Читать книгу The Soviet Passport - Albert Baiburin - Страница 27

Historically, the passport has had two fundamental purposes. The first is linked to the rise and spread of documents, which allow the bearer to cross the borders of a particular territory. The second is the creation and use of documents intended to identify the bearer. These two purposes come together in the modern passport. In the first instance, the passport’s history is directly linked with the history of the foundation of the state, and specifically with its territorial definition; the very understanding of the concept of a border becomes relevant when there is some sort of regulation for traversing it. The equivalent of a passport as a permit (or a petition) to cross a border can be found in the earliest sources.¹ The fundamental prerequisite for the appearance and the functioning of such documents (as well as the establishment of the frontiers of the early states), seems to be linked, firstly, to rulers establishing control over the crossing of their territory by ‘aliens’; and secondly, to the relatively high level of the use of written texts.

An important point to bear in mind at the outset is what the term ‘passport’ means to different people. Someone brought up in the Western world immediately associates the word with foreign travel. As we shall see, this was not always the case; but since the late nineteenth century, in the West ‘passport’ has meant only a document allowing the bearer to travel to other countries. This is not the case in Russia. To this day, most Russians associate ‘the passport’ with the identity document which all Russian citizens aged fourteen and over must have. (Until 1997 internal passports were issued only from the age of sixteen.) Only about 20 per cent of Russians today have a passport for foreign travel. Hence, when I call chapter 2 ‘Fifteen Passport-less Years’, I am referring to the lack of an internal passport. Russians who travelled abroad in the early years of the Soviet Union still needed to have a passport for this purpose.

In this chapter I shall be dealing mainly with the purpose of ‘identification’; and not with the passport in general but specifically with the Russian passport (up to the establishment of the Soviet Union). We are talking here about the formation of the official portrait – a visualization of how the person was regarded by the state authorities. However, before going into details, I shall say a few words about the European passport tradition, which, of course, affected developments in Russia.

In the countries of Europe, the increase in the use of passports is part of the overall picture of the early stages of the transition from pre-modern society to the modern, which took place in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.² This transition was marked by the drive to consider a person as an individual and to rationalize his behaviour; by the spread of written communication, costing and planning; and by the creation of indirect forms of control by the state towards its subjects. The passport (or more precisely, its early equivalent) was used both in its ‘direct’ meaning (to pass through a port or through various borders), and also as a way of dealing with vagabonds, the poor and criminals. The increase in the use of passports in Germany in the fifteenth century, and later in other European countries, was connected not only to the growth of trade links and the number of pilgrims, but also with the associated rise in social activity brought about by the increase in the numbers of tramps and people on the run. The passport became the privilege of those who did not wish to be considered as tramps. It performed a defensive function as a kind of certificate of protection. Such a document usually declared that its bearer belonged under the protection of their sovereign (as the modern British passport still does). The invention of the printing-press in the middle of the fifteenth century allowed for the production of standardized documents, and at that time it was virtually impossible to make forgeries.

The use of documents as a means of identifying the bearer comes much later. According to Valentin Groebner, even in the sixteenth century in European countries external signs, perhaps only tangential to the bearer, were still used for this purpose.³ These included, for example, signs of a man’s social status, such as particular details of the clothes of an ambassador or a courier. But such signs could not reliably guarantee the identity of the bearer. The same could be said about letters of recommendation, because as a rule the person presenting the letter was not described in it, and even a mention of their name was no defence against a possible substitution.

It seemed that the only reliable way to solve the problem of identification would be a description of a person’s individual external characteristics. And yet right up until the modern era, the most noticeable element of a person was considered to be their clothing; what one might call their ‘individuality’, if noted at all, concerned their occupation, rather than any particularities of their face or body.⁴ It is no coincidence that the portrait is among the later genres of painting.

Such an impersonal understanding of the individual was typical in Russia also. Perhaps in this sense linguistic details are especially significant. Relevant here is this quotation from Viktor Vinogradov’s unfinished article about the history of the words ‘person’ or ‘personality’ [Russ: lichnost’]:

In old Russian up to the seventeenth century there was no need for a word which would match, however vaguely, the contemporary concept and understanding of ‘personality’, ‘individuality’ or ‘individuals’. In the ancient Russian world view the individual was defined by their relationships: to God; to their local community;⁵ to the various levels of society; to the authorities, the state and their Motherland; and to their specific place of origin; and this was expressed and understood using different terminology. Of course, certain characteristics which marked out a person were clear and were recognized in ancient Russia. For example, whether they lived alone or were isolated from society; the consistency of their character, based on various signs; their ability to concentrate or be motivated by their actions, and so forth. But these were combined with the person’s characteristics and their own peculiarities (such as the person, the people around them, the individual, their soul, perhaps their very being). In both social and artistic terms, up to the seventeenth century the ancient Russian understanding of a single specific person, their individuality or their self-awareness was totally alien, as was the concept of the individual ‘I’ as the bearer of social or subjective signs or characteristics (compare this with the lack of autobiographies or tales of the individual in ancient Russian literature, or the production of portraits and so on).⁶

