An internal passport is an identity document which is or was used in some countries to control the internal movement and residence of its people. Countries that currently have internal passports include Russia, Ukraine, China and North Korea.
When passports first emerged, there was no clear distinction between internal and international ones. Later, some countries developed sophisticated systems of passports for various purposes and various groups of population. Passports were used to control internal movements and residence of people in Imperial Russia, France, the Confederate States of America, the Soviet Union, the Ottoman Empire, South Africa during Apartheid and other countries.
Read more about Internal Passport: Soviet Union and Its Successors, People's Republic of China, Other
Famous quotes containing the words internal and/or passport:
“I believe that there was a great age, a great epoch when man did not make war: previous to 2000 B.C. Then the self had not really become aware of itself, it had not separated itself off, the spirit was not yet born, so there was no internal conflict, and hence no permanent external conflict.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Whenever [Leonard Bernstein] entered or exited a country he would fill in on his passport form not composer or conductor, but musician. Of course people in the press spent a lot of Lenny’s life telling him what he should have done; he should have been a concert pianist, he should have composed more.... And people wouldn’t let him live his own life. But he created his own career, in his own image.”
—John Mauceri (b. 1945)