Metrical Books and Passports in 19th Century Russia

In 19^th Century Russia, citizens were recorded for a variety of purposes.  Certifying identity provided the government with citizenship records providing data to tabulate taxes, to provide lists for military conscription, to record social estate status, to record land ownership, or to preserve hereditary information.  Citizenship records were kept in two ways: 1) metrical books recorded by the clergy, and 2) internal passports purchased by the citizen from the local police.

Metrical Books (Metrika) first appeared under Peter the Great as a tool for cataloging the population of the Russian Empire.  Beginning in the early 1700s, the government required that clergy keep the metrical books, starting with the Russian Orthodox Christians.  Gradually, the requirement spread to other religions in the Empire including Protestant Christian, Roman Catholic, Islam and Judaism.  However, Buddhists in the east and the recognized pagans in European Russia, escaped registration in metrical books entirely.  The books created the fundamental register of identity in the Empire and served as the basis for civil status.  Regardless of social station or religion, citizens were required to report to clergy to have recorded births, marriages and deaths.  The records created the official documentation needed to identify birthdates, social and civil rights of an individual, and provided lists from which were drawn tax registers and military draft notices.

The government issued instructions to clergy that metrical books were serious records and their maintenance was of utmost importance.  Yearly, parish clergy submitted their metrical records to local government authorities.  This inclusion of the clergy into such vital record-keeping shows that the Empire’s government was indeed moored to religious foundations.  However, suspicions arose from time to time that certain clergy were not fastidious enough in their record keeping which the government may have evaluated as sabotage or treason.  Catholics, Jews and Muslims were from time to time put down as being poor record keepers.  Obviously there were many problems with this system; Lutherans wanted to keep their records in German, and Tatar Muslims in their native languages, etc.  What was to be done if a citizen converted to a different religion or confessed to no religion at all?  What if a new religion was formed?  Metrical books lasted until the Tsarist government was put down by the Bolsheviks and the process was never taken over by civic authorities.

-“Between Particularism and Universalism: Metrical Books and Civil Status in the Russian Empire, 1800-1914”, Paul W. Werth, UNLV.

http://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/seminars_conferences/WERTH.pdf

Passports (pasportnaya kniga): internal passports had been in place in Russia since the early 18^th Century as Peter the Great instituted their use as a way to certify a person’s legal place of residence.  Internal passports, identifying the bearer by occupation, residence, and estate, helped regulate travel and prevented evasion of taxes and military conscription.  Passports held by those belonging to lower social orders were registered by the local administrative institutions or rural societies and bound the holder to his residence and form of employment; the passport illustrated that a person belonged in a particular place and to a particular vocation.  By the late 19^th Century, members of lower social orders received passports that were valid for five years, after which time the bearer was required to renew the document.  Each social estate had its own local administrative body.  All members of lower social estates were held responsible for the collective burden of taxes levied on their social estate.  The administrative body certified that an individual had paid his taxes and was eligible for a passport.  Yearly fees were also paid on the passport as a sort of tax on free movement.  Local administrative bodies could also place limitations on a person’s free travel rights.  Literate passport holders, usually members of higher estates, signed their document while the lower orders made their mark or recorded their physical description.  Members of higher estates received passports which were less restrictive.

-Documenting Individual Identity, Jane Caplan and John Torpey ed, Princeton 2001.  Chapter 4, pp 67-80.

http://books.google.com/books?id=gYt6Kf7DtwgC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA76#v=onepage&q&f=false

Andreas Ratzlaff’s passport is an example of a pasportnaya kniga.