SOVIET PASSPORT SYSTEM BEFORE 1932
A few days after the October coup, the passport system of the Russian Empire was essentially declared invalid. On November 11 (24), 1917, the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) and the Council of People's Commissars (SNK) “On the destruction of estates and civil ranks” was promulgated:
"St. 1. All estates and class divisions of citizens that existed in Russia until now, class privileges and restrictions, class organizations and institutions, as well as all civil ranks are abolished.
Art. 2. All ranks (nobleman, merchant, tradesman, peasant, etc.), titles (princely, count, etc.) and names of civil ranks (secret, state, etc. councilors) are destroyed, and one common one is established for the entire population of Russia , the name of citizens of the Russian Republic."
Since the passport system was based on class division (there were different accounting rules and different “residence permits” for different classes), the decree that abolished it practically destroyed the previous passport system. Moreover, its destruction occurred precisely when the dynamics of population movements (due to war and revolutionary upheavals) was the highest, that is, when the second principle (a person’s attachment to a certain place) stopped working. As a result, the previous passport system (that is, the system of accounting and control of the empire’s population) collapsed. Having successfully destroyed the internal passport system, the new government first became concerned with erecting barriers between Soviet Russia and the rest of the world. Already on December 2, 1917, Trotsky issued an order to “visa passports” upon entry into the RSFSR. From now on, entry into Soviet Russia was allowed only to persons who had passports certified by the only Soviet representative abroad in those days, Vaclav Vorovsky, who was in Stockholm. Three days later, “until further orders,” the People's Commissar of the NKVD, Grigory Petrovsky, ordered that citizens of states that had fought with Russia be prohibited from leaving the RSFSR without the permission of local councils.
With the end of the civil war, the fight against “labor desertion” subsided somewhat. The transition to NEP required a different strategy in relation to the “labor reserves”. The principle of strict assignment of labor to enterprises became a brake on the implementation of plans for economic recovery. This, apparently, can explain the sharp change in the attitude of the authorities towards the system of control and registration of the population (and above all, the working population). By the law of January 24, 1922, all citizens were granted the right of free movement throughout the territory of the RSFSR. This right was also confirmed in Article 5 of the Civil Code of the RSFSR. Moreover, the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR dated July 20, 1923, “On Identity Cards,” which was soon issued, opened with a unique article:
“Government bodies are prohibited from demanding from citizens R.S.F.S.R. mandatory presentation of passports and other residence permits, which restrict their right to move and settle on the territory of the R.S.F.S.R. […]
A short and completely unique in modern Russian history began the so-called legitimation period, when in essence people were freed from both the need to have a passport and from being tied to their place of residence. This order was consistent with the principles of the new economic policy, ensuring freedom of development of market relations. In the legitimation system, a passport becomes a mandatory document only when a citizen travels abroad.
The years 1928-1929 turned out to be turning points. At this time, the NEP was ended and a course towards industrialization and complete collectivization was announced. The country was plunged into a severe food crisis. Hunger began. Huge masses of rural residents sought salvation from starvation in the cities. This movement could only be stopped by a new enslavement of the rural population. It was introduced in 1932 in the form of the Soviet passport system. Of course, its introduction was not dictated solely by the fact that in the famine of 1931-1932 the authorities sought to cut off the rural population from the cities. The transition to a planned economy presupposed the presence of an established system of accounting and control of the labor force. And of course, passportization has become the most important tool for “cleansing” the population of large cities and, more broadly, “security zones.”
A.K. Bayburin. To the prehistory of the Soviet passport (1917--1932)
INTRODUCTION OF 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 (except for the disabled and pensioners), as well as for the purpose of clearing these populated areas from hiding kulak, criminal and other antisocial 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 on the basis of 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, Kiev, Odessa, Minsk, Rostov-on-Don and Vladivostok.
3. Instruct the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR to establish the timing and order of introduction of the passport system in all other areas of the USSR.
4. 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 (SKRYABIN)
Secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR
A. ENUKIDZE
Resolution of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated December 27, 1932 “On the establishment of a unified passport system in the USSR and mandatory registration of passports”
POET'S VIEW
as if
grimaced
Mr.
Mr. official
red-skinned passport.
like a bomb
like a razor
double-edged
like a rattlesnake
two meters tall.
meaningfully
porter's eye
at least things
will give you away for free.
questioningly
looks at the detective
to the gendarme.
With what pleasure
gendarme caste
whipped and crucified
what's in my hands
hammer-fingered,
sickle
Soviet passport.
I would be a wolf
bureaucracy.
To the mandates
there is no respect.
to hell with their mothers
any piece of paper.
from wide legs
duplicate
priceless cargo.
envy
citizen
Soviet Union.
V.V. Mayakovsky. Poems about the Soviet passport.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOVIET PASSPORT
The unified passport system, introduced in 1932, was changed and improved in subsequent years in the interests of strengthening the state and improving services to the population.
A notable stage in the history of the formation and activities of the passport and visa service was the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of October 4, 1935 “On the transfer to the jurisdiction of the NKVD and its local bodies of foreign departments and tables of executive committees,” which until that time were subordinate to the bodies of the OGPU.
On the basis of the Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated October 4, 1935, departments, departments and groups of visas and registration of foreigners (OViR) were created in the Main Police Directorate, police departments of republics, territories and regions.
These structures operated independently throughout the 30s and 40s. Subsequently, they were repeatedly united with the passport offices of the police into single structural units and separated from them.