At the same time, in areas such as the law the individual person was fully recognized: punishments for violations of the law were borne by the individual. What’s more, it is worth keeping in mind the expressly masculine nature of the ‘individual person’, which by default is always taken to be a man rather than a woman. It is indicative that up until the beginning of the twentieth century passports were issued only to men. Women, like children, were included in the man’s passport, as he was the head of the family, and they were not considered as individual citizens with rights. The male nature of the passport defined certain characteristics of the document which would continue into later periods as well, such as the indication of whether the holder was eligible for military service, the absence of any reference to his or her sex, and others.

In the course of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries the individual’s personal characteristics and qualities were gradually revealed more and more; but only in the middle of the nineteenth century did concepts of individuality and personhood reach a fully formed state. In close parallel with this process, it became the norm to use documents to determine who the individual was (in many ways the history of bureaucracy is defined by the development of methods of identification). Indeed, in the drive towards defining the individual, the passport played a highly significant role and one which has yet to be fully evaluated.⁷

It is likely that in the Middle Ages the actual word ‘passport’ signified a permit to pass through the gates of a city.⁸ The word became established in Russian usage only from the beginning of the eighteenth century; but this does not mean that such documents did not exist before this. In order to travel within Russia, foreigners (principally merchants) were issued with letters of passage.⁹ They are known to have been in use at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, but officially they were brought in only by decree of Tsar Peter the First in 1719 (Peter the Great, reigned 1682–1725). As a rule, they contained the following details: name (or sobriquet); starting point of journey; intended destination; title or rank (or occupation); details of any family members travelling with the bearer.¹⁰ It appears that the details contained in the letters of passage for foreigners served as the template for letters of passage for Russian subjects, too. According to the Legal Code enacted by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1649, every subject who travelled abroad was obliged to carry a letter of passage, which the provincial governors were ordered to issue without delay (Chapter 6, Article 2 of the Code). Anyone going absent without leave faced severe punishment. This could mean the death sentence, if it was deemed they were travelling ‘for treasonous or any other kind of evil purpose’ (Article 3).¹¹

All such documents showed: first name and surname (and patronymic); title or rank (or occupation); place of residence; starting point of journey; and destination. Strictly speaking, the first name and title (or occupation) did not assist with establishing who a person was, because such details were not unique. They were there to help present who the person was, rather than give them a specific definition. And even in the earliest ‘proofs of identity’, the place of permanent residence was especially carefully reported to the police. It seems that this was the only detail that could be definitely checked to establish the relationship between the information in the document and the bearer.

Thus, it was either ‘foreigners’ who were provided with documents verifying their identity, or those who travelled to foreign lands. What was more, even among one’s own people, there was a category of ‘unknown’ people, whose number increasingly included runaway villeins, tramps and the poor. The endless pursuit of these people became one of the most important reasons for trying to perfect the registration of the population and control over their movement throughout the whole time that the passport system was in existence. The so-called ‘authorization letters’ issued to villeins who had been granted their freedom were the prototypes of the later ‘internal’ passports.¹² They were not used for crossing borders, but simply gave permission to move within the state. The Code of Law of 1497 gave a legal foundation to the way in which authorization letters could be issued. The owners of the villeins could issue the letters, as could local governors; but even a letter written by the villein’s owner but not counter-signed still had the full force of law (Article 18). It is evident that documents of this type were issued in different ways and some were trusted more than others. Such letters started to be provided not only for villeins who had been granted their freedom, but also for dependant peasants to go and work in other districts (Articles 17, 18, 20, 40–3).¹³ From the middle of the sixteenth century, members of the lower clergy also had to have authorization letters. In 1551, according to the Stoglav (The Book of one Hundred Chapters, recording the decisions of the Russian Orthodox church council held in that year), priests and deacons could be accepted to work in another diocese only on production of an authorization letter issued by the bishop of their previous place of service.¹⁴ At this time such documents indicated the dependant position of those who held them.

