document did not lead to any legal consequences. What was more, because it was not compulsory to have such a document, its value as a document confirming identity was questionable, if only because it did not usually contain a photograph of the holder, nor the kind of written ‘portrait’ that was found in pre-revolutionary passports.31
Thus began a short period when citizens were effectively freed from the necessity to own a passport and they were not tied down to a particular place of residence. Such a situation was suitable for the ideas of the New Economic Policy and helped create the freedom essential for the development of market relations. A passport was needed only if a citizen were travelling abroad. The situation could not even be obstructed by the Resolution of the SNK RSFSR which was published two years later, on 27 April 1925, with the frightening title, ‘On the Registration [Russ: propiska] of Citizens to Live in Urban Settlements’.32 In line with this Resolution, the propiska could be issued on the basis of almost any document (from a trade union card to an employment book), which made it a mere formality. This did not exactly mean that the authorities could not use it to force a person to live in a particular place, but it made doing so very difficult.
Only now was it possible to say that the former passport system was dead. What Lenin had written about in 1903 had been achieved. The passport – which Lenin had described as ‘an outrage against the people’ – had become a thing of the past.33 This was how Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeyev-Resovsky summarized this period in his memoirs:
There was a time in the 1920s, it seems to have been Lenin’s influence [Lenin died in January 1924 – Tr.] … when we began to establish normal relations with other countries. A Soviet citizen could buy a passport for foreign travel for thirty-five roubles and travel and even receive healthcare wherever they wanted. From the winter of 1922–3 until the winter of 1928–9 we had virtually free access to foreign travel … Within the country, the employment book fulfilled the legal role of the internal passport. But for a few years, effectively the period of a five-year plan, we had freedom, more or less.34
Yet only a short time would pass and the passport system would go from being ‘an outrage against the people’ to an essential ‘order of administrative registration, control and regulation of the movement of the population by means of the introduction of the latest passports’.35
Figure 5: Identity document with no end date, issued to Antonina Ivanovna Savelyeva.36 A stamp has been added at a later date stating that a passport was issued to the holder in 1933.
Notes
1 1. Vladimir Lenin, ‘To the Rural Poor’, from Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 6, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964. This quotation accessed via https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1903/rp/5.htm#v06zz99h-398, 5 April 2020.
2 2. [According to the Julian Calendar by which Russia was still operating. This was 24 November by the Gregorian Calendar, to which Russia switched on 14 February 1918. – Tr.]
3 3. https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/events/revolution/documents/1917/11/10.htm, accessed 5 April 2020.
4 4. Albert Baiburin, ‘Iz predystorii sovietskogo pasporta…’.
5 5. Sobraniye Uzakonenii raboche-krest’yanskogo pravitel’stva…, p. 78. The resolution itself, called ‘The need for visas in passports for entry into Russia’, was signed on 2 December 1917 by Leon Trotsky.
6 6. [At this point the NKVD RSFSR was responsible for policing, but not the secret police, which was under the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VeCheKa, often abridged to Cheka). The NKVD RSFSR was disbanded in 1930. In 1934 the USSR NKVD was formed and became the new name for the secret police. – Tr.]
7 7. Sobraniye Uzakonenii raboche-krest’yanskogo pravitel’stva…, p. 89. Resolution of 5 December 1917, signed by Grigory Petrovsky.
8 8. Yury Felshtinsky, K istorii nashey zakrytosti…, p. 7.
9 9. [The VeCheKa (often abridged to Cheka) was the first secret police service of the Soviet period, on a number of occasions renamed, most notably as the NKVD and from 1953 the KGB. – Tr.]
10 10. State Archive of the Russian Federation (henceforth GARF) Fond 393, Opis’ 15, Delo 1A, List 38.
11 11. Sobraniye Uzakonenii i rasporyazhenii raboche-krest’yanskogo pravitel’stva RSFSR (henceforth SU RSFSR), No. 73, Article 792, pp. 893–4.
12 12. English translations from the 1918 Constitution to be found at https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/constitution/1918/, accessed 5 April 2020.
13 13. Ibid., p. 893.
14 14. Ibid.
15 15. The role of ration cards in the history of the Soviet state is a separate and very interesting subject. They continued to be used even after the introduction of the passport in 1932. And it was only in the late Soviet period that ration cards and passports changed places. In 1990 citizens started to receive both foodstuffs and non-food products only by showing their passport. ‘On 10 January 1990, new trading rules came into force in Leningrad, under which certain goods could be purchased only on production of the passport. Among these goods were meat and meat products; tobacco goods; animal fats; cheese; and citrus fruits. On the list of non-food products there were eighteen different items.’ Sergei Karnaukhov, ‘Pokhorony yedy…’, p. 639.
16 16. SU RSFSR, No. 73, Article 792, p. 894.
17 17. Ibid.
18 18. Kodeks zakonov o trudye…, p. 34.
19 19. Ibid., Appendix to Article 80.
20 20. Dekret VTsIK, ‘O vvedenii trudovykh knizhek v g.g. Moskve i Petrograde’ (‘Decree on the Introduction of Employment Books in Moscow and Petrograd’), SU RSFSR, No. 28, p. 315.
21 21. Ibid.
22 22. Devyaty s”yezd RKPb, ‘Protokoly’, March–April 1920, Moscow, 1960, p. 48.
23 23. In 1924 ‘employment cards’ appeared, and in 1926 ‘employment lists’ were introduced. Instead of employment books, workers were given certificates. Finally, on 15 January 1939, identical employment books were introduced for workers and those employed in all state and cooperative establishments (by way of the Resolution of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR passed on 20 December 1938, ‘On the Introduction of Employment Books’). These documents are still used today with no significant changes. However, until 1955 it was obligatory to show in Soviet passports the place of work, job title and wages received; in other words, to a certain extent the passport duplicated the employment book. And in reality, this is exactly what it was from 1932 to 1938. For more on the history of employment books, see Yu.V. Tsarenko, ‘Trudoviye knizhki…’; Alexandr Malakhov, ‘Knizhka bytiya…’.
24 24.