To improve the identification of a citizen of the USSR, from October 1937 they began to stick a photographic card into passports, the second copy of which was kept by the police at the place where the document was issued.
To avoid counterfeiting, GUM introduced special ink for filling out passport forms and special documents. mastic for seals, stamps for attaching photo cards.
In addition, it periodically sent out operational and methodological guidelines 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 could confirm the authenticity of the documents.
Since August 8, 1936, in the passports of former prisoners “disenfranchised” and “defectors” (who crossed the border of the USSR “unauthorized”), the following note 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.”
The resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated June 27, 1936, as one of the measures to combat a frivolous attitude towards family and family responsibilities, established that upon marriage and divorce, the corresponding mark was made in passports by the registry office.
By 1937, the passportization of the population in the localities determined by the government was completed everywhere; the passport apparatus completed the tasks that were assigned to them.
In December 1936, the passport department of the Main Directorate of the RKM of the NKVD of the USSR was transferred to the external service department. In July 1937, local passport offices also became part of the departments and departments of the workers' and peasants' police departments. Their employees were responsible for the day-to-day maintenance of the passport regime.
At the end of the 30s, significant changes were made to the passport system. Administrative and criminal liability for violating the rules of the passport regime has been tightened.
On September 1, 1939, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the Law “On General Military Duty,” and on June 5, 1940, by order of the People’s Commissar of Defense of the USSR, guidelines were announced that determined the tasks of the police in the field of military registration...
In the military registration desks of police departments (in rural areas and towns in the corresponding executive committees of the Soviets), primary records of all those liable for military service and conscripts, personal (qualitative) records of ordinary and junior commanding personnel of the reserve were kept.
Military registration desks carried out their work in close contact with regional military commissariats. This work continued until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War (June 22, 1941).
Development of the passport system in the context of strengthening the administrative-command system in the USSR and during the period of perestroika in Russia
“NEW SERDFORTHY” IN THE VILLAGE
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 entered into agreements with collective farmers. - V.P.) abandon their collective farms” 10. 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.
V. Popov. Passport system of Soviet serfdom
In the last twenty years, the story about poor collective farmers turned into serfs by the bloody Stalinist regime has set teeth on edge. The cartoon about the good Khrushchev, who allowed the issuance of passports to peasants, also stuck in my teeth. They say that Stalin forbade peasants from leaving villages for cities without issuing them an identity card. The talkers spreading this schizophrenic nonsense not only cannot show any legal or regulatory act that confirms their point of view, but they refuse to explain why the Soviet government, desperately in need of workers on great construction projects, should punish itself. (During the years of Soviet power, 1,300 cities were formed, that is, 200% of the pre-revolutionary number; meanwhile, over the same period, approximately 75 years, before the revolution, the increase was only 10%. The scale of urbanization amounted to 60% of the total; to at the time of the revolution, 20% lived in cities, 80% in the countryside, and by 1991, 80% in the cities, 20% in the countryside.) How and when did 60% of the population of the entire country move from the village to the city, if they were not allowed in, schizophrenics leave no answer. Well, let's help them figure it out.
Council of People's Commissars of the USSR
On the issuance of passports to citizens of the USSR on the territory of the USSR
Based on Article 3 of the Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of December 27, 1932 on the establishment of a unified passport system throughout the USSR and mandatory registration of passports (S. Z. USSR, 1932, No. 84, Art. 516), the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR decides :
1. Introduce a passport system for the entire population of cities, workers’ settlements, settlements that are regional centers, as well as in all new buildings, industrial enterprises, transport, state farms, in settlements where MTS are located, and in settlements within 100-kilometer Western European border strip of the USSR.
2. Citizens permanently residing in rural areas (except for those provided for in Article 1 of this Resolution and the established zone around Moscow, Leningrad and Kharkov) do not receive passports. Population registration in these areas is carried out according to settlement lists by village and town councils under the supervision of district departments of the workers' and peasants' militia.
3. In cases where persons living in rural areas leave for long-term or permanent residence in an area where the 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 1 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.
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR
V. MOLOTOV (SKRYABIN)
Manager of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR
I. MIROSHNIKOV
The above document regulates the receipt of a passport by a resident of a rural area when moving to the city. No obstacles are indicated. According to paragraph 3, village residents who decide to move to the city simply receive passports for their new place of residence. There is also another document that introduces criminal liability for leaders who prevent peasants from leaving for cities for temporary work.
Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated March 16, 1930 on the elimination of obstacles to the free movement of peasants to latrine trades and seasonal work
206. On the removal of obstacles to the free movement of peasants to latrine trades and seasonal work.
In some areas of the USSR, local authorities, as well as collective farm organizations, prevent the free movement of peasants, especially collective farmers, to waste trades and seasonal work.
Such unauthorized actions, disrupting the implementation of the most important economic plans (construction, logging, etc.), cause great harm to the national economy of the USSR.
The Council of People's Commissars of the USSR decides:
1. Resolutely prohibit local authorities and collective farm organizations from in any way preventing the departure of peasants, including collective farmers, to waste trades and seasonal work (construction work, logging, fishing, etc.).
2. District and regional executive committees, under the personal responsibility of their chairmen, are obliged to immediately establish strict monitoring of the implementation of this resolution, bringing its violators to criminal liability.
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR A. I. Rykov.
Manager of the Affairs of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and Service Station N. Gorbunov.
