CAUSES AND SPECIFICS OF THE MIGRATION CRISIS IN CITIES DURING THE THE FIRST WAVE OF CERTIFICATION OF THE POPULATION OF THE USSR

Abstract

The article is devoted to the crisis of migration policy, in connection with the uncontrolled growth of the urban population and the attempt of the Union government through introduction of the passport system to solve the issue of population control, regulation of flows from villages to cities and supply of cities. In the early 1930s, there was a crisis of migration policy, which arose due to the contradiction between the presence, on the one hand, of a spontaneous labor market based on the freedom of movement and, on the other, the nationalization of the economy, including the sphere of labor.

The short-term tasks of the passport system were "unloading" or "cleansing" of cities from the marginal and lumpenized population, as well as the creation of a registration system. Medium-term goals include limiting the migration of the rural population to cities while maintaining the possibility of the flow of excess labor to priority industrial development zones, as well as the elimination of "social parasitism" in conditions of labor shortages. The long-term goal was to create a national population register in priority development areas, which would allow migration to be controlled by administrative regulation methods, with a gradual expansion of the coverage area. The study concluded that introduction of the passport system provoked a migration crisis in large and industrial cities of the USSR. In 1933–1934, the authorities managed to sharply reduce the scale of migration to cities due to the passport system, but already in 1935 its level returned to previous indicators. An analysis of the policy and practice in the field of the introduction of the passport system illustrates the widespread use of forced evictions including deportations, which serves as confirmation of the repressive functions of the Soviet passporting. The passport system exacerbated the problem of population control both in the field of registration and regulation of flows.