A modern passport is a document equipped with a complex system of protection against crafts and containing a lot of data about its owner. In it, data on appearance, fingerprints and even the cornea pattern of the owner’s eye can be encrypted on special magnetic media. The Soviet-style passport was much simpler.
How did the Soviet passport appear and what happened before it
After the collapse of the USSR, more than two decades passed, and today few can confidently list everything that was on the U-turn of the Soviet passport, especially since its sample has been changed several times. Moreover, he did not appear immediately, but only ten years after the formation of the USSR. It is worth remembering why this happened and how the main document changed.
At the dawn of the creation of the world's first proletarian state, one of the first Bolshevik decrees abolished passports. Back in 1903, Lenin wrote an article “Towards the Village Poor”, in which he outlined his views on this document as an artificial limiter on freedom of movement and employment, the main victims of which were peasants.
Until 1932, the citizens of the RSFSR in their overwhelming majority could guess what was on the U-turn of the Soviet passport, only reading a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky. The proletarian poet was one of the few owners of this purple little book without which they would not be allowed abroad. The rest went by a work book, which served as the main identity card. It indicated what the person’s name was, the year of his birth, and, of course, his labor path was recorded. In 1924, identity cards were introduced with a validity period of three years. Since 1925, they began to put a stamp on registration.
What was on the U-turn of the Soviet passport of the first sample
Only in 1932, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars issued a decree according to which a passport system was introduced in the USSR. The goal of this reform was full control over the employment of the population. The new document has become a tool to combat people who are not working in state enterprises and with peasants who fled to the city from starvation caused by collectivization. But even then, only the residents of Moscow, Leningrad and Kharkov, as well as the restricted area around these cities, were to receive a Soviet passport. A photo with a corner on which part of the seal’s impression fell, surname, first name, patronymic, nationality, date of birth, registration and information on marital status — these are the main attributes of the document that are familiar to all citizens of the USSR, even those born in the following decades. But there was something about the spread of the Soviet passport, which was absent in subsequent editions, for example, social status and attitude to military service.
Non-passport farmers
The document was not issued to the peasants, but, despite this, they no longer had freedom of movement, but quite the opposite. This situation continued until 1974. True, in the fifties, the inhabitants of the countryside appeared several loopholes that allowed to leave the village, brought to poverty by the collective farm system. It was possible (as an exception) to get a job in the city while maintaining a rural residence permit or to obtain a temporary document for the duration of the employment contract. In other cases, collective farmers could come to the city only with a certificate from the village council.
Last Soviet Passport
In 1974, a new Soviet-style passport was introduced. There was less data on the owner’s identity, and there were more photos - after reaching 25 and 45 years, they needed to be pasted into specially designated pages. The seal was replaced with a three-dimensional impression, which is more difficult to fake. There was another important difference - the document was issued to everyone at the age of 16, without exception.
This passport served by faith and truth until 1991 and for some time it performed its functions, provided with a stamp with the name of a new country - the former Soviet republic on top of the letters of the USSR.