It should be noted that the Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated March 17, 1933 “On the procedure for otkhodnichestvo from collective farms” established that a collective farmer, without permission, without an agreement registered with the collective farm board with the “economic body” - the enterprise where he got a job, left the collective farm, subject to expulsion from the collective farm. That is, no one forcibly kept him on the collective farm, just as they didn’t keep him in the village. It is obvious that the passport system was considered by the Soviet authorities as a burden. The Soviet government wanted to get away from it, so it freed the main part from passports - the peasants. Not issuing them passports was a privilege, not an infringement.
Collective farmers did not need a passport to register. Moreover, peasants had the right to live without registration in cases where other categories of citizens were required to register. For example, Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated September 10, 1940 No. 1667 “On approval of the Regulations on Passports” established that collective farmers, individual farmers and other persons living in rural areas where a passport system has not been introduced, arriving in the cities of their region for a period of up to 5 days, live without registration (other citizens, except military personnel, who also did not have passports, were required to register within 24 hours). The same resolution exempted collective farmers and individual farmers temporarily working during the sowing or harvesting campaign on state farms and MTS within their district, even if a passport system had been introduced there, from the obligation to reside with a passport.
The rate of migration of the population of the USSR from rural areas to cities.
Population Census of the USSR Total urban and rural population moved to cities
million million % million % million %
1926
147 26,3 18 120,7 82
1939
70,5 56,1 33 114,4 67 30 17,3
1959
208,8 100 48 108,8 52 44 21
1970
241,7 136 56 106 44 36 15
1979
262,4 163,5 62 99 38 27,5 10,5
This is how another vile bourgeois slander against Soviet society, upon contact with the facts, fell apart like a rotten stump.
Polivanov O.I.
06/09/2014
Links:
http://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/Resolution_of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR_dated_04/28/1933_No_861
http://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/Resolution_of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR_dated_10.09.1940_№_1667
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_Census_USSR_(1926)
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_Census_USSR_(1939)
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_Census_USSR_(1959)
http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/ussr_nac_70.php USSR (1970)
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_Census_USSR_(1979)
On December 27, 1932 in Moscow, the chairman of the USSR Central Executive Committee M.I. Kalinin, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR V.M. Molotov, Secretary of the USSR Central Executive Committee 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 “dispossessed” people who fled in fear from the countryside from “collectivization”1 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” and consolidate the forced division of Russian society into “pure” and “sinners”.
Now everyone 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 was divided into two unequal parts - the one where the passport system was introduced, and the one where it was not.
In passportized areas, the passport was the only document “identifying the owner.” All previous documents that previously served as residence permits2 were cancelled, and mandatory registration of passports with the police “no later than 24 hours upon arrival at a new place of residence” was introduced. An extract 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 changing their place of residence or exchanging passports; prisoners; those arrested and held in custody for more than two months; deceased.
In addition to brief information about the owner (first name, patronymic, last name, time and place of birth, nationality), the passport must indicate: 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”, etc., “handicraftsman”, “pensioner”, “dependent”, “without specific occupations”), 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 were required to require passports (or temporary certificates) from all those hired and to indicate on them the time of entry to work. The resolution instructed the Main Directorate of the Workers' and Peasants' Militia under the OGPU of the USSR to submit instructions to the Council of People's Commissars on “implementing the resolution” within ten days3. The minimum period for preparing the instructions, which is mentioned in the resolution, indicates that it was drawn up and agreed upon at all levels of the highest party and state apparatus of Soviet power long before December 1932.
An analysis of legislative documents of the Soviet era shows that most of those that regulated the main issues of the life of the people were never fully published in the open press. Numerous decrees 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 - internal affairs, justice, finance, procurement, were marked “not for publication”, “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 determined openly and publicly - “for the people”. And the second, secret, which was the main one, because it instructed all government bodies how to understand the law and practically implement it. That is why 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 and Leningrad (including a 100-kilometer strip around them). Kharkov (including a 50-kilometer strip around the city) for January-June 1933. Then, during the same year, it was planned to complete work on the rest of the country subject to passportization. The territories of the three above-mentioned cities with 100-50-kilometer stripes around them were declared regime. 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 following cities were included in the regime: Kiev, Odessa, Minsk, Rostov-on-Don, Stalingrad, Stalinsk, Baku, Gorky, Sormovo. Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk, Grozny. Sevastopol, Stalino, Perm, Dnepropetrovsk, Sverdlovsk, Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Nikolsko-Ussuriysk, Spassk, Blagoveshchensk, Anzhero-Sudzhensk, Prokopyevsk, Leninsk, as well as settlements within the 100-kilometer Western European border strip of the USSR. In these regime areas it was forbidden to issue passports and reside to all 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 a period of no more than 10 days, where they were granted the “right of unhindered residence” and issued passports.
The secret section of the instructions on the issuance of passports of 1933 established restrictions on the issuance of passports and registration in sensitive areas for the following groups of the population: “those not engaged in socially useful labor” in production, in institutions, schools (with the exception of the disabled and pensioners); “kulaks” and “dispossessed kulaks” 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”, i.e. those who crossed the border of the USSR without permission (except for political emigrants who have the appropriate certificate from the Central Committee of the Moscow 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 ( this is what the Soviet government called those who often changed jobs in search of a better life - V.P.), or were fired for disorganizing production,” i.e. again, those who ran away from the village before the start of “complete collectivization”; “disenfranchised”, i.e. deprived of voting rights by Soviet law - the same “kulaks”, people “using 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 of the above groups4.
