Russian Bureaucracy -- A Tirade

In many ways this is a story about authority (lack of authority?). My interpretation of a Russian government worker is someone who desires authority and yet once they have it, wouldn’t dare use it (at least not without a bribe!). It seems no one quite has the appropriate stamp, but someone else above, below, left, or right of them has the authority to make a simple decision (to think!).

Anna has a unique situation. She would like to renew her international passport so that she can continue to come to and leave from Russia. However, in order to renew her international passport, she must first renew her internal passport. All Russian citizens must have an internal passport for travel within Russia! This practice dates back to the soviet time when the government “needed” to known the whereabouts of everybody at all times. Because Moscow still uses these passports pretty heavily in their war against Chechens, they never have disbanded this nightmarish piece of bureaucracy.

Anyway, Anna’s situation is that she would like to change her last name to Luther on both her internal and external passport. It seems that when a woman gets married in Russia she is able to fill out a form that allows her to change her last name at the “government” wedding (my understanding is that a couple has to get married before the government as well as the church!). Well, no form exists for a woman who wants to change her name who was married outside of Russia. Besides, even if there was a form, no one has a stamp that specifically ways “this officially changes a Russian woman’s last name who was married abroad on her internal passport!” Without a stamp, we are dead in the water regarding updating her passport. All of this I learned after dealing with the Internal Passport Agency for the first week of our trip to Russia.

Here is a conversation, as translated by Anna, between her father and a passport official.

Government Worker: “I need a piece of paper that says we should change her last name to “Luther.”

Victor: “Here, in her international passport, the Russian Embassy in San Francisco wrote that she should now go by the name, Anna Luther.”

Government Worker: “Yes, I see that, that will work for her international passport just fine, but for her internal passport I need another piece of paper.”

Victor: “Here we have a notarized piece of paper saying she would like to go by the last name Luther”

Government Worker: “Yes, but that is not the right stamp for the situation.”

Victor: “What stamp do I need and where can I get it?”

Government Worker: “She has an unusual situation, they don’t make a stamp for her situation.”

And these two went on and on like this for over half an hour.

However, please don’t think I am done with my tirade yet… Not surprising, every time you want to talk with someone there is a charge. The charge is not actually to talk with them, but rather it is a charge associated with some form that you want that person to stamp (this part is no better in the U.S.). The bizarre part is the charges in Russia are often miniscule. For instance, one form Anna had to turn in cost 76 kopecks – approximately three cents in American dollars.

There is more… None of the Russian Government Agencies have the authority to handle money (and checks, credit cards, etc are out of the question), EXCEPT the Russian Government Banks. This means that before anyone will talk with you at the Internal Passport Agency (for instance), you first have to go to the Russian Government Bank and pay the charge associated with turning in your appropriate form. All this assumes you know what form you want to turn in, which is surprising never made all that clear anywhere. In order to know what forms you should pay for, you first have to ask a government official at the Agency you wish to deal with… And these government officials are not happy people. There are people who are getting a salary of maybe fifty dollars per month and they have very little career advancement possibilities…

The efficiency of the Russian Government Bank is unmistakably Soviet. All the Government Banks I have visited have been the same. Here is the set-up…

There are four teller windows, each with a woman sitting at them. One of the women deals with people who wants to get receipts for government forms, i.e. form-receipts, one woman sends and receive telegrams, and two women do extraordinarily large crossword puzzles. The one woman who deals with form-receipts (no one else has the authority to help) inevitably has a line of about ten people, while the other women don’t even look up from their crossword puzzles for fear of making eye contact with the people who could actually use their help.

It is also worth describing the process of filling out one of these form-receipts -- this is the best name I can come up with considering it is essentially a form that turns into a receipt (after the appropriate stamp) for a different government form (?). Luckily there is some order to the process. As a matter of fact all of the forms look identically because there is only one. The form is a small (approximately three square inches) piece of paper. The top half is identical to the bottom half because these forms have to be filled out in duplicate (in other words they don’t do carbon-copy paper!). To their credit the bank provides an example of all of the types of form receipts that any of the local government agencies might ask for. These examples are taped to large pieces of cardboard, and the particular form that you need could be on any of the 12 or so pieces of cardboard floating around the bank. Not surprisingly, once you have your piece of cardboard, they become like gold and are not given away until you have copied all of the information from your “example” form, including the 23 digit receipt identification code. Also not surprisingly, the bank never provides any pens, and once Anna filled out a form with the only pen available (a red one) and she quickly turned away after waiting in line. Kindly, someone else let Anna borrow a blue pen and after filling out the form again, we waited in line to pay our 76 Kopecks. Anyway, as of Friday, August 11th, we are still unsure how Anna is going to get her internal passport (now that she told them she wanted to change her last name there is no turning back). In case all this seems trivial, Anna needs to get her internal passport so that she can get her external passport so that she can return to the United States where the bureaucracies use carbon-copy paper!