Obtaining Russian citizenship for those born in the USSR: legal advice

Resettlement of compatriots

For residents of the former Soviet Union, it is possible to obtain a Russian passport by relocating to the Russian Federation.

Please note: this program only works in some regions of the Russian Federation. For resettlement, it is necessary that the citizen has the specialty, education required by the region, or meets other conditions for participation in the resettlement program. Being born on the territory of a union republic is a necessary condition, but not sufficient, to obtain citizenship.

Beware of scammers offering fraudulent resettlement program documents.

How to restore a Soviet state passport

Having dealt with the previous question, it becomes clear that the USSR passport is valid in 2021. Therefore, the question of return arises: how to return a USSR passport? This applies primarily to those who accidentally lost or damaged it.

If a Russian has a document and is issued in accordance with the standard that was legitimate during the Soviet Union, determining permanent registration at the place of residence within the borders of the Russian Federation on the date February 6, 1992 is of great importance. At this time, Law 1948-1 was introduced, where in Art. 13 sets out norms stating that persons who have permanent registration within the country at the time of the above date automatically become subjects of the Russian Federation.

In this case, the person is free to write a special application to the migration service. The application form indicates a request for recording the certificate of a citizen of the Russian Federation. In addition, you should attach: a Soviet passport (if not lost), a biography of the applicant, an identity document of a Russian citizen indicating the presence of a place of permanent registration.

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If the person is registered in another region, a request is sent to the state authorities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with instructions to provide all available registration addresses and dates of stay of the citizen (if there are several of them).

Stages of returning an ID

There are people who consider Russian citizenship to be illegitimate, and because of this they decide to return their USSR-era passport. Replacement involves some difficulties. For example, a document with original watermarks is now not issued, and the cost of one copy is approximately seven thousand rubles.

There is another problem: the state inspection of the Soviet Union does not work, which means there is no body authorized to put a stamp. You can obtain a certificate confirming Soviet citizenship by sending a request to the migration inspection. The form indicates:

Full Name;
actual place of residence;
Date of Birth;
for what reason was previously registered a passport proving citizenship of the Russian Federation;
whether the person was a subject of the Soviet Union and what acts indicate this;
whether the application for withdrawal from USSR citizenship was completed in accordance with the accepted form;
whether they registered Russian citizenship or left the list of nationals of the country.

To speed up the process, experts advise attaching the necessary certificates and certificates to the application. The list of required documentation includes copies of the 1st and 2nd pages of the Russian passport.

The certificate will be permanent or temporary

The documents of the Soviet state stopped being replaced back in 2004, but not everyone wanted to replace them and still use these passports to this day. There are no restrictive rules for the use of this option and no new rules are planned to come into force in the near future. Recently, a draft was submitted for consideration to allow the removal of the restriction on the period of application of the 1974 version of the Union national identity cards. The law equates the validity period of the identity card of Russia and the Soviet state.

CIS

If a person was not a Soviet citizen, but was born after the collapse of the union on the territory of the CIS, then he can obtain Russian citizenship on a general basis:

Temporary residence permit
Resident card
Registration of citizenship

The total period is about 5 years.

A CIS citizen has the right to reduce the period for obtaining citizenship if he has:

Parents or children who are Russian citizens
When receiving education in Russia
Marriage with a Russian man or Russian woman (more than three years)
Birth in Russia

A citizen of the CIS can obtain a passport of the Russian Federation one and a half years in advance if the specified grounds exist.

Features of the USSR passport

More than thirty-six thousand people in the state have in their hands an identification document of the former type. This is the voluntary expression of one's own opinions, political or otherwise. However, some citizens today continue to be interested in information on how to obtain a USSR passport instead of a Russian passport.

The Soviet document of the representatives of the USSR had unique features and differences:

a person’s personal data was recorded by hand in two languages: the first language is Russian, the second is recognized as official in the republic issuing the identification document;
the certificate, unlike most modern ones, had a main page with a vertical orientation;
cover and sheets were held together using paper clips made of metal. Unlike the current ones, which use stainless steel clips, these ones developed rust stains over time;
in the Soviet state, the latest type of passport did not need to be changed within the established time frame according to age; after a person turned twenty-five and forty-five years old, it was necessary to paste in a current photograph. The document was changed in case of loss, accidental damage, theft, or change of surname due to marriage.