Since the Soviet national economy could not manage without the labor of specialists, “exemptions from the law” were made for the latter and they were issued passports if they could provide “certificate of their useful work from these enterprises and institutions.” The same exceptions were made for those deprived of voting rights 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 made for those not engaged in “socially useful labor” and deprived of voting rights, if they were natives of regime areas and permanently resided in them. Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 440 of March 16, 1935 canceled this temporary “concession.” Below we will dwell on this issue in more detail.
For registration, new arrivals in sensitive areas were required to provide, 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 living space for which a visitor was going to register turned out to be less than the established sanitary norm (in Moscow, for example, the sanitary norm was 4-6 m2 in dormitories and 9 m2 in state houses), then he was denied registration.
As we have shown, initially the number of regime areas was small - it was a new thing, the OGPU did not have enough hands for everything at once. In addition, it was necessary to give people the opportunity to get used to it, so as not to provoke mass popular unrest, and to direct spontaneous migration in the direction desired by the regime. By 1953, the regime was extended to 340 cities, localities and railway junctions, to the border zone along the entire border of the country with a width of 15 to 200 km, and in the Far East up to 500 km.
At the same time, Transcarpathian, Kaliningrad. The Sakhalin region, Primorsky and Khabarovsk territories, including Kamchatka, were completely declared regime areas5. The faster the city grew and more industrial facilities were built in it, a large number which were part of the military-industrial complex, the sooner its transfer to a “regime area” was carried out. Thus, from the point of view of the freedom to choose a place of residence in one’s native country, industrialization led to the rapid forced division of the country’s territory into large and small “zones”.
Regime cities, “cleansed” by the Soviet government of all undesirable “elements,” gave their residents guaranteed income and housing, but in return they demanded “hard work” and complete submission to the new “socialist” ideology. This is how a special type of “urban man” and “urban culture” was developed, loosely connected with its historical past.
I understood this misfortune and truthfully described it back in 1922 - ten years before the introduction of the passport system! - Sergey Yesenin:
“City, city! you're in a fierce fight
He dubbed us as carrion and scum.
The field is freezing in long-eyed melancholy.
Marveling at the telegraph poles.
A sinewy muscle at the devil's neck,
And the cast iron road is easy for her.
Well, so what?
It's not the first time for us
And get loose and disappear."
The poet gave a historically accurate and Christianly meaningful picture of the devastation of the Russian land. He showed that a creature with a “devilish neck” rules the country, that he has turned the land into an industrial swamp along which a “cast iron road” is laid. And the main thing is captured: all of Russia is a construction site, sucking in people who for the new owners of the country are only “carrion” and “scum.” This is where the end result can be guessed - the people will have to “lose their power and disappear.” Even today, the majority, reading these verses, are not inclined to attach serious importance to prophetic foresight, viewing the verses as a lyrical longing for a “fading village.”
The rural population was subjected to especially humiliating enslavement, because... 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 remaining citizens of the great country living in rural areas did not receive passports. Both decrees established a long, fraught procedure for village residents to obtain passports if they wanted 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 district or city labor departments.” peasant militia at the place of his former residence for a period of 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 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 collective farm boards to “exclude from the collective farm those collective farmers who, without permission, without a registered in the board of the collective farm, agreements with economic authorities (this was the name of the representatives of the administration who, on behalf of Soviet enterprises, traveled to villages and concluded agreements with collective farmers. - V.P.) abandoned their collective farm”6.
The need to have a contract in hand before leaving the village is the first serious barrier for collective farmers. Expulsion from the collective farm could not greatly frighten or stop people who had personally experienced the hardship of collective farm work, grain procurement, 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 registration of passports of collective farmers-otkhodniks entering work in enterprises without contracts with economic authorities” was adopted. The traditional term “otkhodniks” was supposed to veil the mass exodus of peasants from the village in front of those who carried out the secret decree and in front of future historians, so that less attention was paid to the most essential.
The resolution of September 19, 1934 determined that in passport-certified areas, enterprises can hire collective farmers who went on leave without an agreement with the economic authorities, “only if these collective farmers have passports received at their previous place of residence and a certificate from the collective farm board about its consent to collective farmer’s waste (emphasis added - V.P.).” Decades passed. Instructions and regulations on passport work, people's commissars and ministers of internal affairs, and the country's leaders changed, but this decision - the basis for assigning peasants to collective farm work - retained its practical force7.
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 that “persons living in rural non-passported areas, regardless of where they travel (even if they travel to an unpassported rural area) are required to obtain passports before departure, at their place of residence for a period of one year”8.
Prior to this, the law obliged village residents to obtain passports only when traveling to a “passported area.” Of course, even then the authorities understood that peasants were moving 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.
Therefore, they sought to move 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 had to look for a place out of the way, go to a place where no one knew them, and try to get new documents in order to hide the past. In any case, moving for permanent residence from one rural area to another was in 1933 - March 1935 a kind of “legal” way of escape, which the law did not prohibit.
After the adoption of the decree in February 1935, those who had no hope of a tolerable life in their native village - almost all the peasants who suffered from “collectivization” and did not resign themselves to collective farms - were, as before, forced to flee from their homes. Why? According to the above police circular, local Soviet authorities, including an informant network in the village. were obliged to take under surveillance all new arrivals to the countryside after April 15, 1935 and remove from it those who arrived without passports.
