page_title: Passport system in the Soviet Union
section_title: 1932–1991
hierarchical_section_title: Passport system in the Soviet Union / 1932–1991
caption_attribution_description: паспорт СССР до 1974 года / Pasaporte de la URSS del año 1974
context_page_description: The passport system of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was an organisational framework of the single national civil registration system based upon identification documents, and managed in accordance with the laws by ministries and other governmental bodies authorised by the Constitution of the USSR in the sphere of internal affairs.
context_section_description: On 27 December 1932 the USSR Central Executive Committee and Sovnarkom issued a decree About establishment of the Unified Passport System within the USSR and the Obligatory Propiska of Passports. The declared purposes were the improvement of population bookkeeping in various urban settlements and "the removal of persons not engaged in industrial or other socially-useful work from towns and cleansing of towns from hiding kulaks, criminals and other antisocial elements. "Hiding kulaks" was an indication at fugitive peasants who tried to run away from collectivization. "Removal" usually resulted in some form of forced labour.
  Passports were introduced for urban residents, sovkhozniks and workers of novostroykas (новостройка, a major construction site of a new town, plant, railway station, etc.). According to the 1926 Soviet Census 82% of the population in the Soviet Union was rural. Kolkhozniks and individual peasants did not have passports and could not move into towns without permission. Permissions were given by chairpersons of collective farms or rural councils. Repeated violations of the passport regime was a criminal offence. Passports were issued by the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (Soviet law enforcement) and until the 1970s had a green cover.
  The implementation of the passport system was based on the USSR Sovnarkom decree dated April 22, 1933 About the Issue of Passports to the USSR Citizens in the territory of the USSR. The document declared that all citizens at least sixteen years old residing in cities, towns, and urban workers' settlements, as well as residing within one hundred kilometres (62 mi) of Moscow and Leningrad, within fifty kilometres (31 mi) of Kharkov, Kiev, Minsk, Rostov-on-Don, and Vladivostok and within the hundred-kilometre zone along the western border of the USSR were required to have a passport with propiska. Within these territories passports were the only valid personal identification document. From 1937 onwards, all passports had a photo headshot of its owner. Historian Stephen Kotkin argues that the sealing of the Ukrainian borders caused by the internal passport system was in order to prevent the spread of famine related diseases.
  On 10 September 1940 the USSR Sovnarkom decreed the Passport Statute (Russian: Положение о паспортах, romanized: Položenye o pasportakh). It allowed for special treatment of propiska in capital cities of republics, krais, and oblasts, in state border areas, and at important railroad junctions.
  On 21 October 1953 the USSR Council of Ministers decreed a new Passport Statute. It made passports obligatory for all citizens older than sixteen years in all non-rural settlements. Rural residents could not leave their place of residence for more than thirty days, and even for this leave a permit from a selsoviet was required. The notion of "temporary propiska" was introduced, in addition to the regular or "permanent" one. A temporary propiska was issued for work-related reasons and for study away from home.
  After the First Congress of Collective Farms Workers in the summer of 1969, the Council of Ministers of the USSR relieved rural residents from procedural difficulties in obtaining a Soviet passport.
  On 28 August 1974 the USSR Council of Ministers issued a new Statute of the Passport System in the USSR and new rules of propiska. The latter rules were in effect until 23 October 1995. However "blanket passportisation" was started only in 1976 and finished by 1981.
caption: Soviet passport before 1974
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