“Travel Abroad Authorized…”: The Activities of the Commission for Travel Abroad, 1949–1962

International travel from the USSR began to show a marked increase in the mid-1950s. One of the key screeners for this flow was the Commission for Travel Abroad, whose activities have yet to be the focus of a separate study. Initially there was no single agency that controlled travel abroad by citizens. It was handled by the foreign departments attached to executive committees and by agencies of the OGPU [Joint State Political Directorate]. In the 1920s the functions were transferred to commissions that were almost immediately subordinated to the Bolshevik party’s Central Committee. After several reorganizations—in June 1947—the Bureau for Travel Abroad and Entry into the USSR emerged, and it became part of the Information Committee under the USSR Council of Ministers, which consisted of the Foreign Intelligence Directorate of the MGB [Ministry of State Security] of the USSR and the Main Intelligence Directorate [GRU] of the Soviet Army’s General Staff. The Bureau’s functions as spelled out in a special statute were to consider and resolve questions regarding travel abroad by citizens to full-time work at Soviet institutions, on temporary business trips, and on personal matters; regarding travel abroad by political emigrants and their family members; and regarding entry into the USSR on personal matters by foreigners and Soviet citizens who were full-time residents abroad. In the process, the emphasis was placed on three aspects: evaluation of the political reliability of Soviet citizens who were to travel abroad to work, evaluation of the validity and advisability of personal applications for travel out of the USSR and entries into it, and clarification “to every Soviet citizen who was to go abroad” of the rules for their conduct abroad and receiving the relevant pledge in writing from them “against their personal signature.”