Propiska in the Soviet Union

Among many explanations of вид, Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary indicates a "certificate of any kind for free passage, travel and living", mentioning "passport" as its synonym.

[citation needed] The origin of the propiska dates back to the Russian Empire, more specifically Peter the Great who wanted to ensure "that serfs stayed in the fields where they belonged."

[5] In the pre-Soviet Russian Empire, a person arriving for a new residency was obliged (depending on the estate) to enroll in the registers of the local police authorities.

[6] However, in December 1932, the Central Executive Committee and Sovnarkom (then under the leadership of Joseph Stalin) issued a decree that re-established a unified internal passport.

[citation needed] The decision to restrict internal migration was made against the backdrop of the massive social flux that originated from Stalin's far-reaching collectivization and industrialization efforts.

[8] In this explosive context, the regime hoped that the propiska system (and other mechanisms such as "labour books" that monitored work ethic) would restore a degree of order.

R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft note that the propiska was effective in this regard: "The growth of the urban population ceased, and was partly reversed, only as a result of restrictions on movement and the introduction of an internal passport system.

In the USSR, the term residential permit (Russian: Вид на жи́тельство, romanized: vid na zhitelstvo) was used as a synonym for temporary propiska, particularly with regard to foreign nationals.

[14] Often enterprises in large cities built hostels with dormitories at their own expense, to provide accommodation (with temporary "propiska") for migrant workers from elsewhere.

After long-term employment at an enterprise, a worker could be given an apartment (as opposed to an individual hostel room, which often shared a single bathroom and kitchen per floor and was ill-suited for family life), with permanent "propiska" rights to it.

The native populations of large cities like Moscow often despised these migrant workers ('limit-dwellers' Russian: лими́тчики), considering them rude, uncultured, and violent.

The passports were stamped at the local police precinct's Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) office, with the Military Comissariat (the draft body) also involved.

[citation needed] Acquiring a propiska to move to a large city, especially Moscow, was extremely difficult for migrants and was a matter of prestige.

Even moving to live with relatives did not automatically provide a person with a permanent propiska because of a minimum area limit (12 m2 (130 sq ft)) for each resident of a specific apartment.

For such cases, as also for any unrelated people, the so-called "sanitary norm" was used: a propiska would not be issued if it would cause the apartment area to fall below 12 m2 (130 sq ft) per person.

This was officially meant to prevent unhealthy overcrowding of apartments and sexual abuse, but since most Soviet people had only a little over 9 m2 (97 sq ft) per person, it was also an effective method of migration control.

This was also a serious driving force in migration of young people to "monocities", the new cities built from scratch, often in Siberia or the Arctic, some around a single facility (factory, oil region, or the like).

The three major post-Soviet reforms, to "not show ethnic background" on this still-vital document, private ownership (something previously disallowed), and seemingly free movement, being "able to register to live anywhere, once they arrange a written lease or buy a house"[2] also ended the situation where these were the only apartments which passed down to children by inheritance.

In Soviet times, this was connected to a "distribution" system which was a mandatory official allocation of a first job placement for university graduates (even from the same city), where they had to work for around 2 years "to pay back the cost of their education".

[citation needed] This system was despised as being a violation of freedom,[11] since nobody wanted to relocate from a larger city to a smaller one, but it still provided at least a propiska (and the dwelling space connected to it) to a graduate.

Also, a "young specialist" could nearly never be fired, the same as a pregnant woman and other specific (in terms of labor laws) categories of people who were entitled to such benefits.

After the end of the USSR, the distribution system was almost immediately abolished, leaving graduates with the choice of returning to their home town/village, to their parents or other relatives or struggling to find work in the large city where the school was located.

Since, once provided the permanent propiska was not revocable, the natives of the large city were very suspicious about senior-age students from smaller towns or villages when it came to marriage.

The Supreme Court of Russia has ruled the propiska to be unconstitutional on several occasions since the fall of communism and it is considered by human rights organizations to be in direct violation of the Russian constitution, which guarantees freedom of movement.

[citation needed] Registration is used for economic, law enforcement and other purposes, such as accounting for social benefits, housing and utility payments, taxes, conscription, and medical care.

In modern Russia, this was mostly abandoned due to apartment privatisation, but if a person has no other place to live, he still cannot be evicted without substitution,[15] acting as a powerful deterrent for registering others on their property title.