Was there a nationality column in the USSR passport? “The fifth column”: why was it necessary to return “nationality” to Russian passports again

from 31/12/2018

In passports and other identification documents of citizens of the Soviet Union, the indication of nationality was mandatory, but in the 1990s the nationality column in the Russian passport was abolished. During the Soviet era, each citizen determined his nationality when receiving a passport at the age of 16 - according to his father or mother. In most cases, she was chosen based on her father; The nationality of children under 16 years of age was also determined by their father, since the class registers also included a column for “nationality.”

There is ample evidence that information about nationality in documents enabled officials to discriminate against some national minorities. This discrimination manifested itself in admission to universities and graduate school, hiring and career advancement, obtaining state awards and trips abroad, etc.

When the nationality column in a Russian passport was canceled

If we turn to the history of the appearance of such a mark, it should be noted that in the documents of subjects Russian Empire she was absent. At that time, nationality was determined by religion.

In the Soviet Union, indicating nationality on citizens' passports became mandatory in 1974. It was preserved in the first years of the existence of the sovereign Russian Federation when the population used old passports. When citizens of the Russian Federation became citizens in the mid-1990s, there was no indication of such information and the corresponding column.

Currently they do not include information about nationality. However, an indication of affiliation may be recorded from the applicant’s words when receiving a number of social services.

Proposals to return the indication of nationality

In 2010 constitutional Court Russia ruled that the absence of a nationality column in the passports of citizens of the country does not contradict the Constitution of the Russian Federation. However, the Communists and representatives of other parties have repeatedly proposed returning such a mark to citizens’ passports.

In December 2012, he was in the State Duma bill introduced“On the passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation”, prepared by the Communist Party faction. This project provided for the return of the nationality column in the passports of Russians, which should be filled out at the request of their owners. This is due to the fact that Part I of Article 26 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation enshrines the right of every citizen to determine and indicate his nationality. By the way, in Tataria and Bashkiria there are special inserts in passports in which you can indicate your nationality. The bill was rejected, but attempts to return the mark to passports continue.

In February 2015, another bill was introduced to the State Duma to return the “nationality” column to the passport. This document was submitted to the lower house of parliament by Federation Council Senator Zhanna Ivanova. In accordance with the draft law, the indication of nationality in the passport should be voluntary and based on a written statement from the interested citizen. The corresponding application must be submitted to territorial office Federal Migration Service.

Planned to provide migration service the right to introduce temporary restrictions on marking. Thus, a recognized citizen will not be able to make a mark in his passport. A restriction will also be introduced if the nationality indicated by the applicant does not coincide with the one indicated on the birth certificate. In such cases final decision will be accepted by the court.

Is a nationality mark required in a Russian passport?

Citizens who wish to have their nationality stamped in their passports will be required to pay a fee, the amount of which will be determined in the future. It is envisaged that the mark can be canceled by written statement citizen. In such a situation, he will be issued. At the initiative of parents, information about nationality can also be included in the birth certificates of children. Parents' passports are also required to include no indication of nationality. By the way, such a column exists in a marriage certificate, a certificate of change of name, as well as in a military ID, however, filling it out is not mandatory.

Whether the nationality column will appear again in the Russian passport and how soon this will happen, time will tell, but if there is interest in this issue, then it must be satisfied.

General passportization of the urban population was announced on December 27, 1932, before that Soviet passports were issued as “foreign”. Basically, those citizens who were allowed and instructed to go abroad to represent Soviet interests there. And it was precisely this kind of passport that Mayakovsky wrote about in his immortal essay about “wide trousers.”

Bureaucratic freedom

But such bureaucratic freedom until 1932 created a lot of everyday and criminal problems. Huge masses of people roamed freely across the vast expanses of the country, and the criminal element took advantage of this especially actively, who in those years could “tour” with virtually no restrictions until they were caught.

That’s why a column about registration appeared in the Soviet passport. Which made it possible, like the document itself, to record the movements of a citizen and in a certain way “bind” him to his place of residence.

Contrary to general opinion, passports were also issued to rural residents, although their universal passportization came much later, in the seventies. Collective farmers simply received passports upon entering a university or starting military career, or moving to the city to an already discussed workplace.

Nationality column

Experts are still arguing about “registration,” which is now referred to as “registration.” But there was also a so-called “fifth column” in the Soviet passport, or a column about nationality.

