers.
There was no requirement to obtain a passport in cases where people left their permanent place of residence within or outside their district, but no further than 50 miles and no more than six months. It was possible to be hired for rural work without limiting the period of absence and without obtaining a passport, if you had to work in the volosts adjacent to the county.
In other cases, when changing the place of permanent residence, passports were issued: unlimited - to non-serving nobles, reserve officers dismissed from public service, honorary citizens, merchants and commoners, five-year - to burghers, artisans and rural inhabitants. If the latter had arrears in public, state, zemstvo or secular taxes, passports were issued only with the consent of the societies to which they were assigned, for a period of up to one year.
Males under the age of seventeen who were not in public service, and females under 21 could receive individual passports only with the consent of their parents and guardians in whose passports they were entered. Married women received passports with the consent of their husbands (exceptions were made for those whose husbands were in unknown absence, in prison, in exile, or suffering from insanity).
Members of peasant families, including adults, were issued passports with the consent of the owner of the peasant household. Without this, documents could only be issued by order of the zemstvo or peasant chief or other responsible persons.
Those who served their sentences in correctional departments, prisons and fortresses in accordance with the Penal Code (in some cases by decision of Special Meetings of the Minister of Internal Affairs) were under special police supervision. Passports were issued to these persons only with the permission of the police, and they included a note about the owner’s criminal record and a record limiting places of residence. The passport regime that existed in the Russian Empire allowed even revolutionaries, after serving their sentences for especially dangerous crimes, not only not to feel like outcasts in society, but also to live in tolerable, humane conditions, change their place of residence, continue to be involved in revolutionary affairs, and travel abroad. Many abuses were then associated precisely with the excessive liberalization of the passport regime.
In 1900, a foreign passport was issued, for example, to V. Ulyanov, the brother of an executed terrorist, an active supporter of the overthrow of the monarchy, who promoted his ideas. It’s even funny to imagine the possibility of something like this in the USSR after the introduction of the passport system.
Among the similarities of the passport systems of Russia and the USSR, which at first glance have some similarities, are the restrictions imposed on rural residents. However, here too it is easy to see the various goals that were pursued when introducing passport standards. In pre-revolutionary Russia, with a clear predominance of the rural population over the urban one, “otkhodnichestvo” served not only as a way to smooth out the seasonality of rural labor, but also as additional income for peasants, which allowed them to pay off taxes and arrears. Regarding legal restrictions, even Soviet historians are forced to admit that the Tsar’s decree of October 5, 1906 provided peasants with “the same rights in relation to public service” as other classes and “freedom to choose their place of permanent residence,” without which it was impossible to carry out the Stolypin reform.
The purpose of the Soviet passport system was to assign people to collective farm work, and the traditional term “otkhodnichestvo” masked people’s flight from the horrors of collectivization.
Before the revolution, the dictate of the head of the peasant household regarding permission to issue passports to members of his family, firstly, was based on economic and religious tradition developed over centuries and determined by the way of farming, and secondly, could not be compared with arbitrariness and mockery of the Soviet authorities when issuing passports to collective farmers.
The Second World War demonstrated the new possibilities of the totalitarian passport system. In 1939, the USSR returned territories that had been mediocrely lost during a military campaign nineteen years earlier. The population of these places was subjected to forced Sovietization. On January 21, 1940, temporary instructions were put into effect for implementing a passport system in the western regions, which was no different from the one in force in the Soviet Union.
...In the same year, by resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 1667 of September 10, a new regulation on passports and a new instruction of the NKVD of the USSR on its application began to be implemented. The new document had one significant difference from the December 1932 resolution: it expanded the territory of passportization to include regional centers and settlements where MTS were located. The cherished line beyond which life with a passport began seemed to be approaching. The authorities seemed to be making an inviting gesture to the villagers; migration from villages increased. But, having got a job in a new place at enterprises, the former rural residents immediately fell under the decree of June 26, 1940. According to it, under penalty of criminal punishment, the unauthorized departure of workers and employees from enterprises was prohibited. The fictitious “liberalization” of the passport system actually backfired on those who bought into it. The expansion of the passported territory testified to the continuing advance of the city on the countryside, because in the regional centers an urban atmosphere was created with all the delights of a Soviet reservation.
In addition to the mentioned innovation, the regulations on passports took into account the changes that occurred after 1932. The boundaries of regime areas were clarified in connection with the territorial seizures of the USSR in 1939 - 1940; the extension of the passport system to residents of the new lands was formalized by law; the procedure for issuing passports to nomadic gypsies and persons admitted to USSR citizenship was determined; the practice of confiscating passports from workers and employees of the defense and coal industries, railway transport and issuing them with special certificates in return was fixed for an indefinite period. Order bearers, persons over fifty-five years of age, disabled people and pensioners were now required to receive unlimited passports; five-year cards were issued to citizens from 16 to 55 years of age. The practice of issuing temporary certificates to “citizens traveling from areas where the passport system has not been introduced” continued.