The circular did not explain where undocumented fugitives should be removed, i.e. left 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 any, even illusory, hopes for a quiet existence. After all, “collectivization” with its forced eviction of “kulaks”, brutal grain procurements, hunger, and lawlessness of local authorities fully showed the peasant his collective farm future. The fact of fleeing from the collective farm could hardly have gone unnoticed by the village authorities, because directly testified to “unreliability.”
There was only one way out - to run further, to where, according to people’s ideas, the enslavement of the village had not yet reached its maximum, where at least the slightest hope loomed. Therefore, the true meaning of the amendment to the passport law (Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 302 of February 27, 1935) 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, and to build a better life for themselves through the exploitation of ordinary collective farmers. There remained those fooled by the regime, who fell for generous promises, but did not find the courage to go against them; there remained people who, due to age, family circumstances or physical injury, could not escape and, finally, those who, back in 1935, understood that you could not escape far from Soviet power.
True to its well-written rule (everything that really relates directly to the life of the people must be hidden from them), the government did not publish a new resolution. 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, and then they could 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 collective farmers could quit their jobs at their own request and freely “walk” around the country. The chairman of the collective farm well understood this “political moment” and his task - “to hold on and not let go.”
We have already indicated that formal rights to obtain a passport were also reserved for residents of “non-passported areas.” This was determined by the government decree of April 28, 1933. When reading this document, an ordinary person might get the impression that obtaining a passport at the district (or city) police station was the most common thing, but only peasants uninitiated in all the intricacies of the matter could think so.
In the very instructions on passport work, put into effect on February 14, 1935 by order No. 0069 of its People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR G. Yagoda, there were a lot of legal snags, outwardly (in form) contradictory, but included in the document deliberately for that reason. to give representatives of local authorities (from the chairman of a collective farm or village council to the head of the district police department) full opportunity for unlimited arbitrariness in relation to the ordinary collective farmer.
The only “restriction” that could arise was that “higher interest” when Industrial Moloch again opened his insatiable mouth wide, demanding new victims - then the local Soviet “princeling” was obliged to forget about tyranny for a while and not interfere with the peasants leaving for the city according to the so-called “organizational recruitment”, i.e. to fall under the next prong of the ruthless Machine for churning out “Soviet people” from Orthodox Russian people.
Let us give a small example from the times of the “thaw”. According to the secret resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers No. 959-566 ss of May 18, 1955, on the territory of the RSFSR (with the exception of the northern regions), citizens of military age were conscripted to work at enterprises and construction sites of the USSR Ministry of Construction. In order not to disrupt the state event, the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs instructed its subordinate bodies to “unhindered issuance of passports to persons of this category (conscripts - V.P.). living in an uncertified area, sent to work at the specified enterprises and construction sites”9.
Paragraph 22 of the instructions for passport work 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 the obligatory 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.)10.
Paragraph 24 of the same instructions indicated 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 a “waste”, otherwise why include a special clause about this in the instructions? But it was an appearance.
In the instructions in the section “Issue of passports to persons leaving rural areas”, paragraph 46 prescribed: “Persons permanently residing in rural areas where passporting is not carried out, and leaving for a period of more than five days in an area where passporting is carried out, or entering work in industrial enterprises, new buildings, transport, state farms are required to obtain passports at their place of residence before leaving (before entering work).” And then Article 47: “The persons specified in Article 46 are required to submit to the police all documents (this means including a certificate from the place of work, i.e. permission from the collective farm board to “leave” - V.P.) necessary to obtain a passport (see Art. 22), as well as a certificate from the collective farm board (and individual farmers - a certificate from the village council) about vacation leave”11.
Twice in different forms, so that it is clear to everyone without exception, in one sentence it is emphasized that all peasants (collective farmers and individual farmers) are required to leave the village for a period of more than five days to have a certificate from the local authorities, which was practically the main document on the day you receive your 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 “owls”. secret." Therefore, when they encountered it, the ancient legal norm sounded especially cynical to people: ignorance of the law does not exempt from punishment under it.
(To be continued)
Vasily Popov, Candidate of Historical Sciences
NOTES
2 In the country since 1919, the identity document of a citizen of the RSFSR has been labor
books Since 1924, identity cards began to be issued for a period of three years. Since 1927, the legal force of identity cards extended to such documents as birth or marriage certificates, certificates of residence from house administrations or village councils, service IDs, trade union, military, student cards, and university graduation documents. See: Shumilin B.T. Hammered. sickle... M.. 1979.
3 GARF. F. 9401. He. 12. D. 137. L. 54-138.
4 Ibid. L. 59-60. According to police reports, by April 20, 1933, in Moscow and ten other capitals and large cities of the country, 6.6 million passports were issued and 265 thousand people were denied documents. Among the outcasts, the police identified 67.8 thousand “escaped kulaks and dispossessed kulaks.” 21.9 thousand “disenfranchised”. 34.8 thousand “not engaged in socially useful work.” See: GARF. F. 5446. Op. 14a. D. 740. L. 71-81.
5 GARF. F. 9401. Op. 12. D. 233. T. 3. B.n.
6 Collection of laws and orders of the Workers' and Peasants' Government of the USSR. No. 21. Art. 116.
7 GARF. F. 5446. Op. I. D. 91. L. 149. Despite that. that the October 1953 regulation on passports
legalized the issuance of short-term passports to “otkhodniks” for the “duration of the contract”, collective farmers
well understood the relative value of these documents and regarded them as formal
permit for seasonal work. Therefore, they followed the established practice of twenty years and...