The following information was included in the passport:

presence of children (full name);
facial blood type;
the registration address and date of discharge were indicated (if the place of residence changed);
information about marriage or divorce.

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The certificate of a subject of the Soviet state was the main document on equal terms with the party card. For those who had the latter, it was worse to lose it.

Advantages of a migration center

Reliability . The center has been operating since 1996.
Experience . All migration law lawyers have been working in the center for more than 10 years.
Guarantees . All documents are received in the personal presence of the applicant.
Agreement . A contract is concluded for all services.
Installment plan . All payments are made in stages with 50 percent installments.
Result . We work until the desired result is achieved.

Creation of a system of population control in the USSR. Passport as a class entity

Details Category: Workshop of historians Published: June 08, 2018

The passport system is anti-democratic - so they argued at the beginning of the 20th century. Russian Social Democrats. V.I. Lenin (Ulyanov) directly wrote in 1903: “The Social Democrats demand complete freedom of movement and trade for the people.

What does this mean: freedom of movement?.. This means that passports should be destroyed in Russia too (in other states there have been no passports for a long time), so that not a single police officer, not a single zemstvo boss should dare to prevent any peasant from settling and working wherever he pleases "

By decree of October 8, 1906, the government of P. A. Stolypin abolished a number of restrictions that existed for peasants and other persons of the former tax-paying classes. The place of permanent residence for them began to be considered not the place of registration in one or another society (urban or rural), but the place of actual residence, which could be chosen freely.

It is paradoxical that after seizing power, it was the party led by Lenin that restored the “serfdom” of the people from the state on a scale undreamed of in pre-revolutionary Russia.

Immediately after the October Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks, in one of their first decisions - the decree “On the destruction of estates and civil ranks” of November 11, 1917 - completely eliminated the passport system of the Russian Empire. Since the end of 1918, the work book has become the main identification document in the country. However, in reality, only residents of Moscow, Petrograd and several industrialized provinces could receive it. Since 1923, a new main document was introduced in the USSR - an identity card, issued at the request of citizens for three years.

“The Great Turning Point” of the late 1920s – early 1930s. put an end to the last illusions about freedom in the state of workers and peasants. On December 27, 1932, Chairman of the USSR Central Executive Committee M. I. Kalinin, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR V. M. Molotov (Scriabin) and Secretary of the USSR Central Executive Committee A. S. Enukidze signed Resolution No. 57/1917 “On the establishment of a unified passport system in the USSR and mandatory registration of passports.” Certification was carried out to tighten state control over the population of the Country of Soviets - “in order to better account for the population of cities, workers’ settlements, new buildings and unload these populated areas from persons not associated with production and work in institutions or schools,” as well as “in order to clear these populated areas from hiding kulak... and other antisocial elements.” This document became the legal basis of the Soviet passport system. It established that from now on “all citizens of the USSR over the age of 16, permanently residing in cities, workers’ settlements, working in transport, on state farms and on new buildings, are required to have passports.” Thus, not the entire country was covered by passportization: the vast majority of the peasantry remained outside the latter; special certificates were issued to military personnel.

Identity card of a citizen of the USSR. 1923

The passport was now the only document “identifying the owner.” All papers that previously served as a residence permit were cancelled. Mandatory registration of passports with the police was introduced “no later than 24 hours upon arrival at a new place of residence.” An extract also became mandatory for those who left “the boundaries of a given locality completely or for a period of more than two months,” as well as for those exchanging passports, prisoners, those arrested, or those held in custody for more than two months.

