The Soviet Passport. Albert Baiburin

The ‘Jewish problem’ this created was solved in a tried and tested fashion: passports were issued only for movement within the Pale of Settlement, the only place Jews (with rare exceptions) were permitted to live. The passport was already used for conscription to the army, police control and tax collection; now, by a manifesto of 15 December 1763, Catherine brought in the ‘passport fee’, which differed depending on the length of validity of the passport, from one to three years.³⁹

      A decree of 23 October 1805, published in the official Gazette, concerned lost passports and also gave information about runaway ‘pashportless people’.⁴⁰ The passport was being handled in an ever more regulated way. In 1812 a new designation was added to the list of compulsory details for the owner of a passport (who, it will be remembered, could be only a man): his marital status. In a uniform manner it had to be stated whether he was married or a widower; and if a widower, after which marriage (i.e., first, second, etc.). This latter point was motivated by a desire to observe the rites of a church wedding (it was found that after peasants had spent long periods working away from their community, there were cases of bigamy).⁴¹ The inclusion in the passport of details about wives and children led to a significant expansion in the number of people who were registered in the document.

Under Tsar Nicholas I (reigned 1825–55), the number of essential details for confirming a person’s identity continued to grow. ‘Leave passes’ for officials, which served as their passports, had the designation, ‘religious denomination’ added to the list of essential details. It should be noted that these new details contained information which could be verified only at the person’s place of permanent residence, but which was useful when it was necessary to establish with greater certainty a person’s identity, since both their marital status and their religious denomination were parts of the written record. Thus, passport details were now linked to other documented information about a person. But this was incidental. The ‘religious denomination’ designation was introduced principally as another category for classifying the population. This was due to the unequal status of different religions in the Empire. Until the passing of the law of 17 April 1905, ‘On the Strengthening of Religious Tolerance’,⁴² religions were divided into three groups: 1. The official religion of the state (Orthodoxy); 2. Religions which were tolerated (Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Paganism); 3. Those which were not to be tolerated (sects such as the Dukhobors, the Molokans, the Sabbatarians or Subbotniks [Russ: Iudeystvuyushchiye] and at certain times the Raskol’niki, or Old Believers).

      Naturally, this meant the authorities could utilize religious belief as a convenient instrument of domestic policy, by drawing up a hierarchy of denominations, which they could use for their own purposes. Religious belief played a particular role in identification strategies. To the question, ‘Who are you?’, the peasants and the average citizen usually answered in one of two ways: either, ‘We are Orthodox’ (or ‘Muslims’ and so on); or ‘We’re locals’ (from, for example, Pskov, or the village of X, and so on). Religious and regional identity was the basis on which imperial patriotism flourished.⁴³ In this, religious belief occupied a special place, as it was the principal consolidating factor. Vladimir Solovyov maintains that the state effectively turned religious belief into an issue of nationality.⁴⁴ It is indicative that the russification of the outer fringes of the Empire at the end of the nineteenth and start of the twentieth centuries was marked out, amongst other things, by the construction of Orthodox churches and the creation of Orthodox parishes.

      Right up until the Soviet period, religious belief was considered to be a far more important feature than a person’s ethnic origin. In the majority of documents, ethnicity is not indicated; if it is required, it is related to belief and mother tongue. (This is exactly what happened in the First Census of the Population of the Russian Empire of 1897, where there was no question about ‘ethnicity’, but there were questions about ‘religious denomination’ and ‘native tongue’.⁴⁵) This was because the most important issues in a person’s life (such as getting married) lay under the auspices of the Church, and there was no unified ‘family code’ for people of all denominations. People needed permission from the hierarchy of whichever religion they belonged to in order to marry. In the majority of cases this meant that spouses had to be of the same faith (or to convert to it). In such a situation, documents that contained details about religious denomination (such as the passport) served as official confirmation that the bearer belonged to a particular religion.

Throughout Europe the attitude to passports changed dramatically in the second half of the nineteenth century. There was much talk about doing away with them altogether. This was linked to the rapid expansion of the railways and the subsequent growth in the mobility of the population. The passport system was clearly hindering progress. This was accompanied by a heated discussion in the press about the rights of man. As a result, the presumption of trust won out. Up until the outbreak of the First World War, there were hardly any passports in Europe (in the sense of identity documents).⁴⁶ Instead of the passport, a system of legitimization was introduced, whereby a citizen could choose whether or not to hold an identity document. A passport became necessary only if one was travelling abroad.

      But in Russia the initial reaction to this new situation was to tighten still further the passport system. Passengers had to show not only permits (or passports) but special certificates issued by the police confirming that, as far as they were aware, there was no impediment preventing this person travelling from, say, St Petersburg to Moscow. This innovation did not last long, as it created unacceptable conditions for passengers. The authorities were forced to ease the restrictions and Tsar Alexander II (reigned 1855–81) removed the necessity to show documents when purchasing railway tickets.⁴⁷

      New rules and demands were issued for various categories of the dependant population to present identity documents, but these inevitably led to chaos and confusion. Even in the eighteenth century it had been recognized that passport rules should be standardized, but in the existing hierarchical social system this was simply an impossible utopia. In the 1830s all of the decrees and resolutions on movement of the population within the boundaries of the Russian Empire which had been issued since the Legal Code of 1649 were brought together in a single ‘Resolution on Passports and Runaways’. They made up the complete fourteenth volume of the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire of the Second Assembly. This did not solve the problem; but at least this Code provided some guidance in this area.

      The first article of the Code pronounced: ‘No-one is to absent themselves from their permanent place of abode without a legal permit or passport’ (a position which had been established under Peter I). The permanent place of abode was considered to be the place where the subject served or where their property was, or where they were registered in the nobles’, city or inspectors’ lists. The clergy were supposed to be living near their churches or in monasteries; merchants where they were registered; peasants and domestic serfs where they were registered for taxes. Other limitations were laid down on the religious or ethnic principle. There were special rules set down for where the Jewish population could live (Articles 16–38). Jews were allowed to live in the seven Western districts and in Bessarabia. Settling in other districts was regulated by legal acts which were constantly changing; one day permission might be granted, on another day refused. This happened also with those wishing to settle in Siberia.⁴⁸

      Nobles who were not in government service could use as passports certificates verifying their noble status. For peasants and the lower middle classes there were three types of passport, which were differentiated by their length of validity and the distance they permitted the bearer to go from their place of permanent residence. Separate categories were created for those with ecclesiastical titles, monks, members of sects such as Raskol’niki and Skoptsy and others. The social and religious delineation of the Empire’s population was strengthened by Article 20 of the Code through the following all-embracing formula: ‘Each level has its own permits or passports, as provided for by the law.’

If travelling from one district to another, all passport holders were obliged to show their passport to any government official they met on the way, and on reaching the gates of a city they were obliged to show their passport