Propiska in the Soviet Union

A propiska (Russian: пропи́ска) was both a residency permit and a migration-recording tool - in the Russian Empire before 1917 and in the Soviet Union from the 1930s. Literally, the word propiska means "inscription", alluding to the inscription in a state internal passport permitting a person to reside in a given place. For a state or third-party owned property, propiska meant a person was included in the rental contract associated with a dwelling. Propiska was documented in local police (Militsiya) registers and certified with a stamp in internal passports. Residing anywhere without a permit was prohibited.

In the USSR, there were both permanent (прописка по месту жительства or постоянная прописка) and temporary (временная прописка) propiskas. A third type, the business propiska (служебная прописка), was an intermediate type, permitting a person and family to live in an apartment built by an economic entity (factory, ministry) as long as the person worked for the owner of the housing (similar to inclusion of house rent into a labour contract). In the transition period to the market economy, the permanent propiska in municipal apartments was one factor leading to the emergence of private property rights during privatization (those who built housing at their own expense obtained a permanent propiska there by definition).

The Russian verb "propisat" (Russian: прописа́ть) is formed by adding the prefix "про~" ("pro~") to the verb "писа́ть" ("to scribe, to write"). Here this prefix emphasizes the completion of the action, which supposes permission (like in Russian: "пусти́ть – пропусти́ть", "let [go]" – "yield [the way]") or other related formal action (like in Russian: "дать – прода́ть", "give" – "sell").

Originally, the noun propiska meant the clerical procedure of registration, of 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 enrol [the document] in a book and stamp it". Page 20 of the internal passport of the Russian Empire (see illustration) was entitled: Russian: "Место для пропи́ски ви́довъ поли́цiею" ("Space for registration of vids by police"). 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 p. 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.

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