In general, purely technically, this column was not in the Soviet passport, but in “ Personal sheet on the registration of personnel of the passport authorities of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs" on the basis of which the Soviet passport was issued.

Critics of the “nationality” column, and many researchers, see in it not only a mechanism for additional control, but also an opportunity for infringement individual citizens USSR by nationality. But the most interesting thing is that initially everything was exactly the opposite.

The USSR was emphatically a multinational country of a single Soviet people. But it is precisely “many”-national, and not “non-national”. Therefore, the column “nationality” in theory and within the framework of Soviet ideology not only was not discrediting, but, on the contrary, emphasized this very multinationality, and through this the unity of the entire Soviet people. But this, as they say, is in theory. In practice, it didn't quite work out that way.

Initially, a person's nationality was determined by the nationality of his parents. At the same time, the USSR had a list of these same nationalities. What is characteristic is that it also changed periodically.

Father's nationality

Initially, according to the lists of 1924-1926, representatives of two hundred nationalities lived in the USSR. In this case, as a rule, the citizen who received the passport determined his nationality by the nationality of his father, although there were exceptions.

In 1974, passportization in the Soviet Union continued. Now collective farmers and residents also had the right to receive a document rural areas. At the same time, the approach to determining nationality also changed.

The column in the passport was still mandatory, but now a citizen could, at his own choice, enroll himself in one or another nationality. But the most interesting thing is that around these same years the list of “official” nationalities began to vary. In 1959 there were 126, in 1979 - 123, in 1989 - 128.

Interestingly, with the collapse of the USSR, Soviet passports did not disappear, and are still considered valid on the territory of Russia, along with new passports of citizens of the Russian Federation, where there is no “nationality” column.

Conservatives periodically advocate for its return, and public discussion on this issue is still going on. However, it seems that the state will not return the “fifth column,” at least in the near future, due to the peculiarities of the current Russian nationality policy.

“The Fifth Count” - a horror story that anti-Soviet propaganda loved to carry around was canceled in 1990. However, many Russians were very unhappy: after all, most people are proud of their nationality. By the way, the Constitution of the Russian Federation states that everyone has the right to determine and indicate their nationality. Everywhere - but not in the passport. Is this legal?

The Constitution of the Russian Federation contains an article dedicated to national question, has a dual formulation: “Everyone has the right to determine and indicate his nationality. No one can be forced to determine and indicate his nationality.” In other words, if a citizen for some reason does not want to reveal his nationality, then no one can force him to do so. And on the contrary, no one has the right to prevent a person from indicating his nationality if he wishes to do so.

Both sides of the law are quite equal, but since 1990 there has been a sharp shift in Russia in one direction: the so-called “fifth column”, in which nationality was previously indicated, was removed from Russian passports.

However, according to sociological surveys, more than half of Russians would like to return an ethnicity stamp to their passports. The Bashkirs and Tatars, by the way, managed to do this - now residents of the respective republics can, if they wish, receive special inserts in their passports, indicating their nationality.

Meanwhile, when issuing birth and marriage certificates, it is still possible to indicate the nationality of the child or newlyweds. Until recently, this was a voluntary matter, but last fall the Ministry of Justice introduced changes to the procedure for filling out documents upon marriage, according to which this will become a mandatory norm. Representatives of the Ministry of Justice motivate this decision by the need to collect statistics. These amendments will come into force on April 1, 2014.

But no one is going to return the nationality column to passports. It turns out to be a very strange situation - until the age of 14 a person has a nationality, but after that he does not. In any case, it can be documented only until adulthood.

At the end of 2012, a group of deputies from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation introduced a bill to the State Duma, suggesting, in particular, the return of the “fifth column” to passports. It was also proposed to divide many of the marks into mandatory and those that would be entered only at the request of the citizen. The latter should have included nationality, and in addition, tax identification number, blood type and Rh factor. However, this package of amendments was rejected for being “irrelevant.”

So is it necessary to return a record of nationality to passports and what considerations were used? government, when it was canceled in 1990?

Head of the Center for the Study of Elites of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences Olga Kryshtanovskaya gave the following comment:

“This cancellation is connected with discriminatory policies towards Jews, with anti-Semitism under Stalin and immediately after his death. Then many people were not accepted into work or into universities in connection with this “fifth column”. Of course, when the reforms began, there was a broad agenda , that this clause should be removed due to discrimination against Jews. This abolition completed the task, and the problem of anti-Semitism was completely resolved - the Jews either left or disappeared into society.