The passport indicated the first name, patronymic, last name, date and place of birth, nationality, social status (“worker”, “individual peasant”, “employee”, “student”, etc.), permanent residence address, place of work or military service, as well as information about the documents on the basis of which the passport was issued. It had a place for a photograph, which for a long time was pasted in only when necessary, but from October 1937 this became mandatory. Enterprises and institutions had to require passports (or temporary certificates) from those hired, noting the time of enrollment in them. Since August 8, 1936, a secret mark was made in the passports of persons with a criminal record, which made it difficult for those convicted for political reasons to get a job.

Peasants at the construction of the Dnieper hydroelectric station. Late 1920s – early 1930s.

The process of passportization, of course, did not occur simultaneously. First of all, it was carried out in Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov and in large areas near them (100 km around Moscow and Leningrad, 50 km around Kharkov). These territories were declared regime, that is, it was forbidden to issue passports and reside there to persons in whom the Soviet government saw a direct or indirect threat to their existence: “not engaged in socially useful labor” in production, in institutions, schools (with the exception of disabled people and pensioners ); “kulaks” and “dispossessed kulaks” who fled from the villages (even if they “worked in enterprises or were in the service of Soviet institutions”); “defectors from abroad”; arrived from other cities and villages of the country after January 1, 1931 “without an invitation to work in an institution or enterprise, if they do not currently have certain occupations or, although they work in institutions or enterprises, are obvious flyers or have been fired for disrupting production "; “disenfranchised” - people deprived of voting rights by Soviet law, representatives of the “former exploiting classes”; former prisoners and exiles; as well as family members of citizens of all of the above groups. They were subject to deportation to other parts of the country within ten days, where they received the “right of unhindered residence” with the issuance of a passport.

By 1953, 340 cities in the USSR were already considered regime (among them Odessa, Rostov-on-Don, Stalingrad, Gorky, Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk, Grozny, Sevastopol, etc.), railway junctions with vast zones around them (from 15 to 500 km) and individual areas. Transcarpathian, Kaliningrad and Sakhalin regions, Primorsky and Khabarovsk territories, Kamchatka were declared completely under regime.

As already mentioned, passportization did not apply to peasants (with the exception of residents of regime areas). Those who wanted to leave the village faced a long and painful procedure for obtaining passports. Formally, everything seemed to be simple. The law stated: “In cases where persons living in rural areas leave for long-term or permanent residence in an area where a passport system has been introduced, they receive passports from the district or city departments of the workers’ and peasants’ militia at the place of their previous residence for a period of one year. After the expiration of the one-year period, persons who arrived for permanent residence receive passports at their new place of residence on a general basis.” In practice, the law was “corrected” beyond recognition.

According to the resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated March 17, 1933, the peasant “otkhodnik” had to have in his hands “an agreement registered with the collective farm board with economic authorities,” that is, with representatives of the enterprise that hired the “otkhodnik” to work under the “organizational recruitment” " On September 19, 1934, a closed resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was adopted, which specified that in passport-certified areas, enterprises can hire collective farmers who went into retirement without an agreement with economic authorities registered with the collective farm board, “only if these collective farmers have passports received under previous place of residence, and a certificate from the collective farm board confirming its consent to the collective farmer’s departure.” Thus, the peasant’s ability to leave the collective farm was completely placed under the control of the local authorities. Those who left without permission took serious risks. According to the resolution on passports, “passportless” were subject to a fine of up to 100 rubles and “removal by order of the police.” Repeated violation entailed criminal liability. Article 192-a, introduced into the Criminal Code of the RSFSR on July 1, 1934, provided for imprisonment for up to two years for violating the passport regime. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1939 formulated the essence of the Soviet passport system very frankly: “... the procedure for administrative registration, control and regulation of the movement of the population through the introduction of passports for the latter. Soviet legislation, unlike bourgeois legislation, never veiled the class essence of its P. s. [passport system. – S.M.], using the latter in accordance with the conditions of the class struggle and with the tasks of the dictatorship of the working class at different stages of the construction of socialism.”

Peasants at the construction of the Dnieper hydroelectric station. Late 1920s – early 1930s.

