WHAT'S IT LIKE LIVING IN RUSSIA TODAY?

steissd, I hope you will be able to provide us with more feedback from the Russia Forums.

Mapleleaf, I guess I am a global citizen who takes great pains to give some comments in principle of impartiality. But anyway, I am not a Russian.

acepoly, perceptions are colored by home grown experiences. Some of our members have lived in contrasting environments during their lifetime. Having access to this information, helps the reader to measure the posting.

A number of our members are well read and display an amazing knack for pinpointing issues and facts. This tends to reveal itself through interaction with other members.

Re: "helped the Muslims to take over the part of the European continent", all I can think of that you might be alluding to is the UN-governed area of Kosovo, and the Bosniak/Croat Federation within UN-governed Bosnia-Herzegovina (which comprises half of the territory of the republic, the Republika Srpska making out the other half).

First question would be what you'd consider "taking over", of course.

The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina were already there, of course, constituting as big a share of the population as they do now. As for political control, back then, it was largely centrally imposed from Belgrade. But then again, what is the situation now?

The government of Bosnia-Herzegovina is comprised of equal numbers of Serbs, Muslims and Croats, with the prime ministership rotating between the groups. Even in "their" half of Bosnia-Herzegovina (the Bosniak/Croat Federation), the Muslims share government with the Catholic Croats - and on top of that, in the elections before the last ones the ethnically Muslim Party for Democratic Action was beaten into second place by the cross-ethnic Social Democratic Party there. And as for any of this constituting a "Muslim posession", there's also still the High Representative of the UN, Paddy Ashdown at the moment, sitting on top of these convoluted structures, regularly exercising his authority to impose laws by decree.

The population of Kosovo, also, already was 90% (Muslim) Albanian before the Kosovo war erupted. And though the Yugoslav army and Serbian paramilitaries kept the area under military control, they mostly governed themselves, through the parallel 'underground' government of Rugova, which ran its own schools etc. And again, on the other hand, even in the current Kosovo, Serbs are represented in the area's government and parliament - to a ratio exceeding their percentage of the population.

So no parallel to the mass influx of Muslims and conversions to Islam of the Ottoman times you refer to, which changed the face of the region. At most, the end of the Yugoslav wars can be said, in respect of an increase of "the Muslim possessions in Europe", to have resulted in Muslim-dominated multi-ethnic governments under UN control in the Bosniak-Croat Federation and Kosovo.

To put this in perspective, just a reminder that the population of Kosovo is estimated at 1,9 million, and the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina - both parts included! - at 3,8 million. The population of South-East Europe overall (counting Romania, Moldova and Croatia but not Slovenia) is, on the other hand, some 60 million.

Hi, acepoly.

If it is the upheavals of 1917 you are talking about, it would only be fair to the "bourgeoisie" to note that it was itself at the forefront of the February revolution. By the time it came about, the mainstay of the Czarist regime had mostly shrunk to the aristocracy, the army officers and generals, and the clergy. The bourgeoisie, for its part, was politically mostly involved with the radical liberal Kadet party, which, as it had done in the uprising of 1905, played a prominent role in the February revolution and in the Provisional Government that subsequently assumed power.

As for the so-called "October Revolution", it can better be described as a coup d'etat, a well-orchestrated, military take-over of power involving a relative minimum of "the masses". It was only after this take-over by the Bolshevik party that the bourgeoisie was clamped down upon, as were all rival political parties, the socialist ones foremost.

The image of "workers standing up against the bourgeoisie" is primarily borrowed from the Marxist rhetorics in which the Soviet regime subsequently shrouded its historiography on 1917. It is that particular clash that is the prime mover of history in the Marxist vision, after all. But it is in fact rather hard to fit the actual realities of 1917 Russia into that mould. If only because, apart from the revolutionary credentials of the bourgeoisie, the overwhelming majority of Russians at the time were peasants, with industrial workers constituting only a small, if growing, minority. And these peasants, in turn, overwhelmingly supported the (non-Marxist) Socialist-Revolutionaries (SR), who opposed the collectivisation of land into state-owned kolchoses. The Bolsheviks had to suppress several Socialist-Revolutionary ("Green") and Anarchist peasant insurgencies during the five years of civil war it took to impose its regime on the South-Russian and Ukrainian countryside.

