US Authoritarianism

During the First Five-Year Plan period alone, more than ten million peasants moved to towns and became wage earners. The massive migration produced a housing crisis of mammoth proportions. Like other kinds of scarcity, this onc turned out to be a permanent feature of Sovict life, with families jammed for decades in tiny single rooms in communal apartments with shared kitchens and (if such existed) bathrooms. During the famine, as the flood of migrants to the cities grew unmanageable, the state introduced internal passports for the first time since the revolution and sct up a system of urban residence per- mits. Both were administered by the OGPU (secret police, precursor to the NKVD), which brought a new dimension of control over citizens' movements that complicated life cnormously for many people.