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.
Notes
1 1. The example usually cited is the documents of passage, which are referred to in the Book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament. It is stated: ‘I spoke to the king once more, “If it please the king, could letters be given me for the governors of Transeuphrates to allow me to pass through to Judah”’ (Nehemiah, Ch. 2, v. 7). It is reckoned that these words were written in the fifth century BCE.
2 2. For the history of the passport system in the countries of Europe, see John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport…; Mark B. Salter, Rites of Passage…; People, Papers and Practics: Registration and Recognition: Documenting the Person in World History, Eds. K. Breckenridge, S. Szreter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); and others.
3 3. For more on this function of the first identification documents, see Valentin Groebner, ‘Describing the person…’.
4 4. Ibid., pp. 25–6.
5 5. [Russ: obshchina or mir. From ancient times, the obshchina was the basic community structure on which Russian society was organized, by territory or a religious community. The mir was similar but referred specifically to a rural community – Tr.]
6 6. Viktor Vinogradov, Istoriya slov…, pp. 271–2.
7 7. Albert Baiburin, ‘K antropologii dokumenta…’.
8 8. It probably came from the Dutch, paspoort or the German, der Pass, itself from the French, passeport. See Max Fasmer, Etimologichesky slovar’ russkogo yazyka….
9 9. At first, the right to issue such letters lay with the Grand Prince, but later (in the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries), the various state offices were given permission (the Embassy Office, the Foreigners’ Office, the Siberian Office, the Office of Ranks, and others). After the publication of the Legal Code of 1649, provincial governors were given the right to issue them, ‘in order not to create obstacles to trade’.
10 10. S.N. Romanova and I.I. Glukhovskaya, ‘Ukazatel’ vidov dokumentov…’.
11 11. Polnoe sobraniye zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii (PSZ, Complete Laws of the Russian Empire), I, Vol. 1, No. 1, Ulozhenie (The Legal Code), Chapter VI, p. 8.
12 12. For more on the authorization letters, see Viktor Paneyakh, ‘Ukazy o kholop’ikh…’.
13 13. Rossiiskoye zakonodatel’stvo X–XX vekov….
14 14. Zakonodatel’niye akty Russkogo gosudarstva….
15 15. In Chapter XX, The Law on Villeins, in the Legal Code, Article 75 states: ‘Concerning people who present at a trial two limited service slavery contracts [issued in] Moscow on one slave; and both of those limited service slavery contracts are written in the books; and that slave corresponds in features and identifying marks with the books according to one limited service slavery contract, but does not correspond with the other: return that contested slave as a slave on the basis of that limited service slavery contract in which he corresponds with the books in features and marks, even if that limited service slavery contract was gotten after that limited service slavery contract on whose basis that slave does not correspond with the books in identification marks.’ Full English translation of the Code is available at https://pages.uoregon.edu/kimball/1649-Ulj.htm. [In this version, the Russian word kholop is translated as ‘slave’. In medieval England a more appropriate term would be ‘villein’, hence its use in the main text – Tr.]
16 16. PSZ, I, Vol. V, No. 3445.
17 17. Ibid.
18 18. The tax reform is part of a project to provide the whole population (and in the first instance, the tax-payers) with documents allowing them to travel away from their place of residence. This was set out in a note left by an unknown author, which has been highlighted by Yevgeny Anisimov. The author of the note saw such measures as essential to bring order to the state. These ideas were laid out in the document known as the Plakat of 1724 and in later documents. See Yevgeny Anisimov, Podatnaya reforma…, pp.