Back in May 1940, the NKVD of the USSR ordered coal industry workers to issue special certificates instead of passports. Passports were kept in the personnel departments of enterprises and were issued in exceptional cases (for example, to present a document at the registry office when changing a surname, marriage or divorce). This procedure was canceled only in May 1948, returning passports to the owners. As in the coal industry, a similar situation in 1940 - 1944 extended to those sectors of the national economy whose enterprises were characterized by particularly difficult working conditions and experienced constant difficulties with workers (mainly unskilled) - ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, chemical industry, heavy industry, shipbuilding. The issuance of certificates instead of passports existed in railway, sea and river transport, in the system of the Main Directorate of Labor Reserves.
In June 1940, the unauthorized departure of workers and employees from enterprises and institutions was prohibited, and in December 1941, criminal liability was established for all workers in the military industry, including those industries that worked for defense “on the principle of cooperation,” who left without permission. were declared deserters and subject to trial by military tribunals. Additional decrees in 1942 extended this provision to workers and employees of the coal and oil industries, transport, as well as workers and employees of individual enterprises (for example, Magnitostroy). Thus, in necessary cases, the passport system was supplemented by changes in labor legislation.
The Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945 required additional efforts from the Soviet police to maintain the passport regime in the country. The secret circular of the NKVD of the USSR No. 171 dated July 17, 1941 prescribed the following procedure for the people's commissars of internal affairs of the republics and the heads of the NKVD departments of the territories and regions for “documentation of citizens arriving without a passport in the rear in connection with military events.” Initially, it was necessary to check everyone who found themselves in the rear without passports: interrogate in detail about the circumstances of the loss of documents, establish the place where they were received, send a request and a photograph of the applicant there. Only after a response “confirming the issuance of the passport and the identity of the photo card” was the issuance of a passport allowed. If due to the German occupation it was not possible to carry out a check, and people had other documents confirming their identity, they received temporary certificates. If all documents were lost, after a thorough personal interrogation and double-checking of this data, those without a passport were issued a certificate, which could not serve as an identification document for the owner, but facilitated his temporary registration and employment.
This additional touch to the characteristics of the Soviet passport system, which at first glance seems unnecessary, actually captures its essence. It is difficult to imagine that German agents would infiltrate our territory without having personal documents corresponding to the operational legend. The NKVD understood this well. Without any visible purpose in wartime conditions, the efforts of this huge state apparatus were spent on endless (and mostly meaningless) checks, interrogations, and double-checks to clarify the obvious. Namely, that so-and-so, fleeing death and not wanting to remain under occupation, fled to the rear and at the same time lost or destroyed (under the threat of captivity) his documents. He got to his people, was saved from death, for him this is joy, he has the right to expect participation in his destiny. Instead, the authorities put him on the right track. The authorities have a clue, “compromising data” about a person’s presence in the temporarily occupied territory. And for the rest of his life he is obliged to indicate this fact in all questionnaires. This small, one-typewritten page circular had a decisive influence on the fate of hundreds of thousands of people and was canceled only in 1949.
The least ceremony in the USSR was with prisoners. On December 19, 1933, secret circular of the OGPU No. 124 informed all subordinate bodies of the procedure for release from the “corrective labor camps of the OGPU, in connection with the establishment of the passport regime.” A “differentiated approach” was required to be applied to those released from the camps.
Those convicted of the following crimes were not given passports and were not registered in secure areas: counter-revolutionary activities (exceptions were made for persons “attached by OGPU regulations to certain enterprises for work” and amnestied by special government regulations, that is, highly qualified specialists, without whom no one could work one production), banditry, riots, evasion of conscription for military service “with aggravating features”, counterfeiting and falsification of documents, smuggling, traveling abroad and entering the USSR “without permission”, violation of the monopoly of foreign trade and rules on foreign exchange transactions, malicious non-payment of taxes and refusal to fulfill duties, escape of those arrested, moonshine, resistance to government officials with violence, violence against social activists, embezzlement, bribery and bribery, theft of state and public property, illegal abortions, child molestation, rape, pimping, repeated thefts, robbery, fraud, arson, espionage. From the above list it is clear that the category of criminals included not only criminals and political opponents of the regime, but also that multimillion-dollar mass of the population who became victims of various “experiments” of the Soviet government in building a socialist society. Many were convicted without any guilt on their part, since, according to the commentary to the criminal code as amended in 1926, a “criminal act” was understood as “an attempt on the main gains of the proletarian revolution; therefore, the completed criminal act will already be from the moment of the attempt; there may be no actual harmful effects.”
Everyone who served “urgent duty (for any period of time. - V.P.) imprisonment, exile or expulsion based on the verdicts of the courts and the OGPU collegium that have entered into force” for the crimes listed above were included in a special list of persons who were not issued passports in sensitive areas. Government Decree No. 43 of January 14, 1933, containing the above list, applied to all those convicted of these crimes after November 7, 1927, that is, five years before the adoption of the state law on the passport system!
...Among the citizens rejected by the Soviet regime, the peasants were at the very bottom. Circular No. 13 of the Main Police Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR dated February 3, 1935 was based on the resolution of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR dated January 25 of the same year, which stated that “the restoration of the civil rights of deported kulaks does not give them the right to leave the place of settlement.” According to this circular, all expelled “kulaks whose civil rights were restored” were issued passports “exclusively at the location of the labor settlement” based on lists provided by the district commandant’s offices. The passport must necessarily indicate that it was issued “based on the list of such and such a commandant’s office of the labor settlement, such and such a district, the number and date of the list.” Point 3 obligated: “Persons who have the specified entry in their passports should not be registered for residence anywhere except in places of settlement. If these persons are found in other areas, detain them as if they had fled and send them along to the place of settlement.”
