Soviet Union passport

Passport of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics issued to Soviet citizens

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Soviet Union passport

Cover page of a 1974 Soviet Union passport.

Type| Passport
Issued by|  Soviet Union
Purpose| Identification
Eligibility| Soviet Union citizenship

The Soviet passport was an identity document issued pursuant to the laws of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) for citizens of the USSR. For the general purposes of identity certification, Soviet passports contained such data as name, date of birth, gender, place of birth, ethnicity, and citizenship, as well as a photo of the passport holder. At different stages of development of the Soviet passport system, they could also contain information on place of work, social status (marriage, children), and other supporting information needed for those agencies and organizations to which the Soviet citizens used to appeal.

## Contents

* 1 History
* 2 See also
* 3 Notes and references
* 4 External links

## History[edit]

The passport system of the Soviet Union underwent a number of transformations in the course of its history. In the late Soviet Union citizens of age sixteen or older had to have an internal passport. In addition, a passport for travel abroad (заграничный паспорт, загранпаспорт, zagranpasport, often confusingly translated as "foreign passport") was required for travel abroad. There were several types of abroad passport: an ordinary one, known simply as "USSR zagranpasport", a civil service passport (служебный паспорт, sluzhebny pasport), a diplomatic passport, and a sailor's passport.

Internal passports were serviced by "passport offices" (паспортный стол, pasportny stol) of local offices of the MVDs of Soviet republics. Abroad passports were handled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the corresponding Soviet republic.

Internal passports were used in the Soviet Union for identification of persons for various purposes. In particular, passports were used to control and monitor the place of residence by means of propiska. Officially, propiska was introduced for statistical reasons: since in the planned economy of the Soviet Union the distribution of goods and services was centralized, the overall distribution of population was to be monitored. For example, a valid propiska was necessary to receive higher education or be employed.

The passports recorded the following information: surname, first name and patronymic, date and place of birth and ethnicity,[1] family status, propiska, and record of military service. Sometimes the passport also had special notes, for example blood group.

As mentioned, the internal passports identified every bearer by ethnicity (национальность, natsional'nost'), e.g., Russian, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Estonian, Jew, etc. When an individual applied for a passport at age 16, they had to select the ethnicity of one of their parents.[2]

The internal passports were written in the Russian language and the language of the republic where it was issued. The "green cover" internal passports and passports for travel abroad were written exclusively in the Russian language.

All residents were required by law to record their address on the document, and to report any changes to a local office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (e.g., by the age of forty-five, a person has to have three photographs of himself in the passport due to the effects of aging, taken at the age of sixteen (when it is issued), twenty-five and forty-five). In Ukraine, these laws were abolished by its Constitutional Court in 2001 on the grounds of unconstitutionality. In Russia, similar cases have so far failed, and the system remains in place, although largely reduced. The system of internal passport registration remains strongly in place in Moscow, which uses the recent[when?] terrorist attacks on that city as a justification for their continued use.

* USSR passport for travel abroad, year 1929

* Passport USSR, year 1974 – 1991

* USSR passport for travel abroad, year 1990

* USSR service passport issued in 1984

## See also[edit]

* Passport system in the Soviet Union
* Eastern Bloc emigration and defection
* 101st kilometre
* Propiska
* Post-Soviet passports
* Abkhazian passport
* Armenian passport
* Artsakh passport
* Azerbaijani passport
* Belarusian passport
* Estonian passport
* Georgian passport
* Kazakhstani passport
* Kyrgyzstani passport
* Latvian passport
* Lithuanian passport
* Moldovan passport
* Russian passport
* South Ossetian passport
* Tajik passport
* Transnistrian passport
* Turkmen passport
* Ukrainian passport
* Uzbek passport

## Notes and references[edit]

1. ^ In Russian, word национальность, natsional'nost' means ethnicity. This is not equivalent to the interpretation of "nationality" as "citizenship" as it is sometimes rendered in English and other languages. In Russian there is a separate word for "citizenship": граҗданство, grazhdanstvo.
2. ^ According to the ethnic demographer V. I. Kozlov, the existence of this so-called "passport nationality," which was largely determined by birth, may have tended to fix the subjective national or ethnic identities of Soviet citizens: V. I. Kozlov, in Динамика численности народов (Dynamics in the Number of Peoples) (Moscow: Nauka, 1969). However, there is a lot of evidence of shifting of subjective nationality, for example as it was reflected in the Soviet censuses, despite the existence of a passport nationality. See, for example, B. A. Anderson and B. D. Silver, "Estimating Russification of Ethnic Identity Among Non-Russians in the USSR," Demography 20 (November 1983): 461–489.