In order not to have to deal with the police again, they took certificates from the boards of collective farms and village councils.More
five years after the introduction of so-called short-term passports for collective farmers, in 1958.
The USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted numerous facts “when citizens recruited in rural non-
sports terrain for seasonal work, are not provided with short-term passports, and
are exported outside the regions, territories and republics... based on certificates from rural Soviets or collective farms.”
See: GARF. F. 9401. Op. 12. D. 233. T. 2. B.N.
8 GARF. F. 9401. Op. 12. D. 137. L. 237-237 vol.
9 GARF. F. 9415. He. 3. D. 1447. L. 99.
10 GARF. F. 9401. Op. 12. D. 137. L. 80-81.
The origin of the first links in registering and documenting the population in Rus' dates back to 945. And for the first time, the requirement for an identity card was legally enshrined in the Council Code of 1649: “And if anyone goes to another State without a travel document without permission for treason or some other bad thing, then he will be firmly sought out and executed by death.” “And if it turns out during the investigation that someone traveled to another State without a travel certificate, not for the sake of foolishness, but for commercial purposes, he will be punished for that - beaten with a whip, so that no matter what, it would be discouraging to do so.”
1717 May 28. Travel document issued by the Arkhangelsk city commissar Pereleshin to the carpenters of the Kineshma settlement Ivan Zatykin and Vasily Kalinin
It turns out that the system for issuing foreign passports was thought out and developed in our country almost 350 years ago. As for internal passports, their need was not felt for almost a century.
Under Peter I, strict state control over the movement of the population led to the creation of a passport system, i.e. As soon as they opened a window-port to Europe, they introduced passports in the sense of documents for the right to pass through a gate, outpost, or port.
Since 1719, by decree of Peter I, in connection with the introduction of conscription and capitation tax, the so-called “travel letters” became mandatory, which from the beginning of the 17th century. used for domestic travel.
In 1724, in order to prevent peasants from evading the payment of the poll tax, special rules were established for them when absent from their place of residence (in fact, such special rules were in force for peasants in Russia until the mid-1970s). It turned out to be a very significant curiosity: the first passports in Russia were issued to the most powerless members of society - serfs. In 1724, the tsar’s “Poster on poll tax and other things” was published, which ordered that everyone who wanted to leave their native village to earn money should receive a “subsistence letter”. It is no coincidence that this decree was issued at the very end of the reign of Peter I: the great reforms that affected society to the very bottom led to a sharp increase in mobility - the construction of factories and the growth of domestic trade required workers.
The passport system was supposed to ensure order and tranquility in the state, guarantee control over the payment of taxes, the performance of military duties and, above all, the movement of the population. Along with the police and tax functions, the passport from 1763 until the end of the 19th century. also had a fiscal significance, i.e. was a means of collecting passport duties.
Since the end of the 19th century. Until 1917, the passport system in Russia was regulated by the law of 1897, according to which a passport was not required at the place of permanent residence. However, there were exceptions: for example, it was required to have passports in capitals and border cities; in a number of localities, factory workers were required to have passports. It was not necessary to have a passport when absent from the place of permanent residence within the district and beyond its borders for no more than 50 versts and no more than 6 months, as well as for persons hired for rural work. The wife was registered in the man's passport, and married women could obtain separate passports only with the consent of their husbands. Unseparated members of peasant families, including adults, were issued a passport only with the consent of the owner of the peasant household.
As for the situation with foreign passports before 1917, the police kept it under constant control. So, in the first half of the 19th century. It was difficult to go abroad. However, nobles were allowed to leave for several years, representatives of other classes - for shorter periods. Foreign passports were expensive. An announcement about each person leaving was published three times in official newspapers, and foreign passports were issued only to those to whom there were no “claims” from private individuals and official bodies.
Passport book 1902
After the victory of the Soviet regime, the passport system was abolished, but soon the first attempt was made to restore it. In June 1919, mandatory “work books” were introduced, which, without being called that, were actually passports. Metrics and various “mandates” were also used as identification documents:
The Far Eastern Republic (1920-1922) issued its own passports. For example, this passport is issued for only one year:
An identity card issued in Moscow in 1925 already has space for a photograph, but it is not yet mandatory, as is expressly stated:
The certificate is valid for only three years:
As can be seen from the number of stamps and records in those days, personal documents were treated more simply. Here is the “registration of a certificate” at the place of residence and marks “sent to work”, about retraining, etc.:
Passport issued in 1941, valid for 5 years
The present uniform passport system was introduced in the USSR by a resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars on December 27, 1932, since during industrialization it was necessary to administratively record, control and regulate the movement of the country's population from rural to industrial areas and back (village residents did not have passports !). In addition, the introduction of the passport system was directly determined by the intensification of the class struggle, the need to protect large industrial and political centers, including socialist new buildings, from criminal elements. It should be noted that the famous “Poems about the Soviet Passport” by V. Mayakovsky, written in 1929, are dedicated to the international passport and are not related to the passport system established in the early 1930s.
Photo cards appeared in passports, or rather, space was provided for them, but in reality, photographs were pasted only if technically possible.
Passport from the 1940s. Pay attention to the entry in the “social status” column at the top right - “Slave”:
From that time on, all citizens who had reached the age of 16 and were permanently residing in cities, workers’ settlements, urban-type settlements, new buildings, state farms, locations of machine and tractor stations (MTS), in certain areas of the Leningrad region, throughout the Moscow region were required to have passports. region and other specially designated areas. Passports with mandatory registration at the place of residence were issued (if you changed your place of residence, you had to obtain a temporary registration within 24 hours). In addition to registration, passports recorded the citizen’s social status and place of work.
