<p>"The Soviet passport's antiphonal role, as both technique of oppressive state control and as a positive sign of equal rights and status for citizens, gave it extraordinary importance in everyday life and made it a quasi-sacred object. Thoroughly researched, vividly written and moving, this book is essential reading for an understanding of changing citizenship regimes in Russia."<br />—<b>Caroline Humphrey, University of Cambridge</b></p> <p>"In this meticulously researched and powerfully argued book, Albert Baiburin mines the history of the Soviet passport as both an instrument of social engineering and control and a totem of individual experience and cultural creativity. The result is an innovative and fascinating account of the Soviet experiment."<br />—<b>Daniel Beer, Royal Holloway, University of London</b></p> <p>"For Soviet citizens, the passport was a crucial possession that both enabled and restricted them. Albert Baiburin's exhaustive and lively account, fluently translated by Stephen Dalziel, shows why passports were so central to the maintenance of the party dictatorship."<br />—<b>Robert Service, University of Oxford</b></p> <p>"significantly advances our understanding of a crucial institution of Soviet governance."<br />—<i><b>H-Soz-Kult</b></i></p> <p>"scintillating, panoramic history-cum-ethnography of the Soviet passport. Filled with surprising insights and details, it now appears in Stephen Dalziel's superb and lavishly illustrated translation."<br />—<b>Times Literary Supplement</b></p> <p>"thoughtful, deeply researched and fluently translated."<br />—<i><b>History Today</b></i></p> <p>"The Soviet Passport is essential for historians, anthropologists, political scientists and sociologists. . . . This is a fascinating topic and well handled."<br />—<i><b>Eurasian Geography and Economics</b></i></p> <p>"[A] well-researched resource. . . . Baiburin's Soviet Passport is ample illustration of the common Soviet phrase, still used today, 'Bez bumazhki—ty bukashka, as bumazhkoi—chelovek' (Without a piece of paper, you're an insect; with a piece of paper, you're a human being)."<br />—<i><b>Europe-Asia Studies</b></i></p> <p>"...thought-provoking and engaging"<br />—<i><b>Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History</b></i></p> <p>"...a rich and indispensable volume, which provides a near-definitive treatment of its subject and includes fascinating passages likely to capture the imagination of any historian or anthropologist of the USSR. This is a major work of scholarship that deserves a broad readership."<br />—<i><b>The Russian</b></i><b> Review</b><b><br /><br /></b>"a work of consummate scholarship"<br />—<i><b>Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute</b></i></p>