The Soviet Passport: The History, Nature and Uses of the Internal Passport in the USSR by Albert Baiburin

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Soviet Passport: The History, Nature and Uses of the Internal Passport in the USSR by Albert Baiburin Mark Edele Baiburin, Albert. The Soviet Passport: The History, Nature and Uses of the Internal Passport in the USSR. Translated by Stephen Dalziel. New Russian Thought. Polity Press, Cambridge and Medford, MA, 2021. xvii + 451 pages. Illustrations. Appendix. Glossary. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £35.00: $39.60. This book explains everything about the Soviet internal passport you ever wanted to know — and a lot beside. Based on both published and archival sources as well as in-depth interviews with former Soviet citizens about their relationship with and experience of the passport, this book provides a comprehensive history of one of the central documents of Soviet life. In part, this is a history of the tenacity of an institution. Passports were a central tool to try and control population movement under the old regime. As such, they were construed as a means of repression and abolished with the revolution. However, the new regime had as much need to control the circulation of people around this vast empire; and soon efforts to stem this relentless mobility reappeared. At first, as befits a Marxist dictatorship, these were class based rather than universal. Employment booklets were the most important of these, but various other forms of identification were also used to track who was legitimately travelling where. Most did not work very well in practice. And as both mobility and general chaos increased with Stalin's revolution from above at the end of the 1920s and early 1930s a crisis point was reached. In response, the Soviet state introduced internal passports in 1932, which were patterned in many ways on their old regime predecessors. These were, again, not universal documents uniting the citizenry, but issued only to the 'deserving', that is, those of the right social background. 'Passportization' was intimately linked to the system of residency registration (propiska), which regulated who could live in the cities (or in particular cities) and who could not. Hence, the passport became a sign of social status in Soviet society. Collectivized peasants were not eligible for one, which showed their lower-rank position in the Soviet social hierarchy. Only in 1974 was 'passportization' extended to the entire population. Contrary to commonly held assumptions, however, this reform did not free the peasants from their serfdom-like ties to the collective farm: despite holding passports, they could still only leave if the farm administration gave them written permission. Even those who had a passport were not created equal. The passport noted your social origin which, if it was not the 'right one' (i.e., poor peasant or working class) caused problems; your nationality (which, if you were part of 'enemy nations' such as Poles or Germans could cause serious grief, while if you were from a non-Russian but otherwise respected minority you could get special privileges); whether or not you had a prison record; and if you were [End Page 774] excluded from living in 'regime cities' (such as Moscow or Leningrad) or near the border zones. The passport thus anchored the individual in a complex web of stratification which tied the population to the state. Given that your life chances depended on where you were located in this web, the issuing, re-issuing and renewing of passports was enmeshed in complex games of individuals trying to manipulate the system to their least disadvantage. These are described in detail in part three of the book. The Soviet Passport is an inherently multi-disciplinary book. Albert Baiburin is a trained historian teaching in the anthropology department of the European University in St Petersburg and working in the Anthropology and Ethnography Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His history training shows in his careful use of sources while anthropology pushes him to theorize his topic much more than most historians would. This tendency adds to the bulk of the volume as does the overall, tripartite structure: first comes a general history of the Soviet passport regime — the best extant overview over this topic. It is followed by a detailed consideration of the same history from the perspective of the state...