Passport System Campaign in the Closed Cities of Kuzbass in 1933

Abstract

In 1933, Kuzbass entered the national passport system project to become one of its leaders in Western Siberia. Modernization proceeded here at an accelerated rate and had a pronounced industrial character. The article describes the passport system campaign in the so-called closed cities of Kuzbass in 1933. The list included young industrial centres of all-union significance, e.g., Stalinsk, Prokopievsk, Leninsk-Kuznetsk, and AnzheroSudzhensk. On the one hand, the passport system was a national project; on the other hand, it was a mobilization and repressive campaign. The author identified the features of the nationwide policy in the field of registration and passportization and characterized its dynamics in Siberia in 1932–1940. The essence of the passport regime and its structural elements, including passport restrictions, was defined by correlating the statuses of passported and non-passported communities. The analysis of the regional passport system policy revealed the mechanism of introducing a nationwide system of administrative registration, bureaucracy practices, and repressive measures in a region with a rapid migration and urbanization. A set of archival materials on militia activities made it possible to describe the goals and mechanisms of introducing of the passport system, as well as to identify its regional specifics, quantitative parameters, and public response. The documents were obtained from the State Archive of the Novosibirsk Region, collection of the West Siberian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). In 1933, the passported population was 214,000 people; more than 27,000 people left the cities; 4,189 people were deported.

Keywords

• passport system campaign
• militia
• closed city
• kuzbass
• stalinsk
• prokopievsk
• leninsk-kuznetsk
• anzhero-sudzhensk