Russian passport

International Russian passport
The front cover of a contemporary Russian biometric passport.
Date first issued	1 March 2010
Issued by	Russian Federation
Type of document	Passport
Purpose	Identification of Russian citizens
Eligibility requirements	Russian Federation citizenship
Expiration	10 years (biometric), 5 years (non-biometric)
Cost	3500 rubles for biometric passport, 2000 rubles for non biometric

The Russian passport is a legal document issued to the citizens of the Russian Federation for the purposes of travelling abroad.

The Russian Federation currently issues two types of passports: non-biometric and biometric. Non-biometric passports are currently valid for 5 years, biometric passports issued after 1 March 2010 are valid for 10 years and have an increased number of pages from 36 to 46.

Due to the exclave position of Kaliningrad Oblast, which makes a passport an essential document at any age, citizens residing there are exempt from any fees for passport issue.^[1]

The right of Russian citizen to leave the country can be temporarily restricted if (s)he:^[2]

1. had signed a contract with the government allowing access to state secrets with provision restricting his/her right to leave the country, until the restriction is lifted as specified in the contract;
2. has been conscripted to the military or alternative civil service, until the completion of service;
3. is a defendant under criminal prosecution, until the verdict is reached;
4. is convicted of a crime, until completion of serving time or acquittal;
5. is avoiding obligations imposed by the court, until fulfilling the obligations or achieving consent between the parties;
6. provided false information in his/her application, until the situation is deemed resolved by the processing agency;
7. is employed by the Federal Security Service, until the expiration of contract;
8. has been declared bankrupt, until the settlement is reached by the court of arbitration.

Individuals under 18 travelling without both parents must have written consent of both parents allowing their departure from country. When a child travels with one parent, consent of another parent is not required. Articles 20 and 21 of the Federal Law "On the entry in the Russian Federation and departure from the Russian Federation" govern only departure from Russia and have nothing to do with the requirements of other countries regarding entry to these countries.

In addition to regular passport there are three special-purpose types of passports for travelling abroad: diplomatic passport, service passport (issued to government employees going abroad on official business) and seaman's passport.

History

Russian Empire

Arrival of foreigners to Russia met with various restrictions in the Tsarist period; border magistrates could pass foreigners within the state only with the permission of senior government. In troubled times, it begins to produce and to travel within the country system "roadways" letters (Russian: проезжих) in order, mainly police. As a general rule letters carriageways were built by Peter I (decree of October 30, 1719), in connection with the entered his conscription and head tax. In 1724, to prevent the possibility to evade the payment of the poll tax, special rules about absences of peasants.

Under the legislation in force for the period of 1906 in Russia in the place of residence, as a general rule, the passport is not required. The exception is the capital and other cities, declared an emergency situation or enhanced protection. In addition, in areas that are subject to the rules on the supervision of industrial establishments, the workers of factories and plants are required to have a passport, and in the place of permanent residence. You do not need a passport when absence from the place of permanent residence: 1) within the district and outside it as recently as 50 vents and no more than 6 months, and 2) from the persons hired for rural work, - in addition, within the townships adjacent to the county of residence, even if more than 6 months.

Law of June 10, 1902 the regulations on residence permits June 3, 1894 extended to the province of the Kingdom of Poland, with some modifications. Formed in 1902, the Committee on the needs of the agricultural industry is recognized as desirable in the types of facilitating the movement of agricultural workers, the simplification of passport regulations. A special meeting of the needs of the agricultural industry has been entrusted to the Minister of Internal Affairs of the revision of statutes on residence permits, in the sense of saving for a passport solely value of an identity document. Elaborated on these grounds in 1905, a new draft statute was a passport to postpone consideration until the convocation of the State Duma.

Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

Soviet external passport 1929

Immediately after the Russian Revolution the Russian Republic not followed the emigration; Many disagreed with the new regime left the country since 1917 to the end of the 1920s left the country about 8,000 people, including about 500 scientists (for comparison, in the period from 1989 to 2004, according to various estimates from 25,000-80,000 scientists left Russia^[3]). In 1922, two flights so-called philosophical ship from Petrograd to Stettin and several ships from the territory of Ukraine and trains from Moscow on the personal instructions of Lenin were expelled 225 intellectuals (philosophers Berdyaev, Ilyin, Frank and Bulgakov). Of the emigrants only a small part returned such as Marina Tsvetaeva and Alexei Tolstoy.

By the mid-1930s the Soviet government sealed the borders. Travelling to capitalist countries was only possible to employees of the Foreign Ministry, the nomenklatura and selected artists while most ordinary Soviet citizens had the opportunity to travel only in socialist countries for trade union tour.

The third and final wave of Soviet emigration coincided with the rupture of relations with Israel. June 10, 1968 the Central Committee received a joint letter to the leadership of the Foreign Ministry and the KGB signed by Andrey Gromyko and Yuri Andropov to the proposal to allow Soviet Jews to emigrate from the country. As a result, in the 1970s the Soviet Union had left only about 4,000. People, many against their will, for example, such well-known dissidents, like Brodsky, Aksenov, Aleshkovsky, Voinovich, Dovlatov, Gorenstein, Galich.

May 20, 1991, a few months before the collapse of the USSR the last Soviet law on the exit of citizens abroad was adopted, according to which citizens could leave at the request of the state, public and religious organizations and enterprises.

The Russian Federation

In 1993, exit visas were canceled and allowed a free issue of passports, the right to freely leave the country was enshrined in the new law of 1996.^[4] Passports with the symbols of the Soviet Union were issued to citizens of the Russian Federation until the end of 2000, respectively expire in the early years of the 21st century, about 10 years after the dissolution of the Soviet state. Since 2001, Russian passports were issued with the new design which includes the emblem of Russia, a double headed eagle. Since 2010, the application for registration of passport can be submitted via the website www.gosuslugi.ru.

In 2006 biometric passports were introduced in Russia. Since 2009 in all regions of Russia there are points of issue of passport and visa documents of new generation (passports containing electronic media). The data of these items come in a single personalization center data. On March 1, 2010 biometric passport are valid for 10 years. The data on the chip Russian passports are protected by a technology access control BAC (Basic access control), which allows you to produce read data only after entering the passport number, date of birth of the holder and the expiration date of the passport (usually by means of recognition of the machine readable zone of the passport), which excludes unauthorized access to data on the chip.

Description

Data page and signature page of a biometric international passport (2014)

Data page and signature page of a non-biometric international passport (2007)

Each passport has a data page and a signature page. A data page has a visual zone and a machine-readable zone. The visual zone has a digitized photograph of the passport holder, data about the passport, and data about the passport owner:

• Photograph
• Type of document ("P" for "passport")
• Code of the issuing country (always 'RUS')
• Passport number
• Surname
• Given name(s)
• Nationality (always 'Russian Federation')
• Date of birth (DD.MM.YYYY format)
• Place of birth
• Sex
• Date of issue
• Date of expiration
• Authority
• A facsimile of the owner's signature, scanned from the application form

At the bottom of the data page is a machine-readable zone, which can be read both visually and by an optical scanner. The machine-readable zone consists of two lines. There are no blank spaces in either line. A space which does not contain a letter or a number is filled with "<".

The first line of the machine-readable zone contains a letter to denote the type of travel document ("P" for passport), the code for the citizenship of the passport holder ("RUS" for "Russian Federation"), and the name (surname first, then given names) of the passport holder.

The second line of the machine-readable zone contains the passport number (supplemented by a check digit), the code of the issuing country ("RUS" for "Russian Federation"), the date of birth of the passport holder (supplemented by a check digit), a notation of the sex/gender of the passport owner ("M" or "F"), the date of expiration of the passport (supplemented by a check digit), and, at the very end of the line, one or more overall check digits.