As well as the usual details (such as name and place of residence), the authorization letters issued to villeins and peasants had to show who their master was (the one paying their tax) and for how long they were allowed out. The actual bearer of the letter was described as being part of his master’s belongings. On occasion letters were forged, so sometimes the carrier of the letter was asked for more details, so that his identity could be established with more certainty. To deal with this problem, it was written into the Legal Code of 1649 that it was compulsory to describe villeins by their ‘features and identifying marks’.¹⁵ Unfortunately, there are no details available on how this demand worked in practice. Nevertheless, it is from the time of this Order that individual characteristics and distinguishing features begin to be recorded, which from then on will be used to help identify the bearer of the letter.

By the start of the eighteenth century the basic details needed to confirm a person’s identity had been decided upon. The person’s name, title and place of residence (or for serfs, the name of their master) became part of the official ‘portrait’. The addition of information about their physical appearance was another – and a highly significant – step towards the creation of the passport as a genuine document for identification. It is worth emphasizing at this point that the first such documents for travelling within the country were used only for the lower, dependant, layers of the population.

The foundations of the modern Russian passport system were laid down under Peter I. It is in his Decree of 30 October 1719 that the word ‘passport’ (to be exact, pashport) is first used to describe a document confirming identity.¹⁶ The Decree was aimed at clamping down on the increasing number of cases of desertion from the army and navy. A man was considered to be a deserter if he was found away from his place of service without documents (passports) justifying his absence. It entailed strict punishment:

Let it hereby be known that should someone be apprehended whereso’er they be, be they on foot or on horseback, should they have neither pashport or letter giving them right to travel: such persons shall be taken for criminals or thieves. And it is ordered that they shall be sought, so that no more shall they without letters of travel wander from town to town or village to village, neither on foot nor on horseback; but that each should have from his commander a pashport or letter of permission …¹⁷

The role of documents confirming identity rose sharply at the start of the eighteenth century, not only because of the creation of a standing army, but also because of the tax reform: an individual, personal, tax was introduced in place of many private taxes.¹⁸ The Decree of 26 June 1724, known as the Plakat, now referred to the whole tax-paying population of Russia.¹⁹ All those who were obliged to pay the poll tax could now absent themselves from their place of residence only with permission from those responsible for collecting the taxes – the commissar of the zemstvo [rural district in pre-revolutionary Russia – Tr.] or the commander of a military unit based in a particular locality.²⁰ Such documents came to be known as letters of passage [Russ: propuskniye pis’ma].²¹ Letters of passage, which could be issued for up to three years’ duration, were obliged to contain identifying features, ‘of the one who may be allowed out’.

The passport was issued by the zemstvo commissar and stamped with the seal of the regiment to which the recipient of the passport paid his poll tax. The passport had to include the following details: name, title or rank, identifying features, term of absence, point of departure and destination. Any unauthorized migration by the dependant population was severely stamped on. The order was designed to catch anyone on the run (the pashportless ones) and sentence them to penal servitude. The punishment for forging letters for travelling was to have your nostrils split open and be sentenced to penal servitude. By such measures, the authorities tried to guarantee the reliability of identity documents.

However, ‘thieves’ letters’ (forgeries) were widespread. Because of this, just eighteen months after the Plakat was passed, a Decree of Empress Catherine I (Peter the Great’s widow, who ruled from his death in 1725 until she died in 1727) dated 1 February 1726, first raised the issue of a printed form of the passport.²² It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of the change from handwritten passports to printed ones. This was not only because the printed one was far more difficult to forge, but also because the surviving examples of letters of passage show the beginnings of a tendency to make the internal passport uniform in design.²³ Furthermore, printing gave the passport a significantly different status as a document: now it became ‘a state paper’, and it was regarded in a completely different way to the handwritten document.

The passport was the principal instrument used to carry out the most important reforms of the time (those of the tax system and the army) and effectively to build the state. The passport became the main method for the state to exercise control over the population, as it encompassed the prohibition on unauthorized travel, and permission to travel for law-abiding subjects. In the future, all significant reforms carried out at state level depended one way or another on the passport system. The introduction of passports, which was one of the steps that Peter I took towards the creation of a European-style bureaucracy, was the new technology for running the country. The passport was meant to become the most important instrument for ruling the Russian population; and this, indeed, is what it became.