Since 1933, secretly (in special police registration forms), and since August 8, 1936, both secretly and openly (in the registration documents of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and in the passport), a note was made about a person’s criminal record. In the passports of former prisoners, “disenfranchised” and “defectors” (those who crossed the border of the USSR “unauthorized”), the following entry was made: “Issued on the basis of paragraph 11 of the resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 861 of April 28, 1933.” After the adoption in 1940 of a new regulation on passports and instructions for its application, the entry took on the following form: “Issued on the basis of Art. 38 (39) Regulations on passports.” This addition was also made in the passports of nomadic gypsies.
Finding a decent job for a person whom the Soviet government classified as a “socially alien element” or itself forcibly turned into a “criminal element” was almost impossible.
For millions of people with a criminal record, the path home to their families and relatives was essentially closed forever. They were doomed to wander around their native country, every day they could be fired from their jobs without any explanation. It was life under a raised sword that could fall on their heads at any moment. Many former prisoners did not try to return to their former lives, as they understood the futility of their efforts. Others settled near the camps from which they had come, or were recruited into remote areas of the country. Often, to plug personnel “holes” in enterprises with hard labor conditions, the government used a method of a kind of “mass recruitment”. “In pursuance of the order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR and the Prosecutor General of the USSR No. 0039/3 dated January 13, 1947,” stated in the circular of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR No. 155 dated March 19 of the same year, “the Ministries of the Coal Industry of the eastern regions are sent to work in the mines and other enterprises of the Ministry of Coal Industry 70,000 people released early from prisons and camps.” It turns out that people were released early in order to replace one hard labor with another, using “early release” as bait. Since in 1947 the procedure was still in force according to which workers and employees of the coal industry were issued special certificates instead of passports, the circular ordered the ministers of internal affairs of the republics and the heads of departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the territories and regions to ensure a legalized passport norm.
Sometimes, for educational purposes, the Soviet government showed “humanism” towards former prisoners. In 1945, by joint order of the NKVD of the USSR, the NKGB of the USSR, the People's Commissariat of Justice of the USSR and the Prosecutor of the USSR No. 0192/069/042/149 “On the procedure for implementing the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of July 7, 1945 on amnesty, in connection with the victory over Nazi Germany” , the relevant authorities were allowed to send minors, pregnant women and women with young children, old people and disabled people subject to amnesty to the regime areas and registration in these areas, who “followed their previous place of residence, their relatives or close relatives.” By the end of November 1945, 620.8 thousand people sentenced to various terms and 841.1 thousand people sentenced to forced labor were completely released. 212.9 thousand people sentenced to more than three years had their remaining sentences reduced. Nevertheless, since October 1945 - after the completion of the amnesty - there has been an increase in the number of convicts entering the camps. In just four months (October 1945 - January 1946), the number of prisoners throughout the country increased by 110 thousand, and the monthly intake of people in the camps exceeded the loss of them by 25 - 30 thousand people. In practice, the amnesty was not an act of mercy towards the victorious people, but was a way of replacing and renewing the labor force of the camps.
On March 3, 1949, the Bureau of the USSR Council of Ministers considered the issue of introducing a new type of passport and a draft of a new regulation on the passport system in the USSR. The development was carried out by the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs on the personal instructions and initiative of the Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) L.P. Beria. The proposal was motivated by the fact that “during the war, a significant part of the forms of valid passports and instructions for applying the regulations on passports fell into the hands of the enemy and criminal elements, which largely deciphered the technique of passport work in the USSR.” The most important difference of the proposed project was that this provision on the passport system provided for “the issuance of passports not only to the urban, but also to the rural population.”
This attempt should not be considered as a real liberalization of the Soviet regime. Certification of the entire population of the country aged 16 years and older in those conditions meant total control over everyone’s life, because owning a passport only created the appearance of human rights - a citizen of the USSR, since the main thing in determining his fate would still be “compromising data”, stored in the Central and cluster address bureaus. The transition to complete passportization of the country's population promised considerable benefits to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and personally to its curator Beria, because the importance of this ministry would increase and additional chances would appear in the struggle for power. From the point of view of the state - complete control over the life of every member of society - there was every reason to accept the proposal. But it was rejected with the following wording, which did not explain the reasons for the refusal: “It was proposed that the Ministry of Internal Affairs should be finalized based on the opinions of the Bureau.” The issue of granting passports to the entire rural population (including collective farmers) was not returned to again until 1974, although after Stalin’s death a new regulation on passports was adopted in October 1953.
