The museum’s exposition “The Memory of the Jewish People and the Holocaust in Ukraine” has been replenished with a new exhibit – a Soviet internal passport of the first type, which was introduced in December 1932.
This artifact is placed in the section of the exhibition dedicated to the first genocide on the Ukrainian lands of the twentieth century, the Holodomor of 1932-1933.
Заместитель директора Музея, кандидат исторических наук, доктор Егор Врадий так описал значение этого экспоната и его исторический контекст: «Людям старшого віку можуть бути знайомі рядки Володимира Маяковського (1893–1930), присвячені радянському паспорту. Написаний у 1929 р. вірш насправді стосувався паспорту для закордонних поїздок – документу такого ж фантастичного за умов радянської дійсності, як і сама поїздка. Натомість всередині країни громадяни посвідчували власну особу різноманітними мандатами, довідками і службовими посвідченнями. Лише 27 грудня 1932 р., тобто через десятиліття після утворення СРСР, з’явилася Постанова союзного Центрального виконавчого комітету і Ради народних комісарів № 84 «Про встановлення єдиної паспортної системи по СРСР і обов’язкову прописку паспортів». В останній день того ж року відповідний документ було ухвалено й для мешканців України.
The reason for the introduction of a unified passport system was the intensification of urbanization processes in the country, i.e. the growth of internal migration of rural residents to cities. On the one hand, this situation was facilitated by objective economic reasons, namely the industrial modernization of the country, an increase in the number of enterprises and, as a result, the need for labor. On the other hand, the introduction of a single passport can be seen in the context of the desire to establish state control over its own citizens and a policy aimed at the final subjugation of the Ukrainian peasantry.
According to the resolution, the official purpose of the passport system was to “better account for the population of cities, workers’ settlements and newly built buildings and to relieve these places of persons not connected with production and work in institutions or schools…as well as to cleanse these places of kulaks, criminals and other anti-social elements hiding…”.
The resolution approved the “Regulations on Passports,” which in turn outlined the list of categories of citizens who were required to have passports. First of all, the passport privilege was granted to residents of cities, workers’ settlements, transport workers, state farms and new buildings who had reached the age of 16. Initially, passports were issued for a period of 3 years. The document contained not only the usual personal information (date and place of birth, place of registration, marital status), but also information about nationality, social origin, place of work, and military registration.
At the same time, administrative and criminal liability was introduced for persons who would be in cities and other settlements with a mandatory passport regime without a passport and appropriate registration.
The bureaucratic formulations deliberately left out the multimillion peasant sea, the people who in the early 1930s made up the majority of citizens of the “workers’ and peasants’ state.” It is noteworthy that the Soviet government began to introduce the passport system in the midst of the endless grain procurement campaign of 1932-1933. In the context of the artificial famine that swept through the vast majority of the regions of the Ukrainian SSR, almost the only hope for salvation was to escape from collective farms and seek a better life in the cities. There was also a shortage of food, but there were at least vague chances of survival. There were also children’s homes and orphanages in the cities that, despite the difficult circumstances, could save the lives of peasant children whose parents left them at the doorsteps of Soviet institutions.
Together with other repressive measures (the practice of “Black Boards” and others), Soviet passportization turned into one of the instruments of genocide, the victims of which, according to the lowest estimates, were about 4 million people. The instrument was international in nature, as it restricted the right to freedom of movement, which in those circumstances often meant the right to life, regardless of the ethnicity or religion of the peasant.
The absence of a small book with a grayish and later greenish cover firmly tied peasants to the land, the fruits of which were taken away by the state; it limited social prospects and doomed them to a beggarly existence and death. Passport discrimination against the rural population in various forms would continue for more than four decades. After all, the village and its people in the USSR were long perceived as an inexhaustible reserve for socioeconomic and social experiments. It was only in 1974 that Ukrainian peasants were able to obtain the cherished document for the first time on a general basis, like other citizens of the country “.