We can probably talk about a ‘passport system’ (as opposed to the issuing of travel documents) only once the system of control and registration of such documents and their owners was in place. Peter is responsible also for the creation of the police force, which was the body given (as Valentina Chernukha puts it), ‘the task of investigating the availability of a passport, handling its registration, checking it and catching those without passports. The passport provided the police with a very simple and convenient document with which to check whether citizens were abiding by the law.’²⁴

Which details did the authorities consider essential to describe a person in documents? Above all, the first name was legally considered the basic identifying factor for a person. This is still the case. And a Russian historical peculiarity was that it had become normal for a person to have not one name, but at least two. For centuries people had used the Christian name they were given at baptism and a secular (or folk) one. The secular name could come from a number of sources. Frequently it was a nickname which played on a person’s character.²⁵ A person was given a second name not straight after birth, but rather later, when certain characteristics became clear. For example, this may be when they had their hair cut for the first time. And it was not only parents who could give the second name, but even ‘the community’. Alternatively, a person’s ‘calendar name’ – taken from the Church calendar – might be used. Examples of this can be found even much later, notably among the Old Believer community: ‘According to his passport, Alexander, but christened Sofrony; Valentina by passport, but Vasilisa by baptism’.²⁶ In any case, the secular name was not chosen merely by chance. It was inspired, as a rule, either by family tradition (such as the name of a grandfather or grandmother), or, if it was a nickname, by some kind of personal characteristic.

Historical anthroponymical research consistently reveals that ‘community’ names were so widespread (up to the end of the nineteenth century) that, ‘even formal documents at the end of the nineteenth century were obliged to use them, otherwise it would have been impossible to determine who was being referred to. It was frequently the case that no-one knew the Christian name given at baptism, because in daily life and even in all documentation the person was known only by their other name.’²⁷ The use of double names persisted not only because of tradition, but also because the name given in baptism and the secular name performed different functions. The Christian name united the bearer with all those who had this name; whilst the secular name was more distinctive, if only because such names were varied; in principle there was an endless list of them. In any case, a person was generally known by only one name, and that was usually the secular one.

For centuries, only the Church could bestow upon someone their official name. The name was determined by the Church calendar. Boys were given the name of the saint whose feast day fell on the eighth day after they were born; girls, the name of the saint whose feast day fell eight days before the day on which they were born. This archaic practice (which is still held by some groups of Old Believers) was replaced by the habit of giving a child the name of the saint on whose feast day they were either born or were christened, or often whose feast day fell between those two days. One way or another, the name was not chosen, but was determined by the calendar, which placed the saints in order by where they came in the prayers for the dead. Such a principle for choosing names ruled out any idea that they were chosen by fate or any other reason. But this process was not governed by Canon Law, and therefore, contrary to popular opinion, was not actually obligatory. Nevertheless, it was followed almost without question by representatives of the lower and middle levels of society (note, for example, the way in which the choice is made of the unusual name ‘Akaky Akakievich’ in Nikolai Gogol’s story, The Overcoat).

The Church waged a battle against folk names for hundreds of years. Formally, it maintained its position over them, because when the first registers of births were introduced in the eighteenth century, under the control of the Church, only names given by the Church were considered official and ‘correct’. The Church had assumed the right to take control over the giving of names (by registering the name and entering it into the birth register). However, it was only in the official sphere that a closed list of names (the names of the saints) was maintained and attempts were made to change the naming process from nicknames to symbolical saints’ names. In practice, both systems existed side-by-side.

The increased use of documents and, consequently, the appearance of the name in the passport marked a fundamental change in the relationship to names. The passport name became the only name by which the person was known in their relations with officialdom. In fact, it is only when the name appeared in documents that it became ‘official’. So it was ‘the passport name’ that made a system 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 about the place of residence made it possible to check other information in the passport and establish whether or not it was true or false (in reality, this was only insofar as the accuracy of the latest entry in the register). The place of residence was automatically shown as an affiliation to the local community, such as the obshchina (see above, note 5).

The first name and the place of residence became the basic method for marking a person out as an individual (and they still are), while the social estate that a person belonged to became an instrument of social categorization.³² A little later, religion and ethnicity would be added to the list. The social estate to which you belonged determined your rights. The divisions were: nobility, clergy, merchants, lower middle class and peasantry. It could be said that such categories were brought in as a means of ranking the different groups of the population, since they were based on the unequal status of these groups. The passport placed its owner into one of these groups, or created and strengthened new classifications (such as ‘ethnicity’; see chapter 5). For identification purposes the name and place of residence were sufficient; but the passport was never simply an identity document. From the very beginning it became one of the principal methods for strengthening the social structure.

