Propiska in the Soviet Union

A propiska (Russian: пропи́ска, IPA: [prɐˈpʲiskə] ⓘ, plural: propiski) was both a written residency permit and a migration-recording tool, used 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 living place. For a state-owned or third-party-owned property, having a propiska meant the inclusion of a person in the rental contract associated with a dwelling. A propiska is and always certified via local police (Militsiya / Russian Police) registers and stamped in this internal passports. Undocumented residence anywhere for longer than a few weeks was prohibited.

This article is about former migration control in the Russian Empire and the USSR. For the service for Russians, effective since 1993, see Registration in Russia.

The USSR had both permanent (прописка по месту жительства or постоянная прописка) and temporary (временная прописка) propiskas. A third, intermediate type, the employment propiska (служебная прописка), permitted a person and his or her 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 a market economy in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, the permanent propiska 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 propiska there by definition).

Current Russian law on residency registration is basically a continuation of the Soviet propiska variation that does not give an explicit right to residency for permit holders to actually live in a given living space. Contrary, this right have emerged from judicial practice and court precedents that recognized this right as if it was given by law.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.