...True, what Beria managed to achieve during the peak of his career, when in March 1953 he was appointed first deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers and regained the post of Minister of Internal Affairs, was to manage to push through the government before his arrest and execution the draft resolution “On reduction of restricted areas and passport restrictions.” A report addressed to the new Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, Malenkov, signed by Beria, was sent on May 13, 1953. The corresponding copies of the report were sent to all members of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee - V. M. Molotov, K. E. Voroshilov, N. S. Khrushchev, N. A. Bulganin, L. M. Kaganovich, A. I. Mikoyan, M. Z. Saburov, M. G. Pervukhin. On May 21, 1953, this project was approved as Resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers No. 1305-515. The main changes boiled down to the exclusion of about one hundred and fifty cities and localities, all railway junctions and stations from the list of regime restrictions (regime restrictions remained in Moscow and in twenty-four districts of the Moscow region, in Leningrad and five districts of the Leningrad region, in Vladivostok, Sevastopol and Kronstadt); reducing the size of the restricted border strip (with the exception of the strip on the border with Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and on the Karelian Isthmus); reducing the list of crimes for which a conviction entailed a ban on living in secure areas (all “counter-revolutionary crimes”, banditry, hooliganism, premeditated murder, repeated thefts and robbery were retained). But the reform of the passport system conceived by Beria, as noted, had a deeper meaning. This is confirmed by numerous reference materials (including on the passport system of the Russian Empire), prepared by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in April 1953.
The order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs No. 00375 dated June 16, 1953, signed by Beria, which abolished passport restrictions, issued in development of the government resolution, breathes downright paternal concern for the needs of former prisoners and their families: “Under the current situation, citizens who have served their sentences in places of detention or exile and thereby atoned for their guilt before society, continue to experience deprivation... The presence of wide passport restrictions in the country creates difficulties in settling not only for citizens who have served their sentences, but also for members of their families, who also, in connection with this, find themselves in a difficult situation.” It was further noted that “the regime and passport restrictions introduced in these areas (a restricted zone that extends hundreds of kilometers inland. - V.P.), hinder their economic development.” Having in his hands the most complete sources of information, Beria was the first of the communist leaders to understand that the Gulag system in the post-war period was no longer profitable and did not meet the necessary conditions for the technocratic and economic development of a totalitarian society.
However, the Soviet government continued to keep its main enemy - the Russian peasant - on its passport “hook”. And according to the regulation on passports of October 21, 1953, residents of rural areas (with the exception of regime areas) continued to live without passports. If they were involved temporarily - for a period of no more than one month - for agricultural work, logging, peat mining within their region, territory, republic, they were issued a certificate from the village council, certifying their identity and the purpose of their departure. The same procedure was maintained for village residents of non-passported areas if they went to holiday homes, for meetings, or on business trips. If they went outside their region to other parts of the country for a period of more than thirty days, they were first required to obtain a passport from the police at their place of residence, which was unrealistic.
...After Stalin’s death, life seemed to become easier for the peasant: in 1953, the procedure for imposing agricultural taxes on peasant farms was changed, and from 1958, the mandatory supply of all agricultural products from collective farmers’ farms was abolished; The March (1953) amnesty stopped the execution of all sentences without exception, according to which collective farmers were sentenced to forced labor for failure to fulfill the mandatory minimum of workdays. For those who constantly worked on the collective farm, the amnesty made life much easier. People who went “withdrawal” without permission from the collective farm boards felt free due to the amnesty. But this was self-deception, since no significant changes occurred in the legal status of the collective farmer: the approximate charter of the agricultural artel continued to be in effect, and in the annual report of the collective farm, “otkhodniks” continued to be taken into account by the state as the labor force registered with the collective farms. Consequently, the government could at any moment forcibly return everyone who left without permission to the collective farms. The sword was still raised above their heads, they just seemed to “forget” to lower it. Restrictions on the passport rights of villagers continued to be deliberately maintained by the authorities. Thus, in secret circular No. 4 2 dated February 27, 1958, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR N.P. Dudorov, addressed to the heads of this department in the union republics, stated: “Do not allow citizens from rural uncertified areas to be sent outside the region, territory, republic ( which does not have a regional division) for seasonal work based on certificates from rural councils or collective farms, ensuring the issuance of short-term passports to this category of citizens for the duration of the contracts they have concluded.” Thus, legally, passport restrictions for collective farmers of the 50s were not much different from those in the 30s.
Order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR No. 0300 of October 31, 1953, announcing for the guidance and execution of the above-mentioned government decree No. 2666-1124 of October 21, 1953 and the new regulation on passports, established: “Do not issue passports to persons released from places of detention and following previous place of residence in rural areas, the permanent residents of which, in accordance with paragraph “d” of Article 2 and Article 3 of the passport regulations, are not required to have passports.”
It turns out that in the main thing - in relation to the Russian peasantry - this legislation of the “Thaw” era has become even more sophisticated than before. Such a special clause was absent in the Yagodin instructions on passport work of 1935 and the Beria regulations on passports of 1940. In their times, all prisoners received a certificate (or certificate) after their release, and upon arrival at their place of permanent residence in a non-regime area - a passport. Moreover, the order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR G. G. Yagoda No. 84 dated April 14, 1935 condemned those police agencies that refused to issue passports to former prisoners and exiles. “Such a callous bureaucratic attitude towards persons who have served the social protection measure established for them,” the order said, “pushes them back onto the criminal road.” The order obligated the police to issue passports to all former prisoners and exiles in non-regime areas unconditionally, upon presentation of a certificate from the correctional labor institution (correctional labor institution. - V.P.) about the completion of the social protection measure.”