Indicating a person’s social status (their title or rank and occupation) became one of the few essential details in identification documents; it was as important as their name. Title became in its own way an ‘inherent’ characteristic of a person (it indicated their ‘breeding’). It was fixed for all time and was determined by their origins – who their parents were and their ancestors before that. It was only when it began to be possible to move to another social estate that the attitude to this characteristic began to change. (After Peter the Great’s time it became possible for people to move up the ranks of service. Change could come about also through education or being granted honorary citizenship.) Whichever way, the indication of a person’s status determined and confirmed the existing social stratification, or (as happened at later periods of Russian history) the social stratification that was being created.³³

A significant step towards the creation and operation of the passport as an identity document was the inclusion of information about a person’s physical appearance in the list of essential details: the designation of identifying features. What had originally been written in the Legal Code of 1649 as a demand to describe ‘villeins by their features and identifying marks’ was made more detailed. For the ‘letters of passage’ issued in Peter’s reign, the instruction was that ‘the one who is being allowed to travel be described by height, face and without fail his identifying features’. In the ‘Regulations on Passports and Runaways’, published in 1832,³⁴ the following identifying features were listed: ‘age; height; colour of hair and eyebrows; colour of eyes; nose; mouth; chin; face; distinguishing features’. However, by the start of the twentieth century, the only details required in residents’ permits and passports were ‘height; hair colour; and distinguishing features’. It is curious that ‘colour of eyes’ had been removed from the list, even though it is impossible to change their colour, whilst hair colour can be changed. This shows again the imperfect logic behind the denomination of distinguishing features, and how the link between these and the referent (the passport holder) was at best tenuous. The emphasis had shifted to other identifying details, most notably the signature (see chapter 5).

During Empress Elizabeth’s reign (1741–62) a detail was added to the passport template which at the time appeared to be simply a technicality: instead of the date being printed, it was written in by hand when the passport was received.³⁵ This introduced a characteristic of modern passports (and other documents): the combination of the printed and the handwritten, which widened the scope for the use of documents. It was one example of how the technical side of the passport’s function was still developing. In 1798 a decree of the Senate introduced templates for different types of passports depending on the length of their validity (one, two or three years);³⁶ and slightly before this (in the same year) it was announced that the validity of a passport could be extended.³⁷

All of these measures were designed for printed passports, but at the same time various handwritten forms continued to exist. Attempts had been made earlier to introduce printed passports (such as Catherine I’s Decree of 1 February 1726), but these did not produce the desired result. There were two main reasons for this: the printed templates were expensive, and they were difficult to produce. As a result, there were great problems trying to expand their use. In 1803, Tsar Alexander I once again addressed the issue of the multiple formats of passports. It was announced that merchants, members of the lower middle class and peasants would not only be issued with an identical type of passport but that it would definitely be a printed one.³⁸ Making printed passports compulsory was undoubtedly prompted by the need to reduce the number of forgeries, but clearly this was not the only reason. Bringing uniformity to official documents illustrated how much state bureaucracy had increased. The bureaucracy was gradually beginning to exert full control over the right to issue passports and, as a result, the establishment of a person’s identity.

Under Empress Catherine II, passports were used as a means of controlling where settlers from European countries could live. After the division of Poland, the Russian Empire acquired territories with substantial Jewish populations. The ‘Jewish problem’ this created was solved in a tried and tested fashion: passports were issued only for movement within the Pale of Settlement, the only place Jews (with rare exceptions) were permitted to live. The passport was already used for conscription to the army, police control and tax collection; now, by a manifesto of 15 December 1763, Catherine brought in the ‘passport fee’, which differed depending on the length of validity of the passport, from one to three years.³⁹

A decree of 23 October 1805, published in the official Gazette, concerned lost passports and also gave information about runaway ‘pashportless people’.⁴⁰ The passport was being handled in an ever more regulated way. In 1812 a new designation was added to the list of compulsory details for the owner of a passport (who, it will be remembered, could be only a man): his marital status. In a uniform manner it had to be stated whether he was married or a widower; and if a widower, after which marriage (i.e., first, second, etc.). This latter point was motivated by a desire to observe the rites of a church wedding (it was found that after peasants had spent long periods working away from their community, there were cases of bigamy).⁴¹ The inclusion in the passport of details about wives and children led to a significant expansion in the number of people who were registered in the document.

Under Tsar Nicholas I (reigned 1825–55), the number of essential details for confirming a person’s identity continued to grow. ‘Leave passes’ for officials, which served as their passports, had the designation, ‘religious denomination’ added to the list of essential details. It should be noted that these new details contained information which could be verified only at the person’s place of permanent residence, but which was useful when it was necessary to establish with greater certainty a person’s identity, since both their marital status and their religious denomination were parts of the written record. Thus, passport details were now linked to other documented information about a person. But this was incidental. The ‘religious denomination’ designation was introduced principally as another category for classifying the population. This was due to the unequal status of different religions in the Empire. Until the passing of the law of 17 April 1905, ‘On the Strengthening of Religious Tolerance’,⁴² religions were divided into three groups: 1. The official religion of the state (Orthodoxy); 2. Religions which were tolerated (Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Paganism); 3. Those which were not to be tolerated (sects such as the Dukhobors, the Molokans, the Sabbatarians or Subbotniks [Russ: Iudeystvuyushchiye] and at certain times the Raskol’niki, or Old Believers).

