A propiska ( ; ) was both a written residency permit and a migration-recording tool, used in the Russian Empire before 1917 and in the Soviet Union from 1932 until 1991.
The Soviet Union had both permanent ( [] or []) and temporary (, ). In the transition period to a market economy in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, the permanent in municipal apartments was a factor that allowed dwellers to obtain private property rights on the living space they were "inscripted" in during privatization. Those who built housing at their own expense obtained a permanent there by definition.
Etymology
Originally, the noun meant the clerical procedure of registration, or enrolling the person (writing his or her name) into the police records of the local population (or writing down the police permission into the person's identification document – see below). Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary describes this procedure as "to enroll [the document] in a book and stamp it".
The twentieth page of the internal passport of the Russian Empire (see illustration) was entitled . Five blank pages (20 to 24) were gradually filled with stamps with the residential address written in. It allowed a person to reside in his/her relevant locality. Article 61 of the Regulations adopted on February 7, 1897 (see pp. 18–19 of the passport) imposed a fine for those found outside the administrative unit (as a rule, uezd) in which they were registered to live.
As a clerical term, the noun () is short for (). Although translated into English as a 'residential permit', in Russian this also conveys a presence of the right of a resident to live somewhere. In the sense of a "[legal] right" the word also appears in the phrase (; ). Among many explanations of , Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary indicates a "certificate of any kind for free passage, travel and living", mentioning passport as a synonym.
The verb () was used as a transitive verb with 4 being the direct object. Not only the passport, but also its owner could serve as the verb's direct object. Reciprocally, became an object which one can , e.g.: "to have a in Moscow" (, ). In common speech, the stamp in the passport into which the residential address was written was also called "propiska".
History Russian Empire 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." 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. The police could deny undesirable persons the right to settle. In this case, no stamps were made in passport). In most cases, this would mean the person had to return to their permanent domicile.
Soviet Union Passports were abolished after the October Revolution and the free movement of people through the country was established. The 1930 edition of the Small Soviet Encyclopedia even described passports as a tool of control used by the former Tsarist police state. 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.Постановление ЦИК и СНК СССР от 27.12.1932 об установлении единой паспортной системы по Союзу ССР и обязательной прописки паспортов – via Wikisource.
The noun propiska became associated with the result of residential registration. Permanent propiska () confirmed the housing rights of its owner. Temporary propiska () could be provided alongside a permanent one when a resident had to live outside the permanent residence for a long period of time. As an example, students and workers leaving to study or work in other cities received temporary propiskas at their dorms, apartments, or hostels.
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. Millions of people circulated through the country, for example to receive training or take on new jobs, but also to flee the threat of being repressed as a supposed kulak. 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.
Even more importantly, the government aimed to stop the peasants from massively flooding to the towns in search of food as a result of the 1930–1933 famine. 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."
The newly reintroduced Soviet passport system was similar to that of the Russian Empire where passports were required mainly in the largest cities and in the territories adjacent to the country's external borders. Officers and soldiers always had special identity documents, while peasants could obtain internal passports only by a special application. In the USSR, the term residential permit () was used as a synonym for temporary propiska, particularly with regard to foreign nationals. By the end of the 1980s, when emigrants from the USSR could return, those who had lost Soviet citizenship could also apply for an identity document with this title.
The "passportization" of the citizen of the USSR reached its all-encompassing scope only in the 1970s: the right (and obligation) of every adult (from 16) to have a passport promoted the propiska as the primary lever of the regulation of migration. On the other hand, the propiska underlined the mechanism of the constitutional obligation of the state to provide everyone a dwelling: no one could be stripped of the propiska at one location without substitution with another permanent propiska location, even amidst the then-rarely-granted right to emigrate.
The propiska system persisted throughout most of the Soviet era. In 1990, the Gorbachev government started an investigation into illegalities in the governance system through a special "Committee of Constitutional Supervision". This committee found the propiska requirement to be illegal. The system was abolished on October 11, 1991.
Implementation The limit system for migrant workers The system of a propiska limit () existed in the last 30 or so years of the USSR. This was the only means by which outsiders could settle in big cities like Moscow and Leningrad, except marriage. 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 with permanent "propiska" rights to it. As opposed to an individual hostel room, which often shared a single bathroom and kitchen per floor and was ill-suited for family life.
Cities had a propiska limit for the low-wage city employers, such as street sweeps or janitors, because city natives shunned such occupations.
The native populations of large cities like Moscow often despised these migrant workers ('limit-dwellers' ), considering them rude, uncultured, and violent. The derogatory term "limita" () was used to refer to them.
Students from rural areas or smaller towns lived in similar students' hostels, with the termination of right of abode in the hostel on graduation or on exclusion from their schools.
Details of propiska The propiska was recorded both in the internal passport of a Soviet citizen and at local governmental offices. In cities, it was a local office of a utility organisation, such as РЭУ (District Production Department), ЖЭК (Housing Committee Office), or ЖСК (Housing and Construction Cooperative). 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. In rural areas, it was a selsoviet, or "village council", a governing body of a rural territory.
A propiska could be permanent or temporary. The administrations of hostels, student dormitories, and landlords, (very rare case in the USSR, since the "sanitary norm", a minimum of per person, see below for further details), would usually cause rejection of temporary propiska for such a person, were obliged to maintain temporary propiska records of their guests. The propiska played the role of both residence permit and resident registration of a person.
Acquiring a propiska to move to a large city, especially Moscow, was extremely difficult for migrants and 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 () for each resident of a specific apartment.
Owing to Soviet property regulations, officially based on the Universal Right to Housing for all, the permanent propiska, which provided the permanent right to dwell in this housing, was nearly impossible for authorities to terminate. The only major exception was a second criminal sentence. After serving the penalty for the first sentence, the inmate returned to the old permanent propiska.
If the authorities needed to rule in a certain case, they might refuse a permanent propiska for an individual, but usually not revoking the existing permanent propiska. This also resulted in a situation in which if a spouse agreed, at marriage, to provide the marriage partner with permanent propiska at their apartment, the propiska could not be terminated by divorce, and so exchanging the apartment for two smaller ones was often the only possibility.
Sanitary norm
Spouses could always provide one another a permanent propiska, but explicit consent was required for this. Children were granted a permanent propiska at one of the parents' permanent propiska locations, and this could not be terminated during the lifetime of the child even as an adult, with the exception of a second criminal sentence, unless the grown-up child voluntarily relocated to another place, and was granted a permanent propiska there.
It was not this easy for any other relatives. 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 per person. The number of rooms in the apartment was important: two persons of different gender, one or both being 9 years or older, were forbidden to share a single room.
If the new "propiska" of the new dweller violated this rule, the propiska would not be granted, with spouses being an exception. This was officially meant to prevent unhealthy overcrowding of apartments and sexual abuse, but since most Soviet people had only a little over per person, it was also an effective method of migration control.
These norms were very similar to getting onto the governmental (not dependent on particular employer) "housing list", which was yet another Soviet form of mortgage, again with real money replaced by years of working at one's workplace—the queue was free in terms of money. The main difference was that to gain admission to the housing list, the space had to fall below the required per person in an existing apartment. Due to the dwelling-area rule already mentioned, children of different gender also raised the chances of getting to the queue. This housing list was very slow, much slower than employers' list, and sometimes it took a person's whole life to get an apartment.