Nimh, thanks for your earnest correction of several points in my previous post. I admit that the Marxian mode of revolution was not found in Russian early last century. The communist blueprint established at that time was definitely a premie that, without special care, was destined to death.

To my knowledge, before the coup d'etat, there was a backdoor meeting where Lenin and one of his colleagues (whose name I don't remember) were embroiled in a heated dispute. While Lenin backed up an instant move, his colleague didn't think the time was ripe for it. Because, just as you said, Russia at that moment did not have a majority of workers and most of the population was peasants. The situation did not fit into what Marx had expected of a nation to carry out revolution. But unfortunately, it just happened as what the history has registered, that Russia was finally baptized by the rigor of communism.

But I think the fate of communist Russia might be somewhat different if Stalinism had not superseded the leninism when Stalin took power after Lenin died.

I am interested in knowing more about the above quote.

I don't immediately know what backdoor meeting that would be, but the opinion of the colleague you describe seems to resemble that of the Mensheviks then.

In 1912, the Social Democratic Labour Party (the Marxist party in then-Russia), split into two halves. The radical wing was quick to claim the name "Bolshevik", which roughly translates as "those in the majority", which left their counterparts named the Mensheviks ("those in the minority"). The Mensheviks were more orthodox in their faith to the Marxist doctrines, and consequently thought it was too early for a socialist revolution in Russia, and proponed the completion of the cycle at hand first. Who knows, if the legacy of the February revolution had lasted they might well have become modern social-democrats.

The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, were less burdened by adherence to such formalities, and made no bones about using the opportunities of the moment. It was all the easier for them to do so because of how it had deliberately styled itself a small party of professional revolutionaries, rather than the kind of mass movement the Mensheviks had argued for. That in turn underlied the later - fatal - doctrine of the Communist Party as "the vanguard of the masses" (read: we, the revolutionary elite, will not hesitate to wreck the revolution that you, the masses, may still be unaware of really wanting - against your own protests if necessary).

By 1917, the Mensheviks didnt have the mass following the Bolsheviks by then had acquired, let alone that of the SRs. But they were still popular among the stratum of educated workers. They were among the first to be sent to prison and the camps when the Bolsheviks affirmed their power. (That's the short version, of course, and there were others, in Germany for example, voicing the same concerns at the time).



Of course, if Stalin had not succeeded Lenin, history would have looked different. Personality still plays a huge role in politics, and the Stalinist terror bore the hallmarks of his paranoia and incapability of empathy. But I think the difference between Leninism and Stalinism has been overplayed, mainly by generations of Communists and sympathisers who desperately wanted to distance their ideals from the carnage of the thirties, and who preferred to see Stalinism as a "perversion" of Lenin's will. Would the thirties really have been that much less bloody under Trotsky, say? Trotsky has acquired a rebel, true-communist status by the way he was persecuted (and killed in exile) by Stalins agents. But when he himself was still leading the Bolsheviks' military, he was the most ruthless of all, imposing the regime's centralist control with brute violence even against "friendly fire" (Kronstadt), and Stalin actually worked him out of the party by profiling him as the extremist, and himself as the pragmatist.

Without Stalins personal paranoia, perhaps the Red Terror would never have turned inward and against its own apparatus to such an extent. But though its true that, under Stalin, the risk of being killed increased the higher up you were in the Party, army or bureaucracy's ranks, the greatest number of victims was still among ordinary folks. The millions who died during the bloody collectivisation campaign and the man-made famine that followed it, alone, far outshadow the number of victims of the intra-party purges, even if the latter have gotten more attention. And there's no real indication that Lenin would have shown any more compassion or moderation in wresting the new order like that. He had never shown any before.