Naturally, this meant the authorities could utilize religious belief as a convenient instrument of domestic policy, by drawing up a hierarchy of denominations, which they could use for their own purposes. Religious belief played a particular role in identification strategies. To the question, ‘Who are you?’, the peasants and the average citizen usually answered in one of two ways: either, ‘We are Orthodox’ (or ‘Muslims’ and so on); or ‘We’re locals’ (from, for example, Pskov, or the village of X, and so on). Religious and regional identity was the basis on which imperial patriotism flourished.⁴³ In this, religious belief occupied a special place, as it was the principal consolidating factor. Vladimir Solovyov maintains that the state effectively turned religious belief into an issue of nationality.⁴⁴ It is indicative that the russification of the outer fringes of the Empire at the end of the nineteenth and start of the twentieth centuries was marked out, amongst other things, by the construction of Orthodox churches and the creation of Orthodox parishes.

Right up until the Soviet period, religious belief was considered to be a far more important feature than a person’s ethnic origin. In the majority of documents, ethnicity is not indicated; if it is required, it is related to belief and mother tongue. (This is exactly what happened in the First Census of the Population of the Russian Empire of 1897, where there was no question about ‘ethnicity’, but there were questions about ‘religious denomination’ and ‘native tongue’.⁴⁵) This was because the most important issues in a person’s life (such as getting married) lay under the auspices of the Church, and there was no unified ‘family code’ for people of all denominations. People needed permission from the hierarchy of whichever religion they belonged to in order to marry. In the majority of cases this meant that spouses had to be of the same faith (or to convert to it). In such a situation, documents that contained details about religious denomination (such as the passport) served as official confirmation that the bearer belonged to a particular religion.

Throughout Europe the attitude to passports changed dramatically in the second half of the nineteenth century. There was much talk about doing away with them altogether. This was linked to the rapid expansion of the railways and the subsequent growth in the mobility of the population. The passport system was clearly hindering progress. This was accompanied by a heated discussion in the press about the rights of man. As a result, the presumption of trust won out. Up until the outbreak of the First World War, there were hardly any passports in Europe (in the sense of identity documents).⁴⁶ Instead of the passport, a system of legitimization was introduced, whereby a citizen could choose whether or not to hold an identity document. A passport became necessary only if one was travelling abroad.

But in Russia the initial reaction to this new situation was to tighten still further the passport system. Passengers had to show not only permits (or passports) but special certificates issued by the police confirming that, as far as they were aware, there was no impediment preventing this person travelling from, say, St Petersburg to Moscow. This innovation did not last long, as it created unacceptable conditions for passengers. The authorities were forced to ease the restrictions and Tsar Alexander II (reigned 1855–81) removed the necessity to show documents when purchasing railway tickets.⁴⁷

New rules and demands were issued for various categories of the dependant population to present identity documents, but these inevitably led to chaos and confusion. Even in the eighteenth century it had been recognized that passport rules should be standardized, but in the existing hierarchical social system this was simply an impossible utopia. In the 1830s all of the decrees and resolutions on movement of the population within the boundaries of the Russian Empire which had been issued since the Legal Code of 1649 were brought together in a single ‘Resolution on Passports and Runaways’. They made up the complete fourteenth volume of the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire of the Second Assembly. This did not solve the problem; but at least this Code provided some guidance in this area.

The first article of the Code pronounced: ‘No-one is to absent themselves from their permanent place of abode without a legal permit or passport’ (a position which had been established under Peter I). The permanent place of abode was considered to be the place where the subject served or where their property was, or where they were registered in the nobles’, city or inspectors’ lists. The clergy were supposed to be living near their churches or in monasteries; merchants where they were registered; peasants and domestic serfs where they were registered for taxes. Other limitations were laid down on the religious or ethnic principle. There were special rules set down for where the Jewish population could live (Articles 16–38). Jews were allowed to live in the seven Western districts and in Bessarabia. Settling in other districts was regulated by legal acts which were constantly changing; one day permission might be granted, on another day refused. This happened also with those wishing to settle in Siberia.⁴⁸

Nobles who were not in government service could use as passports certificates verifying their noble status. For peasants and the lower middle classes there were three types of passport, which were differentiated by their length of validity and the distance they permitted the bearer to go from their place of permanent residence. Separate categories were created for those with ecclesiastical titles, monks, members of sects such as Raskol’niki and Skoptsy and others. The social and religious delineation of the Empire’s population was strengthened by Article 20 of the Code through the following all-embracing formula: ‘Each level has its own permits or passports, as provided for by the law.’

