the New Economic Policy demanded a different strategy in relation to the ‘labour reserves’. The idea of forcing people to remain at their workplace became a serious impediment to attempts to carry out plans to improve the economy. The plan to exchange the passport (or identity document) for the employment book was abandoned. From now on these two documents, which were so vital in Soviet life, were to develop separately.23
Like the employment book, attempts to make the passport ‘the main document’ also saw some false starts. This is hardly surprising, given that this was tried against the background of the Civil War which was raging across Russia. The ‘Instruction on the Order for Distributing Passports and Temporary Certificates’ can be considered as the first attempt to do this. This was issued by the Main Directorate of the Soviet Workers’ and Peasants’ Militia of the NKVD in 1919. Passport booklets were designed on the basis of this Instruction, and they were then distributed by the various district police directorates in towns and the countryside. The passport had to contain the following details: (1) date of birth or age; (2) type of employment; (3) marital status; (4) children under the age of sixteen years; (5) liability for compulsory military service; (6) attitude to Article 65 of the Constitution (see below); (7) signature of the passport holder. Should the holder so wish, their photograph could be included.
Article 65 of the Constitution concerned people who had been denied voting rights.24 These people were supposed to receive a passport with a special note under point six above. Only those for whom it was essential to have a passport were issued with one. However, this project, too, was not fulfilled, although a few individual passports were issued.25
Throughout the country, people continued to use a wide variety of documents as proofs of identity: old residence permits; passport booklets; birth and marriage certificates; work passes; and all sorts of certificates and warrants issued by different departments of the new authorities. In January 1923, this was how the People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, Alexander Beloborodov, described the situation in a note addressed to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(B):
Since the start of 1922, the NKVD has been faced with the problem of the need to change the existing order on residence permits. The Decree of VTsIK and SNK of 28 June 1919 allowed for the introduction of employment books only in Petrograd and Moscow, whilst making no provision for any kind of documents anywhere else in the Republic, apart from a vague reference in Article 3 to the existence of the passport, on production of which an employment book would be issued. With the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) there was no point in issuing employment books in Moscow or Petrograd; furthermore, the decision to allow private trade and private production made it essential to have a much more exact registration of the urban population, and, consequently, the need to establish order, so that this registration could be carried out fully. On top of this, the practice of de-centralizing the issuing of documents led to the emergence of a wide variety of documents, both in appearance and contents; also, the certificates that were issued were so simple that it was very easy to forge them. This, in turn, greatly hampered the work of the investigating authorities and the militia. Taking all this into account, the NKVD drew up a draft document which, having been agreed with the relevant authorities on 23 February 1922, was passed to the SNK for approval. In the SNK Committee [Russ: Maly Sovnarkom] at its session on 26 May 1922, it was decided that it was pointless to introduce a single residence permit for the RSFSR…. Finally, on 14 September 1922 the question was brought once again before the Presidium of the VTsIK, and on this occasion the issue of the introduction of a single residence permit was put to one side and no directive was issued on this question. As a result, this matter has dragged on for the whole of 1922, yet no decision has been reached. The demand for a standardized document which can be used for identification is so great that in some places they have already begun to come up with their own solutions. Drafts have been drawn up in Petrograd, Moscow, the Turk-Republic, Ukraine, the Karelian Commune, the Republic of Crimea and a whole list of districts. Allowing a variety of identity documents for different districts and areas makes the work of administrative departments much more difficult and creates all sorts of problems for the local population.26
Figure 3: Employment List, issued to Dina Isayevna Zakharina.
(Source: author’s personal archive.)
Apparently, the authorities were not ready to take decisive action to bring order to the system of documentation, especially as a year earlier (by the Law of 24 January 1922) all citizens of the Russian Federation were given the right of unrestricted travel across the whole territory of the RSFSR. This right was enshrined in Article 5 of the Civil Code of the RSFSR.27 Nonetheless, a decree was prepared on the introduction of a single identity document for the whole country (known as the RSFSR VTsIK and SNK Decree of 20 July 1923). The previous decree on the introduction of employment books in Moscow and Petrograd was annulled. The new decree opened with an unusual article:
Government bodies are forbidden to demand that citizens of the RSFSR produce passports or other residence permits which might hinder their right to move or settle within the RSFSR. Note: Passports and other residence permits for Russian citizens within the RSFSR, as well as employment books, which were introduced by the decree of 25 June 1919 of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee and the Soviet of People’s Commissars are annulled from 1 January 1924.28
In case of necessity, citizens could still receive an identity document, but this had become their right, not their obligation. In order to obtain the certificate, a citizen had to produce one out of a number of possible documents: in cities and smaller towns this could be a stamped or just an old birth certificate, house-management certificate, or proof of residence, work or service; in rural areas it was sufficient to show a birth certificate or certificate from the local soviet proving residence. If it were not possible to produce any documentation, the militia would give out a certificate which was valid for enough time for a replacement document to be issued. Article 21 stated that this should be no longer than three months, but in certain circumstances this could be extended by a further three months. Should all documents have been lost and if it were impossible to obtain a copy, an identity document could be issued on the strength of a court resolution, confirming surname, name, patronymic, date of birth and family status.29
The identity document was issued either with no end date or for three years, and contained the following details: surname, name, patronymic of the holder; date of birth; place of permanent residence; occupation (main employment); liability for compulsory military service; marital status; and list of children under the age of sixteen who appeared in the parents’ documents. If the recipient so wished, their photograph could be inserted.
Figure 4: Student’s Certificate from 1918, issued to Ivan Ivanovich Yankovsky by Petrograd University.
(Source: State Museum of Political History.)
It is not difficult to see that the details in the certificate reflected almost exactly the same ones as were in the pre-revolutionary passport. All that is missing is ‘rank or title’ (social standing); but this is simply because these identity documents were issued only to ‘workers’. ‘Non-working elements’ were put into a particular category labelled ‘the disenfranchised’ [Russ: lishentsy]: people who had no political or civil rights. The ‘non-working elements’ included former landowners and merchants; NEPmen;30 petty traders; former police officers, security guards or prison warders; and also former members of the clergy. They were registered on a special list until 1932, and it was only in the Constitution
