The information that follows pertains to the Soviet Union prior to its dissolution as a state at the end of 1991.
In a telephone interview on 12 December 1994, a professor of history at Yale University in New Haven provided the following information. According to this source, if a child were born to a single mother, the biological father’s name would probably not be listed on the child’s birth certificate. The source was unsure whether the child would get his or her mother’s or father’s surname. There were numerous regulation changes on this matter from 1917 to the mid 1950s. It was fairly common until the mid 1960s for women to keep their surnames after marriage and also to give their surnames to their children.
In an interview on 12 December 1994, a professor at Rutgers Law School in Camden, New Jersey, provided the following information. The ethnicity/nationality of a parent listed on a birth certificate probably does not have to coincide with the nationality listed on that same parent’s internal passport. There were no published rules on that matter, but there were probably internal rules, and there were numerous cases of discrepancies. If a child were born to a single mother, the biological father’s name would not be listed on the child’s birth certificate unless a court order indicated otherwise. The source also indicated that it was possible that a fictitious name could be entered. The child would be given his or her mother’s surname, unless a court order indicated otherwise or the parents mutually decided to indicate the father’s name.
In a telephone interview on 13 December 1994, a professor of political science and criminology who specializes in Soviet and Russian law at the University of Toronto provided the following information. This source stated that the ethnicity/nationality of a parent listed on a birth certificate does not have to coincide with the nationality listed on that parent’s internal passport. If a child were born to a single mother, the child would be given the mother’s or the father’s surname, most probably the mother’s.
Please refer to the attachments for additional information.
This response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the DIRB within time constraints. This response is not, and does not purport to
be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim to refugee status or asylum.
References
Professor of history, Yale University, New Haven. 12 December 1994. Telephone interview.
Professor of law, Rutgers Law School, Camden, NJ. 12 December 1994. Telephone interview.
Professor of political science and criminology, University of Toronto. 13 December 1994. Telephone interview.
Attachments
INS Resource Information Center. Washington. September 1994. “Profile Series Russia The Status of Jews in the Post-Soviet Era,” pp. 4, 30-1.
Presentation by Dr. Oded Eran, Counsel of the Consulate General of Israel of New York, and by Professor Zvi Gitelman, Professor of the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan, to the Eastern Europe Regional Specialization Group on Jewish Refugee Claimants from the CIS (Transcript). 13 November 1992, pp. 37-8.