One book that really hit home with me (though I was never able to afford it) was, if its the right one I just googled back up, Vladimir Brovkin's "Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia, 1918-1922". The detailed excerpts from Lenin's personal orders, for example, show a man solidly wedded to an ideology that condoned, even celebrated, all means necessary to achieve the end, including the mass murder of opponents and entire communities or strata that could spawn opponents. It was Leninism that embraced the notion of the Party as an elite to lead the masses into communism by force, and to rule in a dictatorship of the proletariat-by-proxy - and thus doomed the Soviet Union to totalitarianism. It was Lenin's regime that based the new order on the Cheka's terror and an expanse of concentration camps that far outdid the size and cruelty of exile in Czarist times, and was merely built upon by Stalin.

There's a delightful little book, "Lenin Dada", that's wholly tongue-in-cheek, claiming to "prove" that the October Revolution was merely Lenin's private Dada joke, but in the meantime makes a deadly serious point about the nature of Leninism. I'd say the practice of Stalinism merely echoes the logic of Leninism, disrobed, at most, of Lenin's shrewd ability to make a strategic retreat when necessary.

(So, also, last night I was writing a second reply to Acepoly's original post. But I lost it when I tried posting it.

Here it is again, re-created kinda. I do hope I'm not over-flooding y'all with info & opinions ... I actually held off posting this one for a few hours to "pace" the posts a little, but there's too few posters here, so they still appear one after another!)



One could well argue, instead, that these achievements of Soviet industry turned into their very opposite - into liabilities - in the context of the new capitalist order.

You mention the "martial industry" and its secondary industries. It's true that the military-industrial complex encompassed some of the most eyecatching production capacities of Soviet times. Output was increased, year after year, sometimes most rapidly so. But in the Soviet logic of five-year plans, the centrally imposed demands that spurred this growth were about production, not productivity.

Sprawling industrial complexes expanded ever more, producing ever more of the same - and conversely hardly encouraged the kind of creative innovation that would have ensured a more efficient, cleaner, less labour-intensive and cost-intensive production. With the advent of free-market competition, many of them turned into instant scrap metal material.

The resulting industrial breakdown explains much of the economic collapse of the early nineties. The new profits had to come from elsewhere. In a way, they had to start all over again.



In that context, "even healthier" seems rather deceptive. The Russian government proudly announced this summer that Russia - in terms of GDP($), I believe - was back at the level of 1998, before the big rouble crash.

Back in 1998, in turn, Russia had just enjoyed a first year of GDP growth after having suffered at least seven consecutive years of GDP decline of anywhere between -2% and -14%, the years between 1992 and 1994 having been the worst.

Let's not kid ourselves, the average Russian is now no richer than under Gorbachev - rather the opposite. In the UN Human Development Index of 1990, the Soviet Union ranked 25th. The Russian Federation then ranked roughly between Malta and Hungary. In 1996, Russia ranked 52nd. Now, the Russian Federation ranks 63rd, in between Mauritius and Colombia.

GNI (GNP) per capita went from $ 3,470 in 1991 to $ 2,650 in 1994 and $ 1,750 in 2001. GDP per capita fell by an average of 3,5% a year since 1990, and is now lower than in 1975 (data 2001). Life expectancy among males has fallen by some 10 years since the late eighties. As the dire situation has people putting off family plans, the fertility rate has halved in the same period. About a quarter of the population lives on less than $ 2 a day.

Under Putin Russia at least has gotten itself back up to where it was in 1998, then. But the economic growth that helped bring that about was largely fuelled by the advantageous oil prices on the world market. In the meantime, the "series of investigations against some industry magnates", welcome though such investigations would be, are greatly selective, primarily targeting political opponents, with pro-Putin magnates remaining untouchable. In terms of fostering a modern, open society, in which flexibility, transparency, freedom and diversity safeguard the social preconditions that made the West flourish, Putin threatens to take Russia back into time.

NIMH wrote

GNI (GNP) per capita went from $ 3,470 in 1991 to $ 2,650 in 1994 and $ 1,750 in 2001. GDP per capita fell by an average of 3,5% a year since 1990, and is now lower than in 1975.
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These data are terribly misleading. GNP for the USSR was always overestimated, especially for the last two decades of its life. Moreover, the incentives prior to change were to overreport output, and value was a guessing game. In contrast, things were reevaluated at closer to market prices after 1991 thus devaluing everything to their "true" levels. Also, the possibility of having to pay taxes made many plants eager to understate their production (relative to the pre 1992 period). So the drops were partly a readjustment to true prices.

