Nationality entry in Soviet passports
소련 여권의 민족란
The entry recording the holder’s nationality (natsional’nost’, i.e. ethnic origin) in the Soviet internal passport introduced in December 1932. At first written down as the holder declared it, from 1938 it was recorded according to the parents’ nationality, and it remained until the end of the USSR in 1991. In Russian it was commonly called the “fifth line” (pyataya grafa).
In depth
The passport regulations approved on 27 December 1932, when the USSR Central Executive Committee and Council of People’s Commissars established a single passport system, required passports at first of residents aged 16 and over in towns, workers’ settlements and certain other places, and listed nationality as the third item after name and time and place of birth. At first it was written down as the recipient stated it, but NKVD circular No. 65 of 2 April 1938 required it to be recorded according to the parents’ “actual national origin.” The Regulations on the Passport System approved by Council of Ministers resolution No. 677 of 28 August 1974 (new passports were issued in 1976–1981) likewise recorded nationality by the parents; where they differed, the holder chose the father’s or the mother’s nationality on receiving a first passport, and the entry could not be changed afterwards. Since passports were issued at 16, that was when the choice was made. Censuses, by contrast, required no documents and recorded the nationality respondents themselves claimed.
Strictly, the phrase “fifth line” came not from the passport but from item 5 of the personnel record form (lichny listok po uchyotu kadrov) kept by the passport offices of the Interior Ministry as the basis for issuing a passport, and by the personnel departments of all state organisations. In the passports of the 1953–1973 pattern nationality was the third item and social status the fifth. The phrase was often used as a euphemism for being Jewish. Under Stalin there were repressions along national lines and deportations of entire peoples; afterwards Jews, Germans, Crimean Tatars and others met unannounced discrimination in university and graduate admissions, hiring, promotion and travel abroad, which gave rise to the ironic expression “invalid of the fifth group.”
The Russian Federation set out a new passport by government resolution No. 828 of 8 July 1997; issued from 1 October that year, it has no nationality entry. Article 26 of the 1993 constitution gives everyone the right to determine and state their national affiliation and says no one may be compelled to do so.