Indefinite passport 1947 issued by L.I. Brezhnev:
Passport from the 1950s. in the column social status - “dependent” there was the following official term:
Here it should be specially noted that initially “prescribe”, i.e. to register, it was necessary to register the passport itself, and only then did the popular everyday legal consciousness connect the concept of registration exclusively with the person’s personality, although “registration”, as before, was carried out in the passport and, by law, related exclusively to this document, and the primary right to use living space was established by another document - a warrant.
Military personnel did not receive passports (for them, at various times, these functions were performed by Red Army soldiers’ books, military tickets, and identity cards), as well as collective farmers, whose records were kept according to settlement lists (for them, the functions of passports were performed by one-time certificates signed by the chairman of the village council, collective farm, indicating the reasons and directions of movement - almost an exact copy of the ancient travel document). There were also numerous categories of “disenfranchised”: exiles and “unreliable” and, as they said then, “deprived of their rights” people. For various reasons, many were denied registration in “regime” and border cities.
An example of a village council certificate - “collective farmer’s passport”, 1944.
Collective farmers began to slowly receive passports only during the “thaw”, in the late 1950s. This process was completed only after the approval of the new “Passport Regulations” in 1972. At the same time, passports, whose alphanumeric codes meant that the person was in camps or was in captivity or occupation, also became a thing of the past. Thus, in the mid-1970s, there was a complete equalization of the passport rights of all residents of the country. It was then that everyone, without exception, was allowed to have exactly the same passports.
During the period 1973-75. For the first time, passports were issued to all citizens of the country.
From 1997 to 2003, Russia carried out a general exchange of Soviet passports of the 1974 model for new, Russian ones. A passport is the main document identifying a citizen on the territory of the Russian Federation and is issued by internal affairs bodies at the place of residence. Today, all Russian citizens are required to have passports from the age of 14; upon reaching the age of 20 and 45, the passport must be replaced. (The previous, Soviet, passport, as already indicated, was issued at the age of 16 and was unlimited: new photographs of the passport holder were pasted into it when he reached the age of 25 and 45). The passport contains information about the citizen’s identity: last name, first name, patronymic, gender, date and place of birth; Notes are made about registration at the place of residence, relation to military duty, about registration and divorce, about children, about the issuance of a foreign passport (general civil, diplomatic, service or sailor’s passport), as well as about blood type and Rh factor (optional) . It should be noted that the Russian passport does not have the “nationality” column, which was in the passport of a citizen of the USSR. Passports are produced and issued according to a uniform model for the entire country in Russian. At the same time, the republics that are part of the Russian Federation can produce passport inserts with text in the state languages of these republics.
December 27, 1932 Resolution of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR No. 1917 “On the establishment of a unified passport system in the USSR and mandatory registration of passports.”
The internal Soviet passport was invented in the 16th year of Soviet power for obviously criminal purposes.
Few people remember this today.
At the end of December 1932, the USSR government issued a decree “On the establishment of a unified passport system in the USSR and mandatory registration of passports.” In January 1933, passportization of the population and the activities arising from it began. And the events that followed were serious. The country was divided into two parts - in some territories a passport system was introduced, in others - not. The population was divided accordingly. Passports were received by “citizens of the USSR permanently residing in cities, workers’ settlements, working in transport, on state farms and new buildings.” Those who received passports were required to register within 24 hours.
In the first six months - from January to June 1933 - passportization was carried out with mandatory registration of passports of Moscow, Leningrad (including a hundred-kilometer zone around them) and Kharkov (with a fifty-kilometer zone). These territories were declared regime areas. All other previously existing certificates and residence permits became invalid in restricted areas.
The year 1932, which ended with the introduction of passports, was a terrible year. The first five-year plan ended with catastrophic results for the population. The standard of living fell sharply. There is famine throughout the country, not only in Ukraine, where millions are dying of starvation. Bread at an affordable price can only be obtained with cards, and only working people have cards. Agriculture was deliberately destroyed by collectivization. Some peasants - dispossessed peasants - are forcibly transported to five-year construction sites. Others flee to the cities on their own to escape hunger. At the same time, the government sells grain abroad to finance the construction and purchase of equipment for military factories (one Stalingrad tractor, that is, tank, factory cost 40 million dollars paid to the Americans). The experiment on using prisoners in the construction of the Belomor Canal was successfully completed. The scale of economic exploitation of prisoners is growing, and their number is correspondingly growing, but this method cannot solve all problems.
The government is faced with the task of stopping unplanned movements across the country of the population, which is considered exclusively as a labor force. Firstly, it is necessary to secure in the village that part of the peasants that is necessary for food production. Secondly, to ensure the ability to freely pump surplus labor from the countryside and from cities to Five-Year Plan construction sites located in remote places where few people wanted to go of their own free will. Thirdly, it was necessary to cleanse the central cities of socially unfavorable and useless elements. In general, it was necessary to provide planning authorities with the ability to manipulate large masses of the population in order to solve economic problems. And to do this, it was necessary to divide the population into groups convenient for manipulation. This problem was solved by the introduction of the passport system.
***
The meaning of an internal passport went far beyond a simple identity document. Here is what was said about this in the strictly secret minutes of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated November 15, 1932:
"...About the passport system and unloading cities from unnecessary elements.