If travelling from one district to another, all passport holders were obliged to show their passport to any government official they met on the way, and on reaching the gates of a city they were obliged to show their passport or certificates of nobility. Once they finally arrived at their destination, they had to present their documents to the police. Anyone not obeying these rules was liable to arrest and to being sent back to their place of residence. Those who were unable to confirm their identity were charged with vagrancy and exiled to Siberia ‘where they were to settle’. People who were in police custody had a red mark stamped in their passport indicating that they had been under suspicion.⁴⁹ ‘Landlords who accepted travellers on a temporary basis were under an extra form of control, as they had to report to the police the following details about their guests: name, title or rank, place of permanent residence and religious denomination.’⁵⁰

In the second half of the nineteenth century, it was clear that this cumbersome and muddled system was proving to be a serious impediment to Russia’s development. Alexander II created a Passport Commission under the chairmanship of the Interior Minister, Sergei Lanskoy, which was tasked with simplifying the existing passport regime. However, it soon became clear that too much was tied up with the passport system: the social stratification of society; the taxation laws; the recruitment process for the army and much more, not to mention serfdom and the organization of the village communes [Russ: obshchina]. Serious reform of the passport system inevitably threatened to rock the very foundations of society. Nevertheless, the need for it was widely discussed in the press.⁵¹

By this time the state bureaucratic apparatus had become extremely experienced in documenting the individual.⁵² In principle, they were prepared to make changes, especially as they had already begun to do so in other areas (such as the move from recruitment for the army to conscription, which was carried out in 1875). After the reform of 1861 (which, most significantly, abolished serfdom), the most relevant issues involved the hiring of workers. For the first time there was talk of introducing employment books [Russ: trudovaya knizhka] instead of passports for hired agricultural workers and servants (this idea was brought up again in Soviet times).

Finally, in 1894, the ‘Resolution on Residence Permits’⁵³ was introduced, thanks to the work of the Passport Commission, chaired by the Secretary of State, Dmitry Solsky. This Commission had begun its work eight years after the reform of 1861, and was succeeded by the so-called ‘preparatory commission’ which presented the results of its years-long work in the State Council. The Resolution was amended by the ‘Decree on Passports’ in 1903 and particularly the Supreme Decree of 5 October 1906, but its basic provisions remained unaltered until 1917.

It is indicative that the title ‘residence permit’ showed that where a person lived – and the place which he could leave only with the appropriate documentation – was the first point of identification.⁵⁴ The residence permit was a document by which the police could keep tabs on the population and was used in conjunction with the passport. According to the Resolution, people who were living at their place of permanent residence were not obliged to have a passport; it was sufficient that they were registered there, or with their place of service or their community.⁵⁵ The residence permit was issued for the homestead and it contained details of all the family members.⁵⁶ A passport was necessary only if a person was travelling more than fifty versts (about sixty kilometres) from their home and for a period longer than six months. Passports were issued not only to men (from the age of eighteen years) but also to women (from twenty-one years); but women could receive a passport only with the permission of their husband or their father. Children who were yet to reach adulthood were registered in their father’s passport.⁵⁷

The exact place of permanent residence was more clearly defined, since the passport was needed only beyond its boundaries. So for nobles, officials, honorary citizens and merchants, this was recognized as being the place where they worked or carried out their service, as well as the place (or places) where they owned property. For the lower middle classes and artisans, their place of residence was considered to be the town or trading quarter where they lived, and, more precisely, the ‘community’ where they were registered. For the peasantry, this was the rural community where they paid their dues and were registered for military service.⁵⁸

All categories of citizens could change their place of residence, except for those who paid dues (the lower middle class, artisans and ordinary country folk). There were restrictions for the Jewish population (who were forced to live in the Pale of Settlement), gypsies and also those who had been convicted and were under police observation. Where necessary, passports were given even to those who had served their sentences, although with certain conditions: they were allowed to receive a passport only with the permission of the police, a special mark was made in it about their conviction and they were restricted in where they could live.⁵⁹ If the police doubted that the documents presented to them were genuine, they had the powers to call on third persons to help with the process of identification.

Various documents acted as passports for the different levels of people in society. Nobles, military officers, honorary citizens, merchants and persons of other ranks [Russ: raznochintsy; i.e., those who had risen from their birth estate through state service or education – Tr.] could receive passport booklets with no expiry date. Those who were at the level where they paid dues received documents that were valid only for a limited period. Those who were not in debt received five-year passport booklets. One-year passports were issued that did not depend on whether the recipient was in debt. Finally, one-year leave-of-absence permits were issued to those who had suffered from a failed harvest, fire or natural disaster. In this way, the type of certification that was given out did not simply indicate social estate, but was also an indication of the type of person the bearer was.

