Paper Trails

The fixation on Soviet documentation make sense primarily in the context of Soviet absence. Anything that works to establish the existence of this long-gone, abstract entity is a net positive.  For the Citizens, Soviet documents are a  guarantee of object permanence, providing reassurance that the object of their love is not actually lost.  It is telling that the documents in question are almost always internal passports, because the reassurance has a circular character: as long as the Soviet Union still exists, the Citizens  of the USSR have a  country to call home, and as long as people have Soviet passports, the Soviet Union remains with them.  Usually, when we talk of people identifying with a group or a country, we are speaking figuratively, but in this case, the Soviet Union establishes both its own identity and that of the Citizens themselves.  Like Narcissus enchanted by his own reflection, the Citizens cannot risk looking away. 

The Citizens of the USSR's belief system should allow them to reject Russian Federation (RF)  documents as a matter of course, just as the Sovereign Citizens and Reichsburger do. If the state is illegitimate, how could their documents be anything else?  But the Citizens of the USSR are too obsessed with documentation to define the issue so simply.  For them, documents and statehood form a closed circuit, with each defining the other.  The flaws in the RF documents, then, must in themselves function as proof of the RF's illegitimacy, and must illustrate the basic tenets of the movement. 

The Citizens of the USSR are fixated on the fine points of Russian money and passports. Their argument about the codes indicated on the Russian ruble is too complex and, frankly, too boring to go into. Suffice to say that for them, this question of codes is enough to prove that the Russian ruble is worthless.  The passport argument is more significant, although the reasoning is no less convoluted.  Soviet passports use upper and lower case to indicate the bearer's last name, first name, and patronymic, while the Russian version uses all capitals--usage more appropriate for tombstones (the reason for that comparison will become clear soon enough). (Родионова “Живорожденные в СССР")

As this example shows, the Citizens give Soviet passports the kind of close, exegetical readings usually reserved for scripture or contract law, seizing on the smallest detail to prove their point.  Their primary argument about the invalidity of RF passports comes down to the use of twо words:  "registration" and the "UFMS" (the Administration of the Federal Migration Service).  

Soviet internal passports were issued at the passport office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and among the many pieces of information it contained was the "propiska" or domicile--where the passport bearer was officially permitted to (and expected to) reside.  In 1992, responsibility for issuing passports in the Russian Federation was handed to the newly-formed Federal Migration Service, which, as the name implies, also processed applications for migration into the RF.   [1] New legislation replaced he propiska with "registration," which actually removed a number of obstacles to the free movement of Russian citizens and to their access to education and social services.  But "registration," particularly when combined with "migration," has been used to argue that the RF passport system turns Russians into migrants rather than citizens. 

This comes up repeatedly in interviews with the citizens.  A 61-year-old retired woman named Lidia Frolova  told a journalist that a friend pointed out the terminology to her back in 2013:  "Take a look at your passport.  It says we're migrants and has an immigration service stamp" (Klimova, Autsaidery). 

Another followed the trail to the the records office, where she asked if they had any paperwork on her renouncing her USSR citizenship and "migrating" to the RF. Naturally, they did not:  "So it's like I was married off without anyone asking me!" ("Kak menia prinimali.") 

The Citizens' literalism is selective.  When a reporter asked how it happened that their "Soviet" passports were printed in Ukraine, they explained that these were leftover blank passports from the old days:

"You see....30 years ago one of the passport series codes accidentally formed a bad word.  So these passports were set aside... And now we've put them to use!  They are real Soviet passports!"  ("Kak menia prinimali.") 

The fact that the letters spelled "KhAM" ("rude person, boor") somehow did not bother them, despite their attribution of near-magical significance to other words on official documents. Nothing gets in the way of what for all intents and purposes looks like a classic case of projection:  to the Citizens, all of these documents prove that the Russian Federation is not really a state, but rather a commercial entity.  Meanwhile, the Citizens main source of income is selling invalid documents to its members.  Clearly, the Citizens are not lacking in sheer gall.  Perhaps the label "KhAM" on their passports is more significant than they think.

Notes

[1] The UFMS was disbanded in 2016, and its functions were transferred to the Main Directorate of Migration Affairs under the Ministry of Internal Affairs.  This does not seem to have figured into the arguments made by the Citizens of the USSR, probably because their passports would likely have been issued before this reorganization, and would therefore still bear the abbreviation "UFMS."