Of course, Yagoda was a hypocrite, but how much more cynical was the order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of 1953! It was not professional thieves or repeat offenders who returned to the village after camps and prisons, but peasants who, having survived all the Soviet “experiments” to build a socialist society, were going home to live out their days. It was they - those convicted of “spikelets” and similar “theft of state and public property” in the hungry pre-war, war and post-war times - who made up the bulk of the prisoners. The police order clearly outlined their place in the pyramid of Soviet society: below the released professional thieves returning to the cities, on a par with prisoners and special settlers. This point should have been taken especially mockingly during the period of mass rehabilitation of former “statesmen” (Soviet officials of all ranks), who, with their policies, drove the peasants into camps.
...In September 1956, an amnesty was declared for Soviet soldiers convicted of surrendering “to the enemy during the Patriotic War.” The police were ordered to “exchange previously issued passports (with restrictions) to citizens from whom, on the basis of the announced resolution (resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated September 20, 1956. - V.P.) the criminal record and loss of rights are removed.” This meant that from now on these people could go for permanent residence to any region of the country, including privileged ones. In January 1957, Kalmyks, Balkars, Karachais, Chechens, Ingush and members of their families were allowed to reside and register in areas from which they had previously been evicted. The rehabilitation campaign gained momentum.
And only Russian peasants continued to remain outcasts in their country. According to the current situation, those convicted under Articles 2 and 4 of the decree of June 4, 1947 “On criminal liability for theft of state and public property” could not return home to their previous place of residence if their village was located in a secure area. In 1950 alone, in the RSFSR, 82.3 thousand people were convicted under Articles 2 and 4 of the said decree (a quarter of them were women). This decree was introduced by the government at a time when many rural residents, in order not to die of hunger, had to steal grain from collective farm fields and currents.
...Since October 1953, passports were issued: unlimited - to persons who have reached the age of forty, ten-year - to persons aged 20 to 40 years, five-year - to persons aged from 16 to 20 years. Another type of passport was issued - short-term (for a period of no more than six months) - in cases where people could not provide all the documents necessary to obtain a passport, in case of loss of passports, as well as when leaving rural areas for seasonal work (on “departure”) . The latter, as already noted, received short-term passports “for the duration of the contracts” and could exchange them “only if they re-signed the contracts.”
It is widely believed that passports began to be issued to all citizens of the USSR who had reached the age of sixteen during the reign of N. S. Khrushchev. Even those who left the village in the 50s believe that, among other reforms, Khrushchev managed to carry out the passport reform. So great is the power of public misconception, mixed with “thaw” prejudices and ignorance of the facts of recent Russian history. There is also a psychological subtext: for those who managed to escape from the village to the city during the Khrushchev era and received a passport, this issue lost its urgency and ceased to be perceived as one of the main ones in rural life.
In fact, only on August 28, 1974, by the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On measures to further improve the passport system in the USSR,” a decision was made to introduce a new type of USSR citizen passport from 1976. This provision on the passport system established that “all Soviet citizens who have reached the age of 16 are required to have a passport of a citizen of the USSR.” The issuance and exchange of new documents was to take place from 1976 to 1981.
Why were peasants given equal rights to other citizens of the country more than forty years after the introduction of the passport system in the USSR? Because such a period was needed to transform the Russian people into the Soviet people. This historical fact was recorded in the preamble of the Constitution of the USSR (adopted on October 7, 1977): “A developed socialist society has been built in the USSR... This is a society of mature socialist social relations, in which, based on the rapprochement of all classes and social strata, legal and actual equality of all nations and nationalities, their fraternal cooperation, a new historical community has emerged - the Soviet people.”
While the villages and villages of Russia were destroyed, the cities swelled and industrialized without any regard for their cultural traditions and environmental conservation. Soviet ideology formed a truly new man, devoid of historical national roots. God was taken away from him and the “code of the builder of communism” was placed in his hands.
On December 27, 1932, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution “On the establishment of a unified passport system in the USSR and the mandatory registration of passports.”
It is to this resolution that we owe the system of internal passports that developed back in the USSR, which we still use today.Post-communist historians, as well as human rights activists and journalists of the perestroika era, desperately branded the decree of December 27, 1932, as anti-democratic and inhumane. It was with him that they associated the myth of the “second enslavement” of peasants on collective farms, the creation of the hitherto unheard of institution of “registration” (tying the urban population to a specific place of residence), the groundless arrests of citizens on the streets, and restrictions on entry into capital cities.
How true are these accusations? Let's figure it out.
Until 1932, neither Russia nor the USSR ever had a unified system of internal passports for citizens.
Until 1917, the role and functions of a passport were reduced primarily to a “travel certificate,” that is, a document certifying the good character and law-abiding nature of a person who left his place of residence.
During the Time of Troubles, the first “travel letters” appeared for “sovereign people” traveling on business. Under Peter I, “travel certificates” became mandatory for all travelers. This was due to the introduction of conscription and poll tax. Later, the passport began to be used as a kind of “tax return”: the payment of taxes or taxes was marked in it with special marks.