From 1903, according to the ‘Regulation on Passports’, citizens of Russia were also given residence permits with differing periods of validity. In the same year, the mutual responsibility of ‘society’ for the payment of taxes was removed and, as a result, the Finance Ministry lost interest in the passport system. From this point it was only the Interior Ministry that was responsible for its operation. And in the bowels of the Police Department, the Commission under Ivan Durnovo was working on a project which was looking into whether the passport was needed at all. When this was put forward in 1905, it did not receive the necessary support. But ten years later, a conference within the Police Department chaired by the Deputy Director, Konstantin Kafafov, returned to the idea of making the ownership of the passport a right, not an obligation. It was suggested that each citizen should have the possibility, ‘by all means available to them to show who they were’. However, before this could be brought in, it was necessary to solve the long-standing problem of what to do about the Jews, Gypsies, travelling traders and the poor.⁶⁰ The First World War and the Revolution saw these plans dropped.

In the final two decades of the existence of the Russian Empire, the basic document which confirmed a person’s identity was the ‘passport booklet’, which was brought in by the Supreme Decree of 5 October 1906. This contained the following details about its owner:

1 First name, patronymic, surname

2 Title or rank

3 Date of birth or age

4 Religious denomination

5 Place of permanent residence

6 Is the holder, or has he been, married?

7 Is he liable for military service?

8 On the basis of which documents was the passport booklet issued?

9 Signature of the holder; if the holder is illiterate, the following details: height, colour of hair, distinguishing features

10 Other people listed in the passport booklet on the basis of Articles 9 and 10 of the residence permit (wife, children)

11 Any changes which had occurred in the holder’s work, social or marital status; or any changes for anyone else listed in the booklet.

As well as this, the usual administrative details were also included in the passport booklet: by whom and when it had been issued; the registration number; signature and stamp. In this way, the passport booklet became a fully-fledged document and part of the overall system of documentation.⁶¹

One notes the unstoppable expansion of the list of personal details which the state needed to know about the individual. As well as the standard list (name, patronymic, surname; title or rank; place of permanent residence), the authorities had now added: date of birth or age; religious denomination; marital status; and liability for military service. In other words, they were using new standards and had begun to regard the individual differently. Age and religious denomination had become very significant. Under social status, there was now not only title or rank (or position) or occupation (noble, peasant, lower middle class and so on) but also marital status, with information included about a wife and children. The ‘male’ nature of the document was underlined by including ‘liability for military service’.

Figure 1: A passport booklet as issued in 1906 to Ivan Ivanovich Kostyrko. The passport is marked (by hand) as having no expiry date. It has printed in it the rules governing the use of passports.

(Source: State Museum of Political History.)

The signature of the holder now became an unexpectedly loaded issue. Firstly, its presence indicated literacy. Secondly, the signature became an alternative visual aspect of the person; if it were missing then other features would be used to prove identity (height, colour of hair, distinguishing features).

The point, ‘On the basis of which documents was the passport booklet issued’ (referring to the birth register, family lists and so on), becomes extremely important for the reliability and verification of the details provided. For the first time in the history of Russia it was now possible to speak of a fully-fledged passport system. It was still far from perfect, but it displayed a high level of functionality.

To sum up the history of the formation of the passport portrait of the person in pre-revolutionary Russia: up to the start of the twentieth century there is a gradual growth in the elements considered essential to establish a person’s identity. The fullest list of these appears in the passport booklet of 1906 (see figure 1).

We can divide the details used to describe ‘the individual’ into three groups. In the first, there are the basic personal details, such as name, place and date of birth, distinguishing features and signature. These were the ones considered absolutely essential to establish a person’s identity.

The second group is made up of social characteristics, such as social standing (title or rank) and religious denomination. At different times, the authorities considered these details as essential for dividing people into genuine or imagined categories. This was based on their affiliation to one or another group which enjoyed particular rights. Such a division was essential not only to control and to govern, but also to fulfil certain ideological and political projects. These details lay at the foundation of the passport system: there were different passports for different categories of the population.

The details in the third group define the person’s legal status: their marital status, liability for military service and, ultimately, their citizenship.

Gathering together all of these passport details made possible two types of regime for observing the citizen: for ‘close-up’ (with direct contact) the basic personal details were important, which individualized the holder of the passport; for ‘distant’ observation (such as in statistical analyses) the person is seen as one element of the whole, be that society, religion or the state.

It was this list of details about the individual, which provided the foundation for the Soviet passport.