Engineering Soviet Society with Passports

Abstract

The place and role of the Soviet passport and the passport system in shaping Soviet state and society have not escaped the attention of scholars.1 Albert Baiburin’s new monograph, The Soviet Passport, builds on the existing knowledge and, by placing the Soviet passport in the center of a historical and anthropological investigation, takes the discussion further. The Soviet Passport examines the evolution of the content of the Soviet passport and passport system from the Russian Empire until the post-Soviet period, explains how the Soviet passport system worked officially and unofficially, and discusses how the passport and its content affected people’s lives. The book consists of three sections. The first section is focused on the passport system as an instrument of social engineering. Here Baiburin discusses why the Bolsheviks, after having abolished the Russian passport system in November 1917, restored the passport in 1932. He shows that in many respects, the Soviet passport was similar to the Russian imperial one, and not only in content. Both aimed to control freedom of movement, strengthen the social structure, and ensure that the population paid its dues to the state (through taxes before 1917 and serfdom until 1861 and military or kolkhoz service after 1932). But the Soviet passport system differed from the pre-1917 Russian passport in that it was conceived as a tool of oppressive control and to conceal the economic failures of the Soviet