Until the end of the 19th century, not only peasants and artisans, but also representatives of the upper classes had neither passports nor any other documents identifying their identity. It was possible to change with complete impunity not only the first and last name, class or age, but even gender. An example of this is the well-known story of the so-called “cavalry maiden” Nadezhda Durova. A married woman, a noblewoman and the mother of a young child, for several years successfully passed herself off as a young man who had fled to the army, against the will of his parents. The deception was revealed only on Durova’s own initiative, and received wide resonance in Russian society.
In Tsarist Russia, a passport was not needed at the place of residence. It should have been received only when traveling 50 miles from home and for a period of more than 6 months. Only men received passports; women were included in their spouse’s passport. The entry in the Russian passport of the 1912 model looked something like this: “He has his wife Avdotya, 23 years old.” Those who came to the city to work or for permanent residence were issued only a “residence permit”, which did not contain any information to accurately identify its owner. The only exceptions were “replacement” (“yellow”) tickets for prostitutes. They were issued at police departments instead of the “residence permit” confiscated from the girl. To make their work easier, the police were the first to paste photographic cards of the owners into this document.
Needless to say, this situation contributed to the emergence of numerous impostors and bigamists, freed the hands of all sorts of swindlers and deceivers, and allowed thousands of criminals and state criminals to escape punishment with impunity in the vast expanses of Russia...
France became the founder of a unified passport system for the entire population of the country. This happened during the Great French Revolution of 1789-1799. With the introduction and strengthening of this system, the concept of a “police state” arose, which strictly controlled all movements of citizens. During World War I, many European countries, due to constant population migrations, also introduced internal passports.
Imagine the surprise of Europe when, after the revolution of 1917 and the civil war in Russia, a whole stream of practically “passportless” emigrants poured in! The so-called “Nansen passports” had to be issued to political refugees (both civilian and military), taking their word for it. The “Nansen passport” confirmed the status of a refugee without citizenship of any state and allowed him to move freely around the world. For the majority of people expelled from Russia, it remained the only document. Russian refugees, as a rule, refused to accept citizenship of any country that had sheltered them.
In Soviet Russia, meanwhile, even greater confusion was happening. In the chaos of the civil war and post-war years, many citizens of the Land of Soviets often continued to exist on “mandates” and “certificates” issued by local authorities, which could easily be transferred from one person to another. The majority of the population remained rural and did not have any documents. Passports of a single Soviet type were issued only for traveling abroad, but only to those who had the right to do so. If in 1929 the poet V.V. Mayakovsky turned out to be “restricted to travel”; it is unlikely that he would have had the lucky opportunity to get a Soviet foreign passport “from his wide trousers!”
How could it happen that by the beginning of the 30s in the USSR the majority of the population did not have passports? It would seem that the totalitarian Soviet regime should have immediately enslaved its citizens according to the scenario of the French revolutionaries. However, having come to power, the Bolsheviks did not take the path of restoring the passport system of Tsarist Russia. Most likely, due to its insolvency and untimeliness: there was no one to distribute “yellow” tickets, and very few people traveled abroad. It took the new government 15 years to create its unified system of internal passports.
By a resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated December 27, 1932, it was decided to establish a unified passport system throughout the USSR on the basis of the “Regulations on Passports.” The resolution clearly indicates the completely logical reasons for the overdue passportization. It was carried out “in order to better account for the population of cities, workers’ settlements and new buildings and to relieve these populated areas of persons not associated with production and work in institutions or schools and not engaged in socially useful labor (with the exception of the disabled and pensioners), as well as for the purpose of clearing these populated areas from hiding kulak, criminal and other antisocial elements.”
The document also indicates the priority of passportization - “first of all covering the population of Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov, Kyiv, Odessa... [hereinafter a list of cities]” and an instruction to “the governments of the union republics to bring their legislation into compliance with this resolution and the regulations on passports” .
Thus, we see that passports were introduced primarily to record the population of cities and workers’ settlements, as well as to combat crime. For the same purposes, passportization also introduced a new concept for Russia - “registration at the place of residence.” A similar control tool - with cosmetic changes - has been preserved in Russia to this day under the name “registration”. It still causes a lot of controversy, but few doubt its effectiveness in fighting crime. Propiska (or registration) is a tool for preventing uncontrolled migration of the population. In this respect, the Soviet passport code is a direct descendant of the pre-revolutionary European passport system. As we see, the Bolsheviks did not invent anything new and “inhumane”.
The introduction of passports in rural areas was not envisaged by the CEC resolution at all. The absence of a passport from a collective farmer automatically prevented his migration to the city, attaching him to a specific place of residence. As for the fight against crime, the indicators of “criminogenicity” of the city and countryside have always been clearly not in favor of the city. In the USSR, a village, as a rule, got by with one local policeman, who knew all his “friends” inside out.
Now people who experienced “democracy” in the 90s no longer need to explain the meaning and purpose of restrictive measures on the part of the Soviet authorities. However, it is precisely the lack of freedom of movement that supporters of the “offended collective farmers” of the USSR period still refer to. An article about collective farms from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, brings the situation to the point of complete absurdity: “When the passport system was introduced in the USSR in 1932, collective farmers were not issued passports so that they could not move to the cities. To escape from the village, collective farmers entered higher educational institutions and pursued a military career.”
