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The Myth of Managed Migration: Migration Control and Market in the Soviet Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Cynthia Buckley
Cynthia Buckley*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Texas, Austin
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Extract

The former Soviet state openly and directly manipulated patterns of economic development and the allocation of social resources in order to influence individual-level demographic decision making. In perhaps the most notable example, the state, through an internal passport system and limits on central city registration, attempted to regulate patterns of population movement and urban growth. In this paper I shall show that while the operation of the passport and propiska system was quite similar to market-based signals in terms of individual perceptions of costs and benefits, the non-migration functions of the passport and “propiska,” or registration system, operated in an anti-market fashion. By preventing migrants from integrating themselves into distributional networks in restricted cities, the passport and propiska system generated a situation in which potential migrants either acquired propiskas through semi-legal avenues, denied themselves access to distributional networks or elected not to migrate.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , Winter 1995 , pp. 896 - 916
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1995

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References

Initial work on this project was supported by a Social Science Research Council Graduate Training Fellowship and by the International Research Exchanges Board. 1 am grateful to Barbara Anderson and Brian Silver, two anonymous reviewers and the editorial staff of Slavic Review for helpful comments on several earlier drafts. Slavic Review 54, no. 4 (Winter 1995)Google Scholar

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19. See Matthews, The Passport Society, particularly chapter 3.

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32. There is some confusion over which cities belong on the restricted list and which do not. Tbilisi is not listed by Khorev but is listed in the statute as published by Gosplan, but in conversation with members of the Tbilisi city council in 1992, I was informed that propiskas for the city were limited. Khorev lists Ufa as being a closed city but it is not listed in the statute published by Gosplan. In a personal interview with Khorev (January, 1990) he confirmed that Ufa was covered in the 1956 restrictions.

33. Labor shortages helped give rise to large numbers of limitchiki, or workers with limited residence permits directly tied to their employment position, as well as otkhodniki, or seasonal laborers who held temporary permits. For an excellent examination of the latter, see Shabanova, M.A., Sezonnaia i postoiannaia migralsiia nasdeniia v sel'skom raione (Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1991)Google Scholar.

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35. As a leading Russian sociologist pointed out, all a professor needed was one child of a police (militsiia) officer in her class to assure a resident permit for a nanny or nurse from the village to assist in either eldercare or childcare. From personal experience she recounted that once one village girl leaves the post (typically to marry an urbanite) another is easy to find as long as you can provide a residency permit (and presumably a passing grade for the officer's child).

36. C. Buckley, Internal Migration in a Centrally Planned Economy: The Case of the Soviet Union, unpublished PhD. dissertation (1991), chapter 6.

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43. See statement made by Chris Pickvance in Mezaros, Julia, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, no. 3 (1992): 477-88Google Scholar. See also Szelenyi, I., Urban Inequalities Under State Socialism. Google Scholar

44. Ibid., 486.

45. Ibid.

46. See issues raised in Perevedentsev, V., “Rynok truda i migratsiia naseleniia SSSR,” Voprosy ekonomiki, no. 9 (1991): 53-60 Google Scholar.

47. See Yang, X. and Goldstein, S., “Population Movement in Zhejieng Province, China: The Impact of Government Policies,” International Migration Review 24, no. 3 (1990): 509-33Google Scholar.

48. See XuXie-quiang, and Si-ming, Li, “China's Open Door Policy and Urbanization in the Pearl River Delta Region,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies, no. 1 (1990): 49-69 Google Scholar. “Temporary” residence permits were often used in the Soviet case to circumvent central city restrictions. As in the Chinese case, workers were given limited registration, typically entitling them to space in a dormitory as long as they held a specific post of employment. Additionally, seasonal migrants (zilikoulianghu in China, otkhodniki or, more pejoratively, shabashniki, in Russia) provided traveling work brigades whose existence outside of standard channels of registration was permitted. See Shabanova, M.A., Sezonnaia i postoiannaia migratsiia naseleniia v sel'skom raione. Google Scholar

49. See Yang and Goldstein, “Population Movement in Zhejieng Province, China: The Impact of Government Policies“; and Goldstein, S. and Goldstein, A., “Population Mobility in the People's Republic of China,” Papers of the East-West Population Institute, no. 95 (1985)Google Scholar.

50. Shokhin, A.I., “U nas net rynka truda,” Obshchestvenennye nauki i sowemennost’ 1 (1992): 3-9 Google Scholar. See also Shokhin, and Kosmarskii, V., “Rynok truda v SSSR perekhodnyi period,” Voprosy ekonomiki, no. 9 (1991): 3-9 Google Scholar.

