Lagoda's OGPU circular No. 96 "About the procedure for the extra-j udicial repression of citizens violating the passport law of August 13, 1933” set the rules for cleansing regime cities. As an extraordinary decree, lagoda's passportization decree set aside normal court proceedings. Instead, violators were to be punished by special OGPU troikas (called passport troikas) that were manned by OGPU representatives with "oversight” from the prosecutor's office. The troikas were instructed to turn over cases in forty-eight hours to avoid congestion. In addition to their regular registration activities, the OGPU and militia raided housing complexes and made organized sweeps of railway stations and open-air markets to capture unregistered persons and those already denied passports.
Lagoda's decree clearly spelled out the punishment to be meted out by the troika:5
The troikas should select measures of extra-judicial repression according to the following examples, allowing for certain variation according to circumstances.
Category of Persons
Measures of Repression
Non-working persons, drifters, and disorganizers of production.
Those deprived of right to vote, kulaks, and de-kulakized persons.
Those serving out temporary imprisonment or banishment.
Criminals and other anti-Soviet elements.
Prohibition to live in the regime city. In the case of a repeated offense— up to three years in a labor colony.
To be sent to labor colonies for up to three years.
To be sent to special settlements up to three years; in the case of forcible arrest—up to three years in camps.
To be sent to camps up to three years.
Those sentenced for violations of the passport regime were sent either to labor colonies, from which they could not leave, or to the Gulag's "corrective-labor camps” where they were incarcerated. Given the intense need for Gulag labor at the time, many ended up in corrective labor camps irrespective of the sentence.
Passport laws remained in force until the end of the Soviet Union to protect cities from "hostile anti-Soviet elements.” The right to live in "regime” cities was granted by the state as a privilege. Residence in a regime city meant better rations and better jobs; those in other locations lived a drab and dreary life at a lower standard of living and with fewer opportunities. Those excluded could only dream of living in a Moscow, Leningrad, or a Kiev. Yet the lure of cities was strong, and people continued to violate passport laws. Between 1937 and 1955, 435,000 were sentenced for violating passport laws.6
The final reckoning with marginals and former persons came with the Great Terror in 1937-1938, which either executed or imprisoned in Gulag camps more than a half million persons classified as marginals or former people. In fact, the catalogs of hostile Soviet elements compiled for the passport campaign proved invaluable for the selection of victims of the Great Terror.
World History