Just think what the totalitarian Soviet regime brought to the common peasant! He forced him to enter universities and pursue a military career!
Those wishing to study at a vocational school, enter college or “pursue a military career” were issued passports by the collective farm boards. There was a problem of “just moving to the city,” but it depended not on having a passport, but on the presence of the institution of registration. The state considered it its responsibility to provide every person with housing and a job. The workplace, in addition, required a certain qualification (and here anyone could improve their qualifications at a school or university).
Summarizing the topic of passports, let us once again dwell on the important points. Liberal researchers to this day consider universal passporting of the population a sign of a “police state” and an instrument of state violence against citizens. However, the Soviet passport system of the 30s was not, as we have seen, a unique “totalitarian” invention of the Bolsheviks. Like the passport systems created before it in Russia and Europe, it pursued specific goals. To humiliate city residents by being “counted” and to “enserve” collective farmers in the countryside was not among them. Quite the contrary, the system was aimed at recording and controlling the urban population, preventing crime and maintaining law and order in large cities.
In the 1930s, the victim of street document checks could equally have been an unlucky city dweller who forgot his passport at home, or a farmer who had illegally escaped from a collective farm. The passport system of 1932 did not take any special measures against the peasantry. The rural population, mainly young people, were not given any restrictions in their studies, military careers, or work in newly created enterprises. Let us remember that already in the 1950s and 60s, the mass outflow of rural youth to the city, interrupted by the war, continued. If the peasants were truly “attached” to the land, such a massive escape “for the blue bird of luck” would hardly have taken place. Let us remember that the official date for issuing passports to all collective farmers dates back only to 1974.
Perhaps the Soviet passport system still seems to many today to be inhumane, deprived of freedom and too organized. But the alternative is before our eyes, we have the opportunity to compare: strict registration or uncontrolled migration? The risk of being punished for violating the passport regime - and the risk of suffering at the hands of an illegal, powerless, but also uncontrolled migrant? Cars burning in Paris at night - or the law and order of Minsk? Or we will be able to find our own way to feed the wolves and save the sheep...
Compilation of Elena Shirokova
For the first time, I read the myth that “Soviet peasants,” collective farmers, and rural workers did not have passports in my friend feed from a rather interesting person, National Socialist Yury Krugovyh (yury-krugovyh) in the publication “Serfdom in the USSR.”. .
This article stated that:
“In 1970, a small loophole arose for unpassported collective farmers assigned to the land. In the “Instructions on the procedure for registration and deregistration of citizens by the executive committees of rural and settlement Councils of Working People’s Deputies” adopted that year, approved by order of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, an apparently insignificant clause was made: “In As an exception, it is permitted to issue passports to residents of rural areas working in enterprises and institutions, as well as to citizens who, due to the nature of the work performed, require identification documents.”
- About isotopic traces and once again about electronic passports
This clause was used by all those - especially young people - who were ready to flee from devastated villages to more or less prosperous cities by any means necessary. But only in 1974 did the gradual legal abolition of serfdom in the USSR begin.
The new “Regulations on the passport system in the USSR” was approved by Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated August 28, 1974, No. 677. Its most significant difference from all previous resolutions is that passports began to be issued to all citizens of the USSR from the age of 16, for the first time including village residents and collective farmers. Full certification began, however, only on January 1, 1976 and ended on December 31, 1981. In six years, 50 million passports were issued in rural areas.
Thus, collective farmers were at least equal in rights with city residents.
Then I looked at it as another anti-Soviet slander, but since there was no time to understand the topic, I gave up and decided that I would deal with it a little later. And now, I have found both time and information. And this is the information I want to introduce you to.
It must be said in advance that in more general terms, this myth extends directly to the pre-war USSR. Like, after the war, no one thought about the fight against fists, but before the war, such garbage was in connection with dispossession. Well, okay, let's study history better. So, the main thesis of the anti-Sovietists is that in the USSR, in the countryside and on collective farms, people lived almost in slavery and they did not have passports; we must refute this thesis.
As soon as I started studying the history of the passport system in the USSR, I immediately came across:
COUNCIL OF PEOPLE'S COMMISSARS OF THE RSFSR
DECREE
dated June 20, 1923
ABOUT IDENTITY CARD
3. Identity cards in cities and urban-type settlements are issued by the police, and in rural areas by volost executive committees at the citizen’s place of residence.
4. Every citizen of the R.S.F.S.R. has the right to receive an identity card without distinction of gender, with the exception of the persons specified in Art. 5th.
5. Minors under 16 years of age are included in the identity card of the person or in the lists of the institution whose dependent they are.
11. Institutions specified in Art. 3, are obliged to issue an identity card to a citizen upon his application, provided that the identity of the applicant and the accuracy of the information to be included in the certificate are confirmed by the documents submitted by the applicant.
12. To obtain an identity card, the applicant must present one of the following documents:
1) in cities and urban-type settlements: a) birth certificate (or old metric) birth certificate; b) a certificate of residence from the house management and c) a certificate from the place of work or service;
2) in rural areas: a) registration (or old metric) birth certificate or certificate of residence from the village council.