A signature page has a line for the signature of a passport holder. A passport is not valid unless it is signed by the passport owner (except for passport owners under age of 14).

Visa-free travel

Countries and territories with visa-free or visa-on-arrival entries for holders of regular Russian passports

  Russia

  Visa not required

  Visa on arrival

  Limited visa on arrival

  Electronic authorization or online payment required / eVisa

  Visa required prior to arrival

Visa requirements for Russian citizens are administrative entry restrictions by the authorities of other countries placed on citizens of Russia. In 2015, Russian citizens had visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 102 countries and territories, ranking the Russian passport 49th in the world according to the Visa Restrictions Index.

Foreign travel statistics

According to the national statistics these are the numbers of Russian visitors arriving to various countries per annum in 2014 (unless otherwise noted):^[5][6]

Foreign travel statistics
Destination	Number of visitors from Russia
Abkhazia	3,285,377
American Samoa[7]	8
Argentina[note 1][8]	8,138
Armenia	359,213
Aruba[note 1][9]	968
Australia[note 1][10]	13,200
Austria[note 1][note 2][11]	313,406
Azerbaijan[note 1][12]	685,555
Bahamas[note 3][13]	1,958
Belgium[14]	97,183
Belarus[note 3][15]	1,107,571
Bermuda[note 1][note 4][16]	101
Bhutan[note 1][17]	269
Bolivia[18]	1,786
Bosnia and Herzegovina[note 1][19]	3,395
Botswana[20]	2,053
Brazil[note 1][21]	25,644
Bulgaria[note 1][22]	493,989
Cambodia[note 1][23]	55,500
Canada[note 1][24]	20,785
Cayman Islands[note 1][note 4][25]	81
Chile[note 1][26]	5,327
China[note 1][27]	1,582,300
Costa Rica[note 1][28]	4,018
Croatia[note 1][29]	101,444
Cuba[note 1][30]	43,387
Cyprus[note 1][31]	524,853
Czech Republic[note 1][32]	432,768
Denmark	74,688
Dominica[note 1][33]	44
Dominican Republic[note 1][34]	71,572
Ecuador[35]	7,313
Egypt[note 1][36]	2,338,900
Estonia[note 1][note 2][37]	186,061
Finland[note 2][38][39]	351,721
France[40]	674,000
French Polynesia[note 1][41]	448
Georgia[note 1][42]	926,144
Germany[note 1][43]	676,586
Greece[note 1][44]	512,789
Guam[note 1][note 4][45]	3,081
Guatemala[46]	2,576
Hong Kong[note 1][47]	151,469
Hungary[48]	145,431
Iceland[note 1][49]	4,877
India[note 1][50]	172,419
Indonesia[51]	96,329
Israel[note 1][52]	414,700
Italy[note 1][53]	832,000
Jamaica[note 1][54]	971
Japan[note 1][55]	54,365
Jordan[note 1][56]	22,020
Kazakhstan	3,560,089
Kyrgyzstan[57]	528,700
Laos[note 1][58]	12,532
Latvia[note 1][note 2][59]	203,732
Lithuania[note 1][60]	149,700
Macao[note 1][61]	22,844
Macedonia[note 1][62]	4,325
Malaysia[note 1][63]	55,263
Maldives[note 1][64]	44,323
Malta[note 1][65]	21,615
Malawi[note 5][66]	154
Mauritius[note 1][67]	11,444
Mexico[note 4][68]	85,006
Moldova[note 1][69][70]	258,320
Montenegro[note 2][71]	318,375
Mongolia[note 1][72]	70,668
Myanmar[note 1][73]	4,138
Namibia[note 1][74]	2,943
Netherlands[75]	196,000
New Zealand[note 1][76]	4,464
Nicaragua[note 1][77]	2,004
Northern Mariana Islands[note 1][78]	1,374
Norway	178,302
Oman[note 3][79]	3,326
Pakistan[note 5][80]	2,500
Palau[note 1][81]	407
Panama[note 1][82]	4,525
Papua New Guinea[note 1][83]	426
Peru[note 1][84]	8,145
Philippines[note 1][85]	25,278
Poland[note 1][86]	2,099,919
Portugal[note 1][87]	98,000
Romania[note 1][88]	24,384
Serbia[note 1][note 2][89]	50,571
Seychelles[note 1][90]	12,222
Singapore[note 1][91]	63,842
Slovakia[note 1][92]	29,664
Slovenia[note 1][93]	56,156
South Africa[note 1][94]	7,244
South Korea[note 1][95]	121,380
South Ossetia	502,108
Spain[96]	1,420,467
Sri Lanka[note 1][97]	61,846
Suriname[note 1][98]	74
Sweden	90,531
Switzerland	299,157
Taiwan[note 1][99]	7,808
Tajikistan	157,858
Tanzania[note 3][100]	4,021
Thailand[note 1][101]	884,085
Tunisia[note 1][102]	53,000
Turkey[note 1][103]	3,649,003
Ukraine[note 1][104]	1,231,035
United Arab Emirates[note 1][105]	482,300
United Kingdom[note 1][106]	164,000
United States[107]	356,492
Uruguay[note 1][108]	3,114
Uzbekistan	127,694
Venezuela[note 3][109]	9,035
Vietnam[note 1][110]	338,843