51. In early 1994 the distribution of residence permits (solidifying citizenship rights) was restricted in Estonia for the non-Estonian population (Izvestiia [19 January 1994]: 5). The previous possession of official residence permits (5 years) are currently a required element for the acquisition of Estonian citizenship (Segodnya [20 January 1995]: 5)Google Scholar.

52. See Shokhin and Kosmarskii, “Rynok truda v SSSR perekhodnyi period.” A recent issue of Voprosy ekonomiki was devoted to the problems of housing reform, see Voprosy ekonomiki, no. 7 (1993)Google Scholar.

53. See Shokhin, “U nas net rynka truda.“

54. Moscow News 43 (1992): 4 Google Scholar.

55. For an insightful analysis of the Soviet housing system, see Bessonova, O., “Mekhanizm obespecheniia v usloviiakh perestroiki,” Postizhenie: solsiologiia. sotsial'naia polilika. ekonomicheskaia reforma, eds. Borodkin, F.M., Kosals, L. and Ryvkina, R.V. (Moscow: Progress, 1989): 289-98Google Scholar. The importance of the housing issue to migration is highlighted in Korel', L.I., Tapilina, B.S. and Trofimov, V.A., Migratsiia i zhilishche (Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1988)Google Scholar; and initial problems with market reforms are introduced in Iasin, E., “Zhilishchnaia problema-uzlovoi punkt ekonomicheskikh reform,” Voprosy ekonomiki, no. 7 (1993): 4-6 Google Scholar.

56. A law entitled “On the Right of Russian Federation Citizens to Freedom of Movement and Choice of Place of Sojourn and Residence Within the Russian Federation” was intended to go into effect on 1 October 1993 (CDSP, XLV, no. 36: 22-23) The law was delayed during the state of emergency (Izvestiia [24 October 1993]: 4) and later suspended. The decree of 24 October 1994, “On Russian Federation Citizenship,” made specific avenues for the acquisition of official documents relating to citizenship to vagrants, students, and others without permanent residence. See Segodnia (2 November 1994): 2.

57. See Rakabitskii, V., “Konkretno-istoricheskie osobennosti stanovleniia rynka truda v SSSR,” Voprosy ekonomiki, no. 9 (1991): 10-13 Google Scholar; Shomina, E., “Enterprises and the Urban Environment in the USSR,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 16, no. 2 (1992): 222-33Google Scholar; and Standing, G., ed., In Search of Flexibility: The New Soviet Labour Market (Geneva: International Labor Office, 1991)Google Scholar.

58. See popular press reports beginning in the late 1980s in Literaturnaia gazeta (27 December 1989): 12 Google Scholar; Sovetskaia kul'tura (12 January 1989): 6 Google Scholar; and lunost', no. 4 (1989): 56-61 Google Scholar.

59. See Prosvirnin, V.F., Problemy narodonaseleniia v SSSR: politiko-ekonomicheskii analiz (Leningrad: Isdatel'stvo Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1989)Google Scholar; and Avdeev, Iu., “Migratsionnaia politika na etape perestroiki,” in Podkhody k upravleniiu migratsionym razvitiem: materialy konferentsii, ed. Katus, Kalev (Tallin: Valgus, 1989)Google Scholar.

60. One often cited motivation for the regulation of apartment inhabitants is to maintain a sanitary norm of living space per individual (Khorev, Problemy Gorodov). There is also fear that urban overcrowding may lead to poor public health. Such overcrowding is a very real threat in the Russian Federation, where large numbers of refugees already taxing resettlement plans and more are anticipated. On the later, see Morozova, C.F., “Sovremennye migratsionnye iavleniia: bezhentsy i emigranty,” Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, no. 3 (1992):34-40 Google Scholar.

61. In Armenian villages rural land distribution took place by allotting each registered adult a share of communal lands (Author, personal observations, 1991).

62. Efforts to rid Moscow of “criminal elements” in fall 1993 focused on tightening residence restrictions and the implementation of visitor permits. Initial efforts to check registration were allegedly tinged with ethnic hatred as only those “non-Slav” in appearance were checked ( Segodnia [16 October 1993]: 1 Google Scholar). Similarly, there have been recent moves to “close” cities tied to military production in order to diminish firearm access. See Segodnia (4 December 1994): 1 Google Scholar; and Segodnia (12 November 1994): 2 Google Scholar.

63. Petersburg, St. (Izvestiia [25 November 1993]: 7)Google Scholar and Moscow (Izvestiia [21 May 1994]: 4)Google Scholar have established expensive temporary permits for visitors to these cities. Krasnoiarsk has established a similar program for the entire territory (Izvestiia [2 November 1993]: 5)Google Scholar. After the initiation of fees for temporary permits in excess of 500 times the monthly wage last year, the duma struck down the charges for permits in Moscow. The high price of the permits was cited as illegal, not the permits themselves (Pravda [9 June 1994]: 1)Google Scholar.