The Soviet Passport. Albert Baiburin

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