Types of passports

Regular (red cover)

Issuable to all citizens of the Russian Federation. Period of validity is 10 years from date of issue.

Diplomatic (green cover)

Issuable to Russian diplomats accredited overseas and their eligible dependents, and to citizens who reside in the Russian Federation and travel abroad for diplomatic work. Passport issued for the period of work, but no more than 10 years.

Service (blue cover)

Issuable to Russian federal and regional civil servants assigned overseas, their eligible dependents, to members of Russian parliament who travel abroad on official business and to judges of Supreme and Constitutional Courts. Also issued to military personnel when deployed overseas. Period of validity: length of service, but not to exceed 10 years.

Certificate for return

Issuable to Russian citizens and nationals overseas, in urgent circumstances. This document is valid only for return to Russian Federation.

• Depictions of the different types of Russian passports
• 
  Cover of a Russian Diplomatic e-Passport
• 
  Cover of a Russian Service e-Passport

Issue Time

According to the federal law and the orders from 2012 and 2014 for the old 5-year laminated and the new 10-year biometric passport, respectively, either document has to be issued within one to four months, ^{[111] [112] [113]} depending on circumstances, with the issue time being three months in case of an application being made to a consulate outside of Russia.

However, in practice, some consulates require an appointment to be made prior to the applicant being able to provide documents to apply for the passport, in some cases, appointments can only be available many months or even possibly years into the future, effectively undoing the upper limit for a timely issuance of the travel document.

Additionally, if passports are expired or lost, applications for the new passport are routinely declined to be accepted when abroad, prior to the verification of citizenship,, for which the consuls require a separate application to be made, either in person or notarised by a notary public, with the processing times for verification itself often exceeding many months. Such practice of causing the extra costs for the applicant, however, seems to be in violation of point 23 of orders 10303 from 2012-06-28 and 3744 from 2014-03-19, which guarantee that no extra services are required in order to apply for a passport.^[114]

See also

• Soviet Union passport
• Visa requirements for Russian citizens
• Identity card of the Russian Armed Forces
• Internal passport of Russia
• Universal electronic card
• Visa policy of Russia
• Passport system in the Soviet Union
• Migration card
• Propiska in the Soviet Union
• Wolf ticket (Russia)
• 101st kilometre
• Closed cities

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Passports of Russia.

• Statute on the Russian federation citizen's passport (in Russian).
• Federal Law On the Entry in the Russian Federation and Departure from the Russian Federation (.doc in Russian).
• Federal Law On the State Border of the Russian Federation (.doc in Russian).
• How to Apply for a Russian Passport.