Not to say that there haven't been drops in output and severe adjustment problems, but these macro indicators should be taken with giant handfuls of salt.

I've taught and/or spoken to many of the leading economists and bureaucrats who've worked on this stuff and they confirm these biases are problems for interpreting the data.

Also, in the old USSR, the big cities (Moscow, Leningrad/Peter) lived well while the worst hit were scattered in small towns and the provinces. Today, the big cities got to feel a lot of the cost of the readjustment. Small improvements spread over many small towns are harder to measure and observe. Ditto for those who have now been able to move to areas that were once closed to them.

So, yeah, many problems. Much bad. But I've just come back from working in St. Petersburg and in my opinion some of the unhappiness is not just about a fall in absolute income but in relative income. Ex. Professors and certain other professionals are no longer privileged nomenklatura while low-life businessmen are making big bucks. Some are legal, some not. But all are scorned by the older "well-bred" Russians and are resented for having succeeded in crass commerce.

Welcome jvc23, I hope you continue to offer your first hand observations. I know we don't have many posters, but don't you love the quality.

Hi jvc, welcome to a2k!

Thanks for your input on the economic data. I admit to being a bit of a nitwit on economic data, so critical reflection is well welcome.

Nevertheless, a few points. You point to the unreliability of soviet-era data. Absolutely agreed. Also because of the immense role of the "grey" economy. But most of the data I quoted refer to years after the Soviet era. The immense drop they indicate is one from 1991 to 1994, from 1994 to 2001, from 1990 to now, respectively. Surely the 1994 data, at least, is no more unreliable than current data - 1994 being years after the dissolution of the soviet union.

Anyway, my main point was that we shouldnt forget that any rise of 3, 5 or 8 percent now should be put in the context of a fall of 10s of percentage points in the early and mid-nineties, and that thus acepoly's Putin-optimism is better tempered. Your point about taking macro-economic indicators with grains of salt is well taken - and would hold true even in present days! Much of the money goes around in the illegal economy, after all.

Good points about "relative income". I would even guess that while people tend to take absolute drops of income in their stride, surviving the best they can, but its the relative drops in comparison to other groups that creates the real resentment!

I dunno about what you say about the 'Moscow-Petersburg' vs. 'rest of the country' perspective being changed around, though. You're right about Moscow enjoying a favoured position in Soviet times. But it has a favoured position now, too. Increasing income unequality has brought poverty to the capital, for sure, but most of the boom is happening there, too. It's many of the provincial cities that have seen the retail-services-boom pass by without a trace, and remain stuck with their rusting heavy industry complexes instead. Its no surprise that protest parties like Zhirinovsky's LDPR have consistently done best in provncial towns, and worst in Moscow and Petersburg.

Very much hope to see more of your postings here!

>Is it possible for Democracy to ever get a true test in Russia?

Why not? As I know the only Europian democratic state existed on the Russian territory - it was the Novgorodian Feudal Republic. At least once we proved that we are not worse than the Iraqies for example.
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>acquired a possibility to take part in some Russian forums, and I was displeased with anti-American emotions of the majority of their participants, their majority being students.

Yes. You are not the only one. Many my Russian speaking friends said about the same - about this what I call fascist attitudes. Many guys then become sure that all the Russians are fascists because they got used that in America the Internet exactly reflect the public opinion. Now I have to defend my nation's honor - the problem is that in Russia, unlike in America, the Internet doesn't give a representative view. While in the US the majority of people can afford an access to the Net in Russia it is available only for a small part, and this is a very bad part - mostly New Russians and youths. On the first view the New Russians (who are mistakenly reffered in the West as "free businessmen") must have libral mind but that's wrong. All of them made their business in illegal ways using the government's suppory and now they perfectly know that their successes will be over as soon as any democratic regime comes in. That's why these comrades will support the totalitarian regime even though it is sometimes dangerous for themselves. And about the youths - I have said already that the youths are the most totalitarian minded part of any society. Furthermore they are the most sensitive to any propaganda. Today every Russian citizen lives under a very heavy propagandist press (it's even hard to imagine what does it like if you have never tasted it). And the fell under it in the first turn. Just remember the Singing Together vocal group where two gals sign that they need a boyfriend "the same as Putin". That's a new Russian "democratically minded generation" that will "build real democracy" - I see what they will build.
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>The high standard of education and the industrial infrastructure promised a fantastic future for the country.