Modern historian V.P. Popov describes the situation with obtaining a passport in the village: “The peasants who decided to leave the village in compliance with passport laws, which they knew about from hearsay, faced a difficult task: they had to have an agreement with the enterprise - only then could they get a passport from the police and leave. If there was no agreement, you had to bow to the chairman of the collective farm and ask for a certificate to “leave”. But the collective farm system was not created so that rural slaves would be allowed to freely “walk” around the country. The chairman of the collective farm well understood this “political moment” and his task: “to hold and not let go”... Let’s try to imagine the ordeal of a peasant to obtain “freedom”. As a rule, there is no agreement in hand, since the state closely controlled and regulated the “organizational recruitment” in the village. Depending on the situation with personnel in a particular industry, at a construction site, factory, mine, it either allowed state recruiters to recruit labor from villages... then it closed this loophole. This means that, first of all, the peasant should have gone to the collective farm chairman for a certificate. He refuses directly or delays, offering to wait to leave until the completion of agricultural work. Having achieved nothing on the collective farm, the peasant tries to start from the other end - first to gain consent from the village council. The chairman of the village council is the same “trembling creature” as the chairman of the collective farm, a dependent creature who values his place as a “boss” more than anything else. Naturally, he asks the peasant if he has a certificate from the board, asks to show it. If there is no certificate, the conversation is over, the circle is closed. The only option left is to bribe village officials or forge the necessary certificate. But that’s what the police are for, to check all the documents to the point, and if necessary, ask the authority that issued the certificate. This creates the basis for the merging of local authorities – collective farm, Soviet, police, which becomes the undivided master of the village.”

The position of “passported” city residents was a little freer. They could move around the country, but the choice of permanent residence was limited by the need for registration, and a passport became the only document acceptable for this. Thus, the registration mechanism served as a powerful tool for regulating the resettlement of citizens throughout the territory of the USSR. By allowing or refusing registration, one could effectively influence the choice of place of residence. Living without registration was punishable by a fine, and in case of relapse - by correctional labor for up to 6 months (the already mentioned article 192-a of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR). The possibilities of control over citizens have increased enormously, the mechanism of police investigation has been greatly simplified: a system of “all-Union search” has emerged through a network of passport offices - special reference centers created in populated areas.

Since the beginning of World War II, the passport regime in cities has become stricter. In May 1940, the NKVD of the USSR ordered that workers in the coal industry be issued special certificates instead of passports. Passports were kept in the personnel departments of enterprises and were issued in exceptional cases (for example, to present a document at the registry office when changing a surname, marriage or divorce). In 1940–1944 This order extended to employees of ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, chemical industry, heavy industry, shipbuilding, railway, sea and river transport, and the system of the Main Directorate of Labor Reserves. This order was canceled only in May 1948.

In 1949, the Bureau of the USSR Council of Ministers, on the initiative of the Minister of Internal Affairs L.P. Beria, considered the issue of reforming the passport system, which provided for the introduction of a new type of passport and “issuing passports not only to the urban but also to the rural population.” However, the offer was rejected. But in May 1953, the Council of Ministers approved the same Beria’s project “On the reduction of sensitive areas and passport restrictions”, which excluded about 150 cities and localities, all railway junctions and stations from the regime. Since October 1953, a new regulation came into force, somewhat expanding the list of localities where citizens were required to have passports. Persons over 40 years of age were issued permanent documents, persons aged 20 to 40 years were issued ten-year documents, and persons aged 16 to 20 years were issued five-year documents. A short-term passport (for a period of no more than 6 months) was issued in cases where people could not provide all the certificates necessary to obtain a passport, in case of loss of passports, and also when leaving rural areas for seasonal work (on “departure”). But in general, the foundations of the Soviet passport system and registration regime remained intact. Criminal liability for violation of the passport regime was also retained.

With regard to the peasantry, no liberalization of the system followed either after the end of the Great Patriotic War, or after the death of Stalin, or during the Khrushchev Thaw. Only on August 28, 1974, by the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On measures to further improve the passport system in the USSR,” it was decided to introduce a new type of USSR citizen passport in 1976. From now on, “all Soviet citizens who have reached the age of 16 are required to have a passport of a citizen of the USSR.” The issuance and exchange of documents was to be carried out from 1976 to 1981. In six years, 50 million passports were issued for the first time in rural areas (in remote areas the process continued until 1989).