## External links[edit]

* V.Popov, Passport System of Soviet Serfage, "New World" (журнал «Новый Мир»), Issue 6, 1996 (in Russian)
* Federal Migration Service of the Russian Federation -- "Historical Information" covers several centuries about passport-policy in Russia and Soviet Union -- in Russian

* v
* t
* e

Passports

UN member states

| A–B|

* Afghanistan
* Albania
* Algeria
* Andorra
* Angola
* Antigua and Barbuda
* Argentina
* Armenia
* Australia
* Austria
* Azerbaijan
* Bahamas
* Bahrain
* Bangladesh
* Barbados
* Belarus
* Belgium
* Belize
* Benin
* Bhutan
* Bolivia
* Bosnia and Herzegovina
* Botswana
* Brazil
* Brunei
* Bulgaria
* Burkina Faso
* Burundi

|

* Cambodia
* Cameroon
* Canada
* Cape Verde
* Central African Republic
* Chad
* Chile
* China, People's Republic of
* Hong Kong
* Macau
* Colombia
* Comoros
* Congo, Democratic Republic of the
* Congo, Republic of the
* Costa Rica
* Croatia
* Cuba
* Cyprus
* Czech Republic

D–F|

* Denmark
* Faroe Islands
* Greenland
* Djibouti
* Dominica, Commonwealth of
* Dominican Republic
* East Timor
* Ecuador
* Egypt
* El Salvador
* Equatorial Guinea
* Eritrea
* Estonia
* Eswatini
* Ethiopia
* Fiji
* Finland
* Åland Islands
* France

G–K|

* Gabon
* Gambia
* Georgia
* Germany
* Ghana
* Greece
* Grenada
* Guatemala
* Guinea
* Guinea-Bissau
* Guyana
* Haiti
* Honduras
* Hungary
* Iceland
* India
* Indonesia
* Iran
* Iraq
* Ireland
* Israel
* Italy
* Ivory Coast
* Jamaica
* Japan
* Jordan
* Kazakhstan
* Kenya
* Kiribati
* Kuwait
* Kyrgyzstan

L–M|

* Laos
* Latvia
* Lebanon
* Lesotho
* Liberia
* Libya
* Liechtenstein
* Lithuania
* Luxembourg
* Madagascar
* Malawi
* Malaysia
* Maldives
* Mali
* Malta
* Marshall Islands
* Mauritania
* Mauritius
* Mexico
* Micronesia, Federated States of
* Moldova
* Monaco
* Mongolia
* Montenegro
* Morocco
* Mozambique
* Myanmar

N–R|

* Namibia
* Nauru
* Nepal
* Netherlands, Kingdom of the
* New Zealand
* Nicaragua
* Niger
* Nigeria
* North Korea
* North Macedonia
* Norway
* Oman
* Pakistan
* Palau
* Panama
* Papua New Guinea
* Paraguay
* Peru
* Philippines
* Poland
* Portugal
* Qatar
* Romania
* Russia
* Rwanda

* Saint Kitts and Nevis
* Saint Lucia
* Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
* Samoa
* San Marino
* São Tomé and Príncipe
* Saudi Arabia
* Senegal
* Serbia
* Seychelles
* Sierra Leone
* Singapore
* Slovakia
* Slovenia
* Solomon Islands
* Somalia
* South Africa
* South Korea
* South Sudan
* Spain
* Sri Lanka
* Sudan
* Suriname
* Sweden
* Switzerland
* Syria

T–Z|

* Tajikistan
* Tanzania
* Thailand
* Togo
* Tonga
* Trinidad and Tobago
* Tunisia
* Turkey
* Turkmenistan
* Tuvalu
* Uganda
* Ukraine
* United Arab Emirates
* United Kingdom
* British Overseas Territories
* BN(O)
* Guernsey
* Isle of Man
* Jersey
* United States
* Uruguay
* Uzbekistan
* Vanuatu
* Venezuela
* Vietnam
* Yemen
* Zambia
* Zimbabwe

Other entities

| UN observer states|

* Palestine
* Vatican City and Holy See

|

Other sovereign entities|

* Sovereign Military Order of Malta

Sovereignty disputed|

* Abkhazia
* Artsakh
* Donetsk People's Republic
* Kosovo
* Luhansk People's Republic
* Northern Cyprus
* Sahrawi Republic
* Somaliland
* South Ossetia
* Taiwan (Republic of China)
* Transnistria

No recognition|

* Aboriginal Provisional Government
* Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Iroquois)

International organizations

| Africa|

* African Union
* ECOWAS

|

Americas|

* Andean Community
* CARICOM
* Central America-4

Europe|

* EFTA
* European Union
* laissez-passer

Global|

* Interpol
* United Nations

Defunct passports

| Dissolved states|

* British Indian Empire
* Czechoslovakia
* East Germany
* Korean Empire
* Mandatory Palestine
* Rhodesia
* Soviet Union
* Yugoslavia

|

Former organizations|

* League of Nations (Nansen)
* UNMIK

Passport types

| Document types|

* Alien's passport
* 1951 Convention
* 1954 Convention
* Animal passport
* Horse
* Pet
* Diplomatic passport
* Hajj passport
* Internal passport
* Laissez-passer and emergency passport
* Service passport

|

Data formats|

* Biometric passport
* Machine-readable passport

Imitations|

* Camouflage passport
* Fake passport
* Fantasy passport
* e.g. World Passport

* Category
* Commons
* List

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