It must be said that in Lately the situation has changed, the global trend has changed: the more the process of globalization developed, the more the value for people of their national identity increased - no one wants to be “melted” in one pot. This happens everywhere. Process in progress strengthening national-ethnic identity.

By and large, whether there will be such a column or not will not solve anything.”

That's strange - for some reason Soviet period The “fifth column” did not contribute to the disunity of nations; on the contrary, it was a sign of mutual respect. The Stalin era, during which Jews were allegedly oppressed, has passed too long ago for its examples to be relevant to our time.

In addition, a position that deliberately assumes that in the very fact of nationality (be it the Jewish nation, or Tatar, or Chechen - any) there is something that should be hidden or something worth being ashamed of is more xenophobic than that which she is trying to dispute. Why government officials And public figures allow themselves to openly say that a Jew should hide his nationality in fear of anti-Semites?

Do we live in Hitler's Germany, do we not have law enforcement who can protect the same Jews? Following this logic, it’s time to start offering representatives national minorities change surnames and appearance. Who decided that some Buryat is ashamed to have a record of his nationality in his passport? It is unlikely that such a policy will be able to strengthen the union of nations on the territory of the Russian Federation.

However, there is also opposing opinions. For example, this opinion was expressed by Director of the Smart Internet Foundation,President of the editorial office of the newspaper "Izvestia" VladimirMamontov:

“False ideas about equality and unity became the reason for the abolition of the “fifth column”. Nationality is part of self-identification; this should neither be prohibited nor specifically emphasized. This ban was an attempt to break through to freedom, but in fact it turned out, on the contrary, to be a restriction of freedom. "

But the problem is not only in the national republics. At least they have their own land on which local residents They feel like full-fledged owners, and the phenotype, as a rule, reveals their nationality more quickly than an entry in a passport. Some, like the Tatars, won for themselves the opportunity to document their nationality. But the Russians found themselves in the most unenviable position - they seem to be the titular nation, the most numerous, bearing the most big load responsibility, but without the ability to even somehow identify itself.

It is not without reason that 54 percent of all those who spoke in favor of returning the “fifth column” are Russians. Some call this a surge of nationalist sentiment, while others call it a normal reaction of the Russian population to an aggressive demonstration of their own ethnicity on the part of other peoples of the Russian Federation - primarily Caucasian.

As in Europe, this trend may indicate a nation’s self-preservation reaction from dissolution in the flow of migrants, albeit internal ones. Refusal to satisfy this wish can only aggravate the situation of tension, on both sides. By the way, many people complain that civil registry office employees sometimes begin to demand some kind of evidence from people who want to register their newborn child as “Russian.” Sometimes it reaches the point of complete absurdity when parents are asked to bring their birth certificates, which indicate that both father and mother are Russian. There are many such stories on the Internet.

Of course, these demands since 1998 have been, at a minimum, illegal. Z Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of the Civil Registry Office of the Moscow Region Elena Mikhailova explained why:

“Nationality is indicated at the request of individuals. Such a column is present in applications, but it is filled out only on personal initiative. There is a Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated October 31, 1998, number 1274, which approves the standards for application forms state registration changes civil status— open the first application form for the birth of a child. Column five - nationality: "the column is filled in at the request of the parents." The same goes for marriage. No proof is required."

Although the Constitutional Court has already ruled on the compliance of removing the “Nationality” column from passports, which was recognized as absolutely constitutional (“Nationality cannot have legal significance for the status of a citizen,” the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation ruled in May 2010 in response to a statement from one Volgograd resident ), it still remains illegitimate in the eyes of many Russians. In addition, the question arises - what legal meaning has, for example, a registration that no one is in a hurry to cancel. By what principle are decisions made that affect the interests of the multi-million population of a huge country? According to Olga Kryshtanovskaya, this decision was made in order to protect the interests of Jews. Couldn't this have been done some other way, without infringing on the rights of the majority of the population?

In addition to the fact that many citizens tend to consider deprivation of the opportunity to voluntarily register their nationality as a violation of their constitutional rights, it also contradicts the very structure of our state. The federal structure itself presupposes that the state is heterogeneous in its structure. If there national republics, then, logically, there should be nations. Force federal state- precisely in national diversity, and not in a falsely understood cosmopolitanism.