No matter how much I studied this decree, I never found the words that obtaining an identity card is the responsibility of a citizen, and not his right. That is, if you have nowhere and no need to constantly present your passport, you don’t have to receive it. This explains the very fact that there were no passports, that is, they were, and a little later I will even show you a few photographs of these passports, but not everyone received them.
The next document that regulated the law on identity cards is already:
Resolution of the Central Executive Committee and Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of December 27, 1932 "On the establishment of a unified passport system"
Before citing the next paragraphs from this resolution, it is necessary to say a few words about why, after 10 years, it was necessary to refine and change the system. I answer, industrialization and collectivization have begun. People from the villages moved to the cities in large numbers to work. Changes were taking place in the villages themselves, dispossession and unification into collective farms took place. We will not give a qualitative assessment of these processes. But we must understand that such processes must be controlled by the authorities, they must take place calmly in accordance with a certain order. This is why it was necessary for people to have identity cards.
Everyone entering the city for permanent residence had to submit an application, receive a passport valid for up to 3 years, then register with the house management. And you can get a job. If you don’t do it on time, then the fine is 100 rubles. By the way, registration was required only for those who had passports. Collective farmers lived without any registration.
In 1926, when all these processes were just emerging, the country had 26.3 million urban population and 120.7 million rural population.
In 1939, when all these processes came to their logical conclusion, the urban population was already 56.1, more than doubling. Thanks to the advent of medicine accessible to everyone, the mortality rate in the countryside fell sharply, and births remained the same as before, seven in a row, therefore, despite the huge internal migration (urbanization) from villages to cities, the specific population of villages remained almost unchanged and amounted to 114. 5 million
The process of increasing the urban population and decreasing the rural population continued afterwards and, in fact, is still going on, in 1962, this figure equalized and then the urban population began to predominate. But let's return to our passports.
On the establishment of a unified passport system throughout the USSR and mandatory registration of passports
From the resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars on December 27, 1932.
In order to better account for the population of cities, workers' settlements and new buildings and to relieve these populated areas from persons not associated with production and work in institutions or schools and not engaged in socially useful labor (with the exception of the disabled and pensioners), as well as for the purpose of clearing these populated areas places from hiding kulak, criminal and other anti-social elements, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR DECIDE:
1. Establish a unified passport system throughout the USSR based on the regulations on passports.
2. Introduce a unified passport system with mandatory registration throughout the USSR during 1933, primarily covering the population of Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov, Kyiv, Odessa, Minsk, Rostov-on-Don, Vladivostok...
3. Instruct the governments of the union republics to bring their legislation into conformity with this resolution and the regulations on passports.
Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR M. Kalinin Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR V. Molotov (Scriabin) Secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR A. Enukidze
December 27, 1932
REGULATIONS ON PASSPORTS
1. All citizens of the USSR over the age of 16, permanently residing in cities, workers’ settlements, working in transport, on state farms and on new buildings, are required to have passports.
2. In areas where the passport system has been introduced, the passport is the only document identifying the owner.
All other documents and certificates that served as residence permits are canceled as invalid.
A passport is required to present:
a) upon registration of the passport holder (registration);
b) when applying for a job in an enterprise or institution;
c) at the request of the police and other administrative authorities.
11. Persons who are required to have passports and find themselves without passports or temporary certificates are subject to an administrative fine of up to one hundred rubles.
Citizens who arrived from other areas without a passport or temporary certificate and did not choose a passport or temporary certificate within the period established by the instructions are subject to a fine of up to 100 rubles and removal by order of the police.
12. For living without registration of a passport or temporary ID, as well as for violating the registration rules, those responsible are subject to an administrative fine of up to 100 rubles, and if they repeatedly violate the registration rules, they are subject to criminal liability.
So, as we see, the obligation to obtain passports was not for everyone and not in all regions of the vast Motherland. But everyone had the right to receive a passport, and every person who traveled from a village to a city or to an urban settlement for permanent residence, issued a passport for himself, it was for these purposes that this system was introduced.
So, all these are myths and anti-Soviet lies. Quite a Goebbels propaganda. Everyone could get passports; it was a right for everyone. But this was not an obligation for everyone, and many who lived in the countryside all their lives had no intention of leaving anywhere, and when there was no one to show this passport to, it was simply not issued, and why spend money, this is not a free procedure...
But the most interesting thing is not this at all, but where this whole topic came from, dear comrades. I didn’t immediately think to look at what source Krugovykh was referring to. And now, when I was preparing materials on this topic, of course I decided to look up where the information came from.
Krugovykh himself refers to the following article “70th anniversary of the Soviet passport” - Source arxiv01.php
There is a link in this article almost at the very beginning
Passport system and registration system in Russia
Kronid Lyubarsky
And then it became interesting to me. What kind of Institute of Human Rights is this, I open it, it means their website
Well, of course, NGO, Foreign Agent, grant eater Kovalev, known for his pearl “Democracy is NOT the rule of the majority”
So, it’s not in vain that all sorts of human rights activists receive their grants, they do their job, flood society with myths about Soviet slavery on collective farms, and many, to my regret, are actively pursuing this.
I hope that we have dealt with this myth, not without your dear readers’ help, of course I would like to say a special thank you to Sergei Sokolov (sokolov9686) for his great help with the materials.
