of personal documentation necessary. This was reflected in the entries in the registers of births, marriages and deaths.
Wider documentation led to a marked contrast between the verbal and the written versions of the name, not only formally but in everyday use. The verbal form is changeable and very flexible, while the written form, which appears in documents, demands stability. It is from this time that the two realities of nomenclature begin to exist: the oral and the written (or documented). Clearly, the latter is considered more trustworthy, if only because it is established: it is precisely because the name is documented that official changes to it become possible. The documented name is always the full name, which, as a rule, is not used in everyday practice. Because of this, the two ways of naming people begin to be seen as distinct. The inclusion of the patronymic and surname into the official name simply underlined the specific nature and intentional artificiality of the documented portrait of the person.
It is important to mention the Russian method of presenting a person’s full name: first name, patronymic and surname. The patronymic becomes a part of the full name in official documents only from the time of Peter the Great. From this point it becomes a mark of identification, an indication of who was the closest relative in the male line: the father. Before it was used for identification purposes, people referred to it either to clarify who your relatives were, or to differentiate one person from another if they had the same first name. Under Empress Catherine II (who reigned 1762–96), different forms of the patronymic were laid down in law. Following on from Peter the Great’s Table of Ranks [the table showing the official civil service hierarchy, issued in 1722 – Tr.], the List of Officials [Russ: Chinovnaya rospis’], which was published during Catherine’s reign, indicated that the top five classes should write their patronymic ending in -vich; from the sixth to the eighth they should use only a shortened form of the patronymic; and everyone below that should use only their first name. Because of this, the patronymic became – in a more formalized way than before – a sign of social estate. Now people could judge by the patronymic to which level of society a person belonged. The introduction of the patronymic had a significant social effect on all levels of the population: a single, unified way of presenting the name could not but be taken as a sign of social equality.
The appearance of the patronymic in documents marked not only a more comprehensive description of the individual, but also a change from previous practice, where the patronymic had been used only in very particular circumstances or in special registers. At the same time, the documents created a parallel reality. The principle of a person’s parentage (which the patronymic was designed to show) became extremely important in early identity documents (compare ‘social estate’ and especially ‘ethnicity’, which will be discussed later).
The surname, as an indication of belonging to a particular family or clan, appears at different times at different social levels. Among the upper circles of society (the boyars or the nobility), surnames began to be used in the sixteenth century. Surnames started to appear among soldiers and merchants in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.28 The clergy began to be identified by surnames only in the mid-eighteenth century. The peasantry were given surnames in the mid-nineteenth century, particularly after the Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861. By decree of the Senate in 1888, it became obligatory for everyone to have a surname, which had to be shown in all documents; yet ten years later, according to the census of 1897, only some 25 per cent of the Russian population had one. The process of issuing everyone with a surname was drawn out until the 1930s;29 and, for the peoples of Central Asia and the Caucasus, it even extended to the beginning of the 1940s.30 As well as the surname being used in documents, this led to the habit of calling someone by their surname in everyday contact, which continues to this day.
The use of the full form of the name had a significant social effect, as people from different levels of society were formally placed on the same level by the way they were referred to in documents. But the social significance of first names did not disappear, and as before they indicated a person’s origins. This was considered to be such a significant characteristic of the official portrait that it was always highlighted in papers.
The full name as shown in the passport (as opposed to simply the use of one name) had a dual effect. It did not simply mark out a particular person and separate them from everyone else, but by the patronymic and surname it united them with a particular circle of relatives, by family or clan. This meant that a person could be referred to not only as belonging to a particular circle, but also it spoke of their origins. These two principles – belonging and origins – would have a particular significance in the formation of the passport portrait.
The age of the holder began to appear in identity documents with the introduction of official records of births, marriages and deaths, which were brought in after the Order of 1722 (‘Supplement to the Ecclesiastical Regulations’) on the compulsory use of registers in all parishes of the Orthodox Church throughout the Russian Empire. However, it took a number of decrees from the Holy Synod (in 1724, 1779 and later years) before the registers had a single format. This was finally settled only in 1838. Births, marriages and deaths were recorded in three separate sections, filled out by the priest who had carried out the christening, the wedding or the burial of the parishioner. The register of births included the following details: date of birth and christening; first name and surname; place of residence and religious denomination of the parents and godparents; and whether the birth was within or outside wedlock. Other religions, too, were ordered to keep registers: Lutherans from 1764; Catholics from 1826 (although in practice these had been kept from 1710); Muslims from 1828; Jews from 1835; Raskol’niki [schismatics, the Old Believers who split from the Orthodox Church at the time of the Church reforms in the seventeenth century – Tr.] from 1874; and Baptists from 1879. In practice, the registration of births, marriages and deaths of many of the minority ethnic groups of Siberia and Central Asia did not take place at all, even though the police and local administrations were legally responsible for this. In Turkestan, for example, the registers were supposed to be kept by the ‘people’s judges’, or mullahs. Up until 1905 the registers of the Raskol’niki and Orthodox sectarians and Evangelical Christians were handled by the police.31
Entries in the registers (and later in civil registration) became important parts of the foundation on which the passport system and its use as a means of identification depended, because the details that were recorded here (particularly information about the birth) were the defining ones for identifying the individual. Proof of age was essential not only for establishing identity (it was something entered in the designation ‘identifying features’) but also for determining whether someone was eligible for military service.
Details about the place of residence seem at first glance to be incidental to the individual’s characteristics; but from the introduction of the passport (and not only the Russian passport) they become crucial, since the passport was issued only if it was essential to travel. It may appear, therefore, as if the passport might aid the population’s ability to move around; but in actual fact it worked the other way round, because it was never issued to all those who wanted one. The passport system was designed not so much for those who were given a passport, but rather for those who, for one reason or another, were not given one. A person who did not have a passport was automatically denied a number of rights; and chief among those was the right to travel freely. One of the fundamental purposes of the Russian passport system was to pin a person down to their place of residence by limiting the issuing of passports, thus controlling freedom of movement. Once the ‘place of permanent residence’ was enshrined in a legal category, a separate article was written into the ‘Decree on Passports’. For nobles, officials, honorary citizens and merchants, this was considered to be their place of service or business, and also the place where they owned property. For the lower middle classes and artisans, their place of permanent residence was the town, trading quarter or community where they were registered. For the peasantry, it was their rural community. Those who had no permanent place of residence were considered to be vagrants (runaways or the poor), against whom a constant battle was waged. Furthermore, details