One of the innovations introduced by the Soviet system into Russian realities was a system of universal passportization. At the same time, the passport system in the Land of Soviets developed slowly and gradually. And in general, it was rather a forced measure.

General passportization of the urban population was announced on December 27, 1932; before that, Soviet passports were issued as “foreign” passports. Basically, those citizens who were allowed and instructed to go abroad to represent Soviet interests there. And it was precisely this kind of passport that Mayakovsky wrote about in his immortal essay about “wide trousers.”

Bureaucratic freedom

But such bureaucratic freedom until 1932 created a lot of everyday and criminal problems. Huge masses of people roamed freely across the vast expanses of the country, and the criminal element took advantage of this especially actively, who in those years could “tour” with virtually no restrictions until they were caught.

That’s why a column about registration appeared in the Soviet passport. Which made it possible, like the document itself, to record the movements of a citizen and in a certain way “bind” him to his place of residence.

Contrary to general opinion, passports were also issued to rural residents, although their universal passportization came much later, in the seventies. Collective farmers simply received passports when they entered a university, or when they began a military career, or when they moved to the city to a previously agreed upon workplace.

Nationality column

Experts are still arguing about “registration,” which is now referred to as “registration.” But there was also a so-called “fifth column” in the Soviet passport, or a column about nationality.

In general, purely technically, this fifth column was not in the Soviet passport, but in the “Personal sheet for registering personnel of the passport authorities of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs”, on the basis of which the Soviet passport was issued.

Critics of the “nationality” column, and many researchers, see in it not only a mechanism for additional control, but also an opportunity to infringe on individual citizens of the USSR on the basis of nationality. But the most interesting thing is that initially everything was exactly the opposite.

The USSR was emphatically a multinational country of a single Soviet people. But it is precisely “many”-national, and not “non-national”. Therefore, the column “nationality” in theory and within the framework of Soviet ideology not only was not discrediting, but, on the contrary, emphasized this very multinationality, and through this the unity of the entire Soviet people. But this, as they say, is in theory. In practice, it didn't quite work out that way.

Initially, a person's nationality was determined by the nationality of his parents. At the same time, the USSR had a list of these same nationalities. What is characteristic is that it also changed periodically.

Father's nationality

Initially, according to the lists of 1924-1926, representatives of two hundred nationalities lived in the USSR. In this case, as a rule, the citizen who received the passport determined his nationality by the nationality of his father, although there were exceptions.

In 1974, passportization in the Soviet Union continued. Now collective farmers and residents of rural areas also had the right to receive a document. At the same time, the approach to determining nationality also changed.

The column in the passport was still mandatory, but now a citizen could, at his own choice, enroll himself in one or another nationality. But the most interesting thing is that around these same years the list of “official” nationalities began to vary. In 1959 there were 126, in 1979 – 123, in 1989 – 128.

Persecution based on nationality

As for persecution based on nationality, a number of scientists record Soviet history cases of deportation of representatives of ten nationalities. These include Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Koreans, Karachais, Ingush, Germans, Balkars and a number of others.

Also, during the Stalinist purges, it was not easy for Soviet Jews.

At the same time, scientists point not only to the facts of deportation, but also to “soft discredit” in the late USSR on a national basis. Soviet Jews came up with a sad joke about this, where they designated their nationality as “disability of the fifth group.”

But it is worth mentioning again that it was more likely that Stalin and the then Soviet leadership saw in the “nationality” column a convenient practical mechanism after its introduction. Initially, the “fifth column” was more of an ideological mechanism and did not imply any systematic practices.

Interestingly, with the collapse of the USSR, Soviet passports did not disappear, and are still considered valid on the territory of Russia, along with new passports of citizens of the Russian Federation, where there is no “nationality” column.

Conservatives periodically advocate for its return, and public discussion on this issue is still going on. However, it seems that the state will not return the “fifth column,” at least in the near future, due to the peculiarities of the current Russian nationality policy.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation introduced a bill to the State Duma that would return the “Nationality” column to passports. It is proposed to fill out the column only at the request of the passport holder. Supporters of this idea were also found in “ United Russia" True, they expressed fears that the initiative could indirectly fuel separatist sentiments.

State Duma deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Tamara Pletneva on Friday introduced a draft law “On the passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation”, providing for the return of the column “Nationality” to it.

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