This series (1, 3) is to discuss a popular greentext story that gets shared around numerous leftist circles, and to provide greater context behind many of the claims made.

The Somewhat Suspect Greentext

It may seem trivial to discuss at length a 4chan greentext post, but importantly, a number of sources have now been provided for these claims alongside the meme. This allows for deeper discussion and interrogation of the claims made.

>have zero homelessness

The source list does not provide a source for this claim, and even acknowledges that there were indeed homeless people in the Soviet Union, but puts this down to predominately mental health issues. However, this is still a substantial whitewashing of the facts.

For this section I will mainly be drawing upon Svetalana Stephenson’s Crossing the Line: Vagrancy, Homelessness and Social Displacement in Russia (2006) to discuss how home ownership and homelessness worked in Soviet Russia.

Shortly after the revolution, Tsarist restictions on movement were lifted by the 1918 ‘Declaration of Rights of Working and Exploited People’, which also legalised vagrancy. However, over the next few years these rights were gradually eroded.

1926 — nomadic people, such as Russian Romani were forcibly settled. In 1933, 5,000 ‘gypsies’ were deported from Moscow to labour camps in Siberia.

1928 — military conscription formally introduced.

1930s — all scientific research into homelessness and vagrancy was ceased.

1932 — workers who abandoned their place of work were to be deprived of coupons for food and other goods, and deprived of their right to an enterprise-provided flat.

1932 — the propiska system was established — a registration stamp of your place of residence in your internal passport. A change of place of residence (even within a single settlement) required the submission of one’s passport for propiska within twenty-four hours. Employers also required proof of propiska. Violating the propiska resulted in a fine, and multiple violations in 6 months “corrective” labour.

1934 — the ‘Exemplary Charter of the Agricultural Cooperative’ forbade peasants from leaving their place of residence (yes, like literal serfdom).

1960 — the RSFSR Criminal Code article 209 established the criminal penalty for persistent vagrancy or begging as imprisonment for up to two years or corrective labour from six months to one year. Repeat offenders were punishable with imprisonment for up to four years. Article 198 introduced penalties for ‘violation of passport rules’. The militia had the power to evict any unregistered person from the locality twice, giving him or her twenty-four hours to leave on each occasion. If people came back a third time, they were liable to a one-year prison sentence.

1961 — the decree ‘On Intensifying the Struggle Against Persons Who Avoid Socially Useful Work and Lead an Antisocial, Parasitic Way of Life’ threatened those who derived “non-labour income from the use of land plots, automobiles or housing, or commit other anti-social acts that enable them to lead a parasitic way of life” to banishment from two to five years.

During the 1920s, people without fixed occupation and registered dwelling were targeted and expelled from cities, especially from Moscow and Leningrad. This was followed by other decrees such as the 1948 ‘On Deportation to the Distant Regions of Persons Persistently Evading Labour Duty and Leading Antisocial Parasitic Ways of Life’, and the 1951 ‘On Measures to Fight Antisocial Parasitic Elements’. The result was there were no ghettoes as such, instead cities had belts around them with concentrations of ex-prisoners, expelled vagrants and ‘idlers’ — colloquially known as “behind the 101st kilometre”.

The propiska is key to understanding homelessness in the Soviet Union. One could not simply move houses in the Soviet Union, you had to get propiska. Propiska is your dwelling registration. You could get registration at birth, or later in life by close relatives (though this was subject to veto). Marriage did not automatically entitle you to your partner’s propiska (however divorce could lead you to losing it!), and if you were returning from a period of absence (such as prison) you would not automatically be re-granted propiska. You could also lose your propiska if you were away for six months.

What happened if you did not have propiska? Millions of workers lived for years in work-provided hostels, mud huts and trailers. As late as 1989, 21 per cent of single people in urban areas lived in hostels, and 29 per cent of those who lived separately from their families. The housing rights of such workers could be extremely weak. When they settled in enterprise hostels, they would be offered (at least initially) only temporary registration, making them particularly vulnerable to eviction for bad behaviour or at the end of their contract. In Moscow, for example, limitchiki (migrant workers with temporary resident permits) lived in workers’ hostels on a renewable one-year propiska. Any misdemeanour (or, for women, pregnancy and the birth of a child) could mean the end of tenancy.

Yuri Lotman captured the cultural zeitgeist towards such living arrangements as “the centre of an abnormal world”, a “false home” and an “anti-home”. It doesn’t take much convincing to see that living in a hostel for years, at constant threat of eviction by your boss, would qualify you as homeless under some Western definitions.