The Soviet Passport. Albert Baiburin

your place of abode, which, in Matthews’ opinion, inevitably led to the introduction of the passport system.

      It is also worth noting the authoritative study by Valentina Chernukha of the development of the Russian passport over the course of two centuries, from 1719 to 1917.⁴⁹ This was based on archival and previously published sources, and was published in 2007. As well as examining the historical evolution of the passport system, particular attention is paid in Chernukha’s book to the role of the passport as a means of police control, which makes it an invaluable manual for future examination of this subject.

      It is only recently that the Soviet passport has become an object of study, with the opening of the archives in the 1990s. There are, of course, earlier works by Soviet historians, but their ideological content tended to give them a very particular focus.⁵⁰ Much post-Soviet research takes a completely opposite view (for example, the title of an article by Valery Popov speaks volumes: ‘The passport system of Soviet serfdom’).⁵¹ In those Soviet-era works, the Soviet passport (and more widely, the passport system) is seen in the broad context of the liberation of the individual and the creation of the new Soviet person; in the post-Soviet ones, it is seen as playing a role in the suppression of the individual and the use of the passport as a repressive measure.

      We should point out that the repressive functions of the Soviet passport system and the way it was used to control the movement of the population within the country have been widely researched.⁵² Many of these studies (especially Russian research of the post-Soviet period) interpret the system inherently as one in which there is an anonymous, active state at work on one side, and on the other, an equally anonymous but passive society which is obliged to carry out all the orders of this state. Of course, the way in which the Soviet passport system functioned was much more complicated than this, and it cannot simply be squeezed into such a template without mentioning that the details that were gathered by the registration of passports were used not just for coercive purposes.⁵³

The circumstances surrounding the introduction of the passport system in the 1930s still need examining. What role did the passport system play in ‘establishing order’? What did its geographical spread look like? And one specific question: was it deliberately aimed at restricting the mobility of the rural population of the USSR? These and other issues are discussed in the works of Nathalie Moine and David Shearer, which have proved invaluable for me in studying these subjects.⁵⁴ I shall expound my views on these questions in chapter 3.

      Sheila Fitzpatrick’s works were of particular importance in examining the various categories of passports for purposes of identification, in particular her article on ascribing people to a particular class. In this, she examined the efforts of the Soviet authorities to construct society by ‘branding’ people according to distinguishing social signs, with the intention of exposing ‘socially undesirable elements’.⁵⁵ The invention of ‘classes’ by the Soviet authorities turned out to be so productive that it largely determined how identity was viewed in the passport, both in social terms and for the different ethnicities across the country.⁵⁶ Indeed, particular attention has been paid to researching the introduction and strengthening of national affiliations.⁵⁷

      Even from such a short description of research that has already been carried out, it will be clear that the history of the Soviet passport system has been well studied. But this is not the case with the passport itself; neither its contents, nor, moreover, how those for whom it was intended took part in its creation and use.

8.

      In examining the Soviet passport I start from the supposition that the way in which the passport system functioned was governed not just by official rules. Of no less importance is the way in which these rules were understood and assimilated and how they were strengthened. Furthermore, different groups and associations developed particular ways to interpret official demands. Such an approach is based on certain specifics of the way the law operated in the USSR. In the Soviet period it was typical for two parts of the official law to exist side-by-side. One part contained, conventionally speaking, decrees and resolutions that were public and available for all to see; the other was hidden, containing information by way of all sorts of instructions, orders and directives, stamped with notices such as ‘Not for publication’, ‘Not to be made public’, ‘Secret’, ‘Eyes only’ and so on. Naturally, the most significant ones were those hidden resolutions in which state bodies were instructed how to interpret an order or how to put it into practice.⁵⁸ The hidden part included documents that were directly related to a citizen’s obligations. The citizen, however, may have been totally unaware of the existence of these documents; nevertheless, he or she was expected to carry out the instructions contained therein.

In this information drought, another, unofficial, legal system sprang up. This came about because of the way in which Soviet citizens reacted to the demands that were being forced upon them to adapt to the new norms and models of behaviour. This second legal system (Legal System-2) developed through genuine and imagined dialogues with government officials at all levels. The hidden official law led to the creation of unofficial laws in situations where nothing was actually being demanded, but citizens guessed that some sort of official rules or norms existed. In such cases, as I shall try to show, the unofficial law was not complete or uniform for the whole population. It contained variations, which were worked out by particular groups (such as limitchiki or former spetsposelentsy).⁵⁹

      As a result of this, the passport system to some extent contained elements of these two laws in the way in which it functioned.

      If we look at the passport as a document, we can see in it the bureaucratic version of the person (‘the documented “I”’), thanks to which the person is given the right to exist in the eyes of the state. In many ways it was only thanks to the passport that the person became a member of society. At first glance, there was no alternative to this transformation: everyone was pressed into the same mould; however, within the framework of this mould there were gaps that were filled in by the unofficial law.

      The fundamental question that I have tried to answer is, how did the Soviet passport system operate in both its official and its unofficial variations (Legal System-1 and Legal System-2)? The way in which the prescribed identity was created and spread by the authorities will be emphasized; and also how it was accepted, assimilated and ‘corrected’ by the Soviet people. Such an approach to trying to understand the Soviet passport and the passport system, it seems to me, demands the investigation of a few more precise questions:

      1 How did the tradition come about in the pre-Soviet period of describing the person (the ‘passport portrait’)?

      2 What did the official Soviet ‘passport person’ look like (Legal System-1)?

      3 How did Soviet citizens relate to their official image and the rules of the passport system, and how did they adapt it to suit themselves (Legal System-2)?

      The three parts of this book are devoted to investigating these questions. To answer the first question, one has to examine the social history of the passport in pre-revolutionary Russia and in the Soviet Union, emphasizing how the institutions of power developed the passport portrait. It is important to note that the functioning of the passport is not the same as the establishment and maintenance of control, and at different times the passport system had different meanings. These issues will all be considered in the first part of this work.

The second part is devoted to the official bureaucratic view of the passport as a document, examining its contents: its designations, its properties and its design. Here I discuss the passport as a document: how it was created and improved according to the model for identification that was applied to make the official image of the Soviet person. This has never been examined previously; but it is essential to explain the evolution of the ideas of the official ‘authors’ of this document as to how they perceived the Soviet ‘passport person’.

      Finally, in the third part I look at the role that