An optimistic idea but the problem is that the quality of Russian education is very poor. The secondary education - yes - meets the highest world standarts but all the benefits are eliminated by the extremaly bad professional and high education. From what I know about foreign educational systems Russian universities and institutes are the worst in the world. The same is about professional colleges but in a less degree. IMHO every Russian engineer may confirm that he got NO usefull knowledge at the university. But there is even worse situation with economists and other "prestige" specialities. These graduaters manage not only not to pick any knowledge but to forget their secondary school course. Actually all our "economists" are educated worse than they were soon after se-dary school. The only ones worse educated are teachers of primary schools.
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Nimh, your knowledge is very impressive. I may just add a couple of unsignificant details.

>As for the so-called "October Revolution", it can better be described as a coup d'etat, a well-orchestrated, military take-over of power involving a relative minimum of "the masses"

I need just add - well orchestrated by the Germans, the German General Staff was the main player in the "October Socialist Revolution".

>But I think the difference between Leninism and Stalinism has been overplayed, mainly by generations of Communists and sympathisers who desperately wanted to distance their ideals from the carnage of the thirties, and who preferred to see Stalinism as a "perversion" of Lenin's will.

It's interesting that Lenin constantly rebuked Stalin for his softness toward the enemies of the revolution during the Civil War. Despite all efforts to prove his Marxist loyality Stalin looked as a real humanist in the front of such high skilled sadists like Trotsky, Dybenko, Latsis, Smilga, Zemlyachka, Bela Kun, Kedrov and thousands of others. It's ridiculous that Stalin became the dictator only due to his reputation of a humanist. Lenin's followers selected the most harmless of them going to divide the power behind his back.

>...perhaps the Red Terror would never have turned inward and against its own apparatus to such an extent.

Here I disagree. Just remember the cases of Dumenko, Mironov, Muraviev and some other "Red commanders", very suspicious assassinations of Uritsky and Volodarsky, arrest and execution of Andronnikov, and the famous case of Gokhran when Dzerzhinsky retook the control over the main state warehouse of treasures. I don't remember now the names of executed in the process.
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>>GNI (GNP) per capita went from $ 3,470 in 1991 to $ 2,650 in 1994 and $ 1,750 in 2001. GDP per capita fell by an average of 3,5% a year since 1990, and is now lower than in 1975.

>These data are terribly misleading. GNP for the USSR was always overestimated, especially for the last two decades of its life.

For me the numbers presented by Nimh look rather more believable. It seems that today a person's real income must be about 2,5 times lower than it was in 1991. Basing on what my belly and my pocket tell me I estimate this downfall as about 3-4 times. A usual citizen now earns 3-4 times less than he would 20 years ago. But then I don't take in account our richest so-called "oligarchs" whose income is supposed to be HUNDREDS OF TIMES higher than one of the poorest civilian. If even their percentage will be 0.1% of the population they may rise the average income up to 1.5 times. So considering this correction the numbers of Nimh look extremaly precise. IMHO the highest income must have been in 1998 or late 1997. Then there was a big downfall and then the situation is worsening every year. The rate of inflation is increasing since 2000, understandably because of the war in Chechnya.

>Also, in the old USSR, the big cities (Moscow, Leningrad/Peter) lived well while the worst hit were scattered in small towns and the provinces. Today, the big cities got to feel a lot of the cost of the readjustment.

