The Soviet Passport. Albert Baiburin

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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:

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