In order to relieve Moscow and Leningrad and other large urban centers of the USSR from unnecessary institutions not related to production and work, as well as from kulak, criminal and other antisocial elements hiding in the cities, it is necessary to recognize it as necessary:
1. Introduce a unified passport system throughout the USSR with the abolition of all other types of certificates issued by one or another organization and which until now gave the right to registration in cities.
2. Organize, primarily in Moscow and Leningrad, an apparatus for recording and registering the population and regulating entry and exit."
At the same meeting of the Politburo, it was decided to organize a special commission, which was called the PB Commission on the passport system and unloading cities from unnecessary elements. Chairman - V.A. Balitsky.
The passport indicated the social origin of the owner, for which a complex classification was developed - “worker”, “collective farmer”, “individual peasant”, “employee”, “student”, “writer”, “artist”, “artist”, “sculptor” ", "handicraftsman", "pensioner", "dependent", "without specific occupation". The passport also contained a note about employment. Thus, government officials had the opportunity to determine from the passport how its owner should be treated.
The “nationality” column looked relatively innocent and rather meaningless in comparison with the “social status” column, especially since it was filled out from the words of the passport owner. But if the fate of the ethnic deportations that overwhelmed the USSR in the next few years was planned by Stalin even then, it is clear that its only meaning is repressive.
In January 1933, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR approved the "Instructions on the issuance of passports." The secret section of the Instructions established restrictions on the issuance of passports and registration in secure areas for the following groups: “those not engaged in socially useful labor in production” (with the exception of the disabled and pensioners), “kulaks” who “escaped” from villages and “dispossessed” people, even if they worked in enterprises or institutions, “defectors from abroad” who arrived from other places after January 1, 1931 “without an invitation to work”, if they do not have certain occupations or often change places of work (are “flyers” ) or “were fired for disrupting production.” The last point included those who fled the village before the start of “complete collectivization.” In addition, passports, and therefore registration, were not received by “disenfranchised” (people deprived of voting rights, in particular “kulaks” and nobles), private traders, clergy, former prisoners and exiles, as well as family members of all these groups of citizens.
Violinist of the Vakhtangov Theater Yuri Elagin recalls this time: “Our family was classified as alien and class-hostile elements for two reasons - as a family of former factory owners, i.e. capitalists and exploiters, and, secondly, because my father was an engineer with a pre-revolutionary education, i.e. he belonged to a part of the Russian intelligentsia, highly suspicious and unreliable from a Soviet point of view. The first result of all this was that in the summer of 1929 we were deprived of voting rights. We became “disenfranchised”. Category "disenfranchised" among Soviet citizens is a category of inferior citizens of the lowest rank. Their position in Soviet society... was reminiscent of the position of Jews in Hitler's Germany. Civil service and the professions of intelligent labor were closed to them. One could not even dream of higher education. Disenfranchised were prime candidates for concentration camps and prisons.In addition, in many details of everyday life, they constantly felt the humiliation of their social position. I remember what a grave impression it made on me that, shortly after we were deprived of our voting rights, a fitter came to our apartment... and took away our telephone set. “The dispossessed are not entitled to a telephone,” he said briefly and expressively...”
Yuri Elagin himself was lucky. As an “artist,” he was included in the Soviet elite, received a passport and retained his Moscow residence permit. But his father did not receive a passport in 1933, was expelled from Moscow, arrested and died in a camp two years later. According to Elagin, about a million people were expelled from Moscow at that time.
And here is the data from the secret certificate of the Workers' and Peasants' Militia Department under the OGPU to the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Molotov, dated August 27, 1933, "On the results of certification of the cities of Moscow and Leningrad." From January 1, 1932 to January 1, 1933 Moscow's population increased by 528,300 people. and reached 3,663,300 people. The population of Leningrad increased during this time by 124,262 people (reaching 2,360,777 people).
As a result of passportization in the first 8 months of 1933, the population of Moscow decreased by 214,000 people, and Leningrad by 476,182 people. In Moscow, 65,904 people were denied passports. In Leningrad - 79,261 people. The certificate clarifies that the given figures “do not take into account the declassed element, local and newcomer, and the kulaks who escaped from the village and lived illegally...”
Among those who were refused - 41% arrived without an invitation to work and lived in Moscow for more than 2 years. "Dispossessed" - 20%. The rest are convicted, “disenfranchised”, etc.
But not all Muscovites applied for a passport. The certificate states: “Citizens who received a notice of refusal to issue passports after the expiration of the 10-day period established by law were mainly removed from Moscow and Leningrad. However, this did not resolve the issue of removing those without passports. Moscow and Leningrad were littered with a huge number of declassed elements living When passporting was announced, they, knowing that they would certainly be denied a passport, did not show up at all at passport points and took refuge in attics, basements, sheds, gardens, etc.
To successfully maintain the passport regime... special passport offices have been organized, which have their own inspection and secret information in the houses. Passport offices conduct rounds, raids, checks of house managements, barracks for seasonal workers, places where suspicious elements gather, illegal shelters...
These operational measures detained the following people without passports:
in Moscow - 85,937 people.
in Leningrad - 4,766 people,
sent as extrajudicial repression to camps and labor camps. The bulk of those detained were fugitives from the Central Black Earth Region and Ukraine, who were engaged in theft and begging in Moscow."
This was just the beginning of the most terrible decade in the history of the USSR.