Registration as Privilege: The Moscow Residence Permit as a Mark of Privilege in the Russian Empire, 1881–1905

Abstract

The internal passport and residential registration system of the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation (propiska) is usually seen as an innovative feature of a totalitarian Stalinist government, designed to facilitate the surveillance and control of population movement. Even historians of Russia will point to the 1932 introduction of the internal passport and the establishment of closed cities (rezhimnie goroda) as an integral part of the totalitarian communist state.1 However, the system of internal passports and permits for residence in cities under Stalin was a reintroduction and adaptation of a practice that had long been a preoccupation of the Tsarist state: the granting of the privilege of residence in the major cities of the empire. Under the Tsars this system of limitations upon mobility and residence had been linked to the institutions of serfdom, the needs of taxation and conscription, and the granting of privilege by the autocrat. Privilege was a basic feature of the political and social structure of the autocratic state and was seen as a gift of the tsar to ensure that each group could carry out its service to the autocrat.2 The residence permit was a significant privilege of the Tsarist state, which was simply reintroduced into the Stalinist state and adapted to accommodate current conditions.