No. In opposite Leningrad and Moscow are the only two places where the economy almost have worsened unsignificantly since 1991. The reason is simple - almost all the state budget (except money spent on the war or stolen and moved abroad) is legally or illegally spent to improve the life of our so-called "elite", living in Moscow of course. In other words these money never leave the borders of Sadovoe Ring. That is why Moscow inhabitants have income (not all but a big part) rather higher than in the rest country. This is why Moscow looks like a paradise in the eyes of all the rest country. Of course they were living better in the Soviet era too but now the difference is uncomparable. As one reporter said Moscow for Russia is the same as the USA for Latin America. This little paradise island is heavily guarded by the well-developed system of aparteid (not softer than one existing in the South Africa once), ethnic clearances and well arranged pogroms.

>Ditto for those who have now been able to move to areas that were once closed to them.

Are you joking? WHAT AREAS were once closed to me? Who told you that the Soviet Union ever had less freedom of movement than it exists now?

Of course the Soviet Union was a very bad totalitarian regime but even it had nothing close to the aparteid established by our Putinist Neo-Commies. Believe or not but in the 80s having a Soviet passport I had the right to arrive to EVERY place in the country, including Moscow and Leningrad and to STAY there as long as I wanted. Today a Russian citizen is allowed to stay in Moscow not more than 48 hours. Every moment I may be checked by the militia when I will have to show - my passport and too tickets (one I have arrived, the second I'm departing with) those dates mustn't differ more than for 48 hours. Otherwise I will be taken to their office, beaten, robbed and then evacuated to the 101st km (if only the militiamen wouldn't be so pleasant to take a bribe).

But this is not about the Chechen or some other Caucausian "submen" who are totally deprived of any legal rights. Often a militian simply tear their passport and says: "I haven't seen any passport here". So an unlucky refugee has to return for a new passport to Chechnya. Because according to our laws you may receive your passport only at the place of your registration. Todays procedure of registration (nominally canceled by the Constitution) is several times harder than it used to be in the Soviet times (excepting may be Lenin-Stalin's period, here I'm not sure). This is the way how the authorities are "clearing" their capital from lower races.

>Ex. Professors and certain other professionals are no longer privileged nomenklatura

Yes, todays privileged nomenklatura are ex-criminals and uneducated alcoholics - aka New Russians.

>But all are scorned by the older "well-bred" Russians...

Now you are reading a well-bred Russian's post. I despise and hate these stinking New Russians and so do 90% of the population (except the New Russians themselves, of course, who despise and hate every non-New Russian). And they have very big reasons to feel so. The only ones worse than New Russians are the children of New Russians, IMHO they are never sober since 11 year old age.

Docent,
Informative as usual....how do you fit in to all of this?

Hey Docent, thanks for more info still.

Can you tell us a little more about the residency permit system within Russia? To be allowed to live in Moscow (or stay there longer than 24 hours, as you describe it), you need a permit, right? Hypothetically speaking, if I were from Omsk, how could I get such a permit? From the city council, or the police? Does it cost? What are the conditions, do you need to have a job in Moscow, for example?

What about in the old Soviet Union - there was such a thing as an "internal passport" back then, wasnt there, without which you could not travel? I remember reading also that the Soviets used to "banish" people from living in Moscow as a softer version of previous Gulag practices, and that former Gulag prisoners werent allowed to return to their home region even when they were freed?

I've read awful stories about what the Caucasians in Moscow face, I'm sure others here have, too ... spates of racist attacks by skinheads, with the police standing by and watching ... police violence, random arrests, deportation from the city ...

First off, a hearty WELCOME to A2K to jvc. Been remiss in not visiting this forum for awhile. Looks like I have a bit to catch up on. Will do so, but before I do, thanks to all the contributors. c.i.

>...how do you fit in to all of this?

A human unlike a horse can get used to everything.
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>Hypothetically speaking, if I were from Omsk, how could I get such a permit?

Every Soviet citizen had to have the special stamp in his passport reffering your living place - so called "propiska" made there by a local militia office. Everyone moving to a new living place or changing his job had to warn the militia. Without this stamp the passport would be considered invalid. This rule was widely critcised in the West as totalitarism so the new "democratic" Yeltsin's regime cancelled this shameful procedure... and immediately imposed a new one called "registration" in exchange. The new rule is absolutely the same. The only novation is that now I must be sentenced for 5 years if I violate the procedure of registration (i. e. don't report to the authorities about my new job for a month) while in the Soviet totalitarian era it would cost me a month of "social work" or a fine.