The passport became unlimited, and the alphanumeric codes that marked documents of former prisoners, prisoners of war, or persons who were in occupied territory were eliminated. To take into account changes in the external features of the passport holder, 3 photographs were inserted sequentially: when receiving a passport at 16 years old, when reaching 25 and 45 years old. However, the new Regulations on Passports left the registration regime virtually unchanged. Its terms have become a little more liberal.

Soviet passports continued to be valid on the territory of the Russian Federation throughout almost the entire 1990s and early 2000s. In July 1997, the government approved the regulations on the Russian passport and its description. The exchange of old Soviet passports for new Russian ones was completed only in 2008.

Sergey Mikhailov, Candidate of Historical Sciences

What does a passport give?

Having the appropriate paper in your pocket, you can make a sharp turn back almost 30 years, become heroes of an alternative reality, turning from “born in the USSR” into Soviet citizens.

The USSR passport is completely different from the Russian ones:

The pages had a vertical orientation;
information was entered manually in 2 languages: Russian and the official language of a specific republic that is part of the Union;
upon reaching the ages of 25 and 45, it was necessary to paste in a photo, which gave the right not to change the passport, but to keep the old one;
on the pages of the document there were special pages where one could indicate the blood type and Rh factor, information about children, registration and other data.

As a rule, the pages were held together with ordinary metal clips, which darkened over time, leaving marks on the paper. In the 21st century this seems too simple a method, but this was one of the features of Soviet passports.

Visit to the Federal Migration Service of the Russian Federation application for a certificate of citizenship of the USSR by

Training in the legal foundations of self-defense in the territory of the USSR occupied by illegitimate structures. How to correctly write a request to the Federal Migration Service (Guvm Ministry of Internal Affairs) of the Russian Federation to confirm citizenship of the USSR? Why the USSR will be restored. Analysis of the response from the Main Department of Internal Affairs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation of deliberately false information, for which the perpetrators can already be held accountable.

Analysis of the response from the Main Department of Internal Affairs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation with incorrect information in advance, for which it is already possible to hold the guilty persons accountable. Notarized statement about. One option for them, the second for you, on the second you need a stamp of acceptance of the request (with the date of acceptance, name and position of the responsible person).

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Confirmation of Russian citizenship

In the situations discussed above, as noted earlier, the person is in any case a citizen of Russia, but does not have a document confirming this circumstance, or the international passport he has as a citizen of the Russian Federation is invalid (Situation No. 4).

From this we can draw a very important conclusion. The presence of at least one of the above documents in a person is the basis for the issuance, in compliance with the established procedure, of any other document(s), while the citizen is not obliged to confirm his Russian citizenship with any other additional documents.

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Details of obtaining a temporary USSR passport in 2021

In order to legally return to the USSR and obtain a state passport of this country, you need to provide a certain list of documents provided for by the established rules.

The procedure for obtaining a temporary passport in this case will look like this:

An application form is sent to the relevant government agencies.
If any claims are made against a citizen by government bodies of Russia, the address is added to the existing ones or another form of document No. 3 is used.
After the response to the application in Form No. 3 is received, you will need to send gratitude in Form No. 4.
The existing document is presented in person against signature or sent by registered mail with notification of the application form from the folder “Application based on a certificate of citizenship to the authorities of the Russian Federation.”
Once all documents have been sent, any correspondence with Russian government authorities can be stopped.

After returning to the USSR, the citizen receives a notification from the state bodies of the Russian Federation about the fact of transfer to the jurisdiction of the USSR, as well as a notification from these organizations about the refusal to pay taxes and loans, perform military service and fulfill other obligations.

Also, various resource, territorial, financial, housing or legal requirements may be imposed on the Russian government on the basis of an international audit and laws adopted by the USSR Government.