USSR passport
The front cover of a Soviet passport, 1991 series
Bio page of a Soviet passport, 1991 series
Type	Passport
Issued by	USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs
Purpose	Identification, travel
Valid in	Russian Federation[1]
Eligibility	USSR citizenship

TheUSSR passport (Russian:Паспорт СССР) was anidentity document andpassport issued pursuant to the laws of theUnion of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) forcitizens of the USSR.

After thedissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Soviet passports continued to be issued until 2000 in theRussian Federation, and in otherpost-Soviet states, until they were replaced with national passports gradually by 2001.^[2] All Soviet passports remain valid as an identity document in theRussian Federation to this date.^[1]

Soviet passports remained valid inEstonia until 1997,^[3] inKazakhstan until 1999,^[4] inLatvia until 2000,^[5] inTajikistan andUkraine until 2002,^[6][7] inTurkmenistan andUzbekistan until 2003,^[8][9] inBelarus,Kyrgyzstan,Abkhazia andSouth Ossetia until 2004,^[10][11][12] inArmenia,Artsakh andAzerbaijan until 2005,^[13][14] inGeorgia andLithuania until 2006,^[15][16] inTransnistria until 2010,^[17] and inMoldova until 2014.^[18]

Thepassport system of the Soviet Union underwent a number of transformations in the course of its history. In the lateSoviet Union citizens of age sixteen or older had to have aninternal passport. In addition, apassport for travel abroad (заграничный паспорт, загранпаспорт,zagranpasport, often confusingly translated as "foreign passport") was required for travel abroad. There were several types of abroad passport: an ordinary one, known simply as "USSRzagranpasport", a civil service passport (служебный паспорт,sluzhebny pasport), adiplomatic passport, and a sailor's passport.

Internal passports were serviced by "passport offices" (паспортный стол,pasportny stol) of local offices of theMVDs ofSoviet republics. Abroad passports were handled by theMinistry of Foreign Affairs of the corresponding Soviet republic.

Internal passports were used in theSoviet Union for identification of persons for various purposes. In particular, passports were used to control and monitor the place of residence by means ofpropiska. Officially,propiska was introduced for statistical reasons: since in theplanned economy of the Soviet Union the distribution of goods and services was centralized, the overall distribution of population was to be monitored. For example, a validpropiska was necessary to receive higher education or be employed.

The passports recorded the following information: surname, first name andpatronymic, date and place of birth andethnicity,^[19] family status,propiska, and record of military service. Sometimes the passport also had special notes, for example blood group. As mentioned, the internal passports identified every bearer by ethnicity (национальность,natsional'nost'), e.g., Russian, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Estonian, Jew, etc. When an individual applied for a passport at age 16, they had to select the ethnicity of one of their parents.^[20] All residents were required by law to record their address on the document, and to report any changes to a local office of theMinistry of Internal Affairs. For example, by the age of forty-five, a person had to have threephotographs of themselves in the passport – to account for the effects ofaging – taken at the age of sixteen (when it was issued), twenty-five and forty-five. At different stages of development of theSoviet passport system, they could also contain information on place of work,social status (marriage, children), and other supporting information needed for those agencies and organizations to which the Soviet citizens used to appeal.

The internal passports were written in theRussian language and the language of the republic where it was issued. Passports for travel abroad were writtenRussian andFrench.^[2] Starting in 1991, French was replaced by English.^[2]

• 
  Cover page of a 1974 Soviet Union passport
• 
  USSR passport for travel abroad, year 1929
• 
  Passport USSR, year 1974 – 1991
• 
  USSR passport for travel abroad, bio page 1976
• 
  USSR passport for travel abroad, year 1990
• 
  USSR service passport issued in 1984

Each passport has a data page and a signature page. A data page has a visual zone and nomachine-readable zone. The visual zone has a photograph of the passport holder, data about the passport, and data about the passport owner under the writing "СОЮЗ СОВЕТСКИХ СОЦИАЛИСТИЧЕСКИХ РЕСПУБЛИК" (UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS):^[2]

• Photograph
• Type of document ("P" for "passport")
• Code of the issuing country (always 'SUN')
• Passport number
• Surname in Latin alphabet
• Given name(s) in Latin alphabet
• Nationality (usually 'СССР / URSS')
• Date of birth (DD.MM.YYYY format)
• Place of birth
• Sex
• Date of issue
• Date of expiration
• Authority

The page next to the data page - the signature page, contains under theemblem of the USSR, the writing "UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS", and contains:^[2]

• Last name in Russian
• First name in Russian
• Patronymic in Russian
• Signature of the holder

Notes on the last page of the passport:

Гражданин СССР, прибывший за границу на постоянное жительство, обязан встать на учет в консульском учреждении СССР и сняться с учета при смене места жительства.

translation: A citizen of the USSR who has arrived abroad for permanent residence is required to register with the consular office of the USSR and deregister when changing his place of residence.

Паспорт этот является собственностью Союза Советских Социалистических Республик.
This passport is the property of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Soviet passports were eventually replaced by the following national passports inpost-Soviet states between 1992 and 2005.^[2] Below are the replacement passports with year of first issue.

• 
  1997:Russian passport (includingInternal passport of Russia)^[2][21][22]
• 
  1994:Armenian passport^[13]
• 
  1998:Azerbaijani passport
• 
  1996:Belarusian passport^[23]
• 
  1996:Estonian passport^[24]
• 
  1994:Georgian passport^[25]
• 
  1995:Kazakhstani passport^[26]
• 
  1994:Kyrgyzstani passport^[27]
• 
  1992:Latvian passport^[28]
• 
  1992:Lithuanian passport^[29]
• 
  1995:Moldovan passport^[30]
• 
  1998:Tajik passport^[31]
• 
  1996:Turkmen passport^[32]
• 
  1995:Uzbek passport^[33]
• 
  1994:Ukrainian passport (includinginternal passport of Ukraine)^[34]

• 
  2006:Abkhazian passport^[35]
• 
  2006-2024:Artsakh passport
• 
  2006:South Ossetian passport^[36]
• 
  2001:Transnistrian passport^[37]

• Passport system in the Soviet Union
• Eastern Bloc emigration and defection
• 101st kilometre
• Propiska

• V.Popov, Passport System of Soviet Serfage, "New World" (журнал «Новый Мир»), Issue 6, 1996(in Russian)
• Federal Migration Service of the Russian Federation -- "Historical Information" covers several centuries about passport-policy in Russia and Soviet Union -- in Russian

• Soviet internal politics
• Foreign relations of the Soviet Union
• Defunct passports
• Identity documents of the Soviet Union

• CS1 Russian-language sources (ru)
• Articles containing Russian-language text
• CS1 uses Russian-language script (ru)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles with Russian-language sources (ru)