If you get to Moscow from Omsk and decide to stay with you relatives more than 48 hours then you will need to receive the interim
registration. IMHO this is close to the same procedure for a foreigner in a Western country. You and your relatives must visit the local Passport Service office, fullfill all necessary blanks, collect all necessary papers from different organizations (every mistake in them is "corrected" by a little bribe), pass a 3-6 hour queue etc. For the period of this procedure (3-5 days) you will be defenceless from every militiaman. Recently the Moscow Duma has passed a law about "informers". In other words every citizen who reports to the authorities that there is an unregistered inhabitant in a neiborough apartment will be awarded 100$. IIRC the interim registration allows you to stay in Moscow for one or two months (this term is constantly being reduced so I can't say surely). In the early Yeltsin period this term was one year, in the Brezhnev or Gorbachev period you might be staying as long as you wished.

>What are the conditions, do you need to have a job in Moscow, for example?

At first you must have the permament registration (if you mean legal work). But how to obtain it I have no idea. I suppose it may cost a very big bribe and good links with the authorities. I have never seen one who managed to get a job legally in Moscow although there are many possibilities to work as a builder or unskilled worker illegaly.

>What about in the old Soviet Union - there was such a thing as an "internal passport" back then, wasnt there, without which you could not travel?

Not exactly. There were (and are now as well) the Passport itself, the main document of every Russian civilian that allow you to lend an apartment, to work, to be serviced in a clinic, to travel by a train, aircraft of bus etc., and the Foreign Passport - the same as this is known as the Passport in the West. The Foreign Passport is issued for someone who is going abroad. All the system hasn't changed since the Communist era.

>I remember reading also that the Soviets used to "banish" people from living in Moscow as a softer version of previous Gulag practices, and that former Gulag prisoners werent allowed to return to their home region even when they were freed?

Yes, in the Stalin period every standart sentence included 3 terms: the first one of prison, the second one of deportation, the third one of depriving of voting rights (the latter two usually 5 years each). In the Brezhnev period the depriving of voting right was cancelled and the term of deportation was shortened to 1 year. The deported persons also lived in different conditions depending on the authorities' decision. One category of people were "attached" [to the camp] ("chemistry" in criminal slang), the second ones were deported to "remote areas" and the third ones weren't allowed to live in Moscow and Leningrad "sent to 101st km" (usually it was to the members of a prisoner's family). The second and the third categories were allowed to visit Moscow or any other but only with their commandant's permission. Sometimes a deportation could be interrupted if you had good relations with a Party official or if the Americans demanded it enough strongly (like it happened to Sakharov i. e.).

But see the difference: the Communists limited some people in their freedom of movemement with court sentences, in other words someones who have passed a formal procedure of being recognized as the enemies of the regime; todays Neo-Commies deprived the most of population from this right without any court procedure. All the population is divided in several categories - high race (living in Moscow), low race (the rest 90% of population) and submen (some ethnic minority, about 1% of population, selected intentially to show to the rest 90% how lucky they are). All this is known as Putin's "guided democracy".

Docent, Those conditions are terrible! Comparing our freedoms of movement in the US, and most every place else on this planet is dramatic. We are able to travel to most developed countries without a VISA, but we are required to have a picture identification to travel into Canada or Mexico. Before nine-eleven, all we needed to say was "AMerican" at the border, and we were let through.
Docent, There is a discussion on another forum on A2K where the discussion of income for Russians were discussed. When I visited Russia a few years ago, we were informed that most professoinals such as doctors, lawyers, and college professors made about US$100/month. Is that still true today? Is there difference in pay for different skills in Russia? Somebody said that everybody's average pay was $100/month no matter what they did. Is that true? What are the average pay of Russian's today?
Docent, please continue to contribute on A2K about Russian life. It is very educational for those of us interested in world politics and economics. c.i.

I concur.

thanks for all the answers, Docent P.