Urban Space Securitization: Foreign Visits to Soviet Omsk in the 1920s–1960s

The First World War had an enormous impact on the perception by the sovereign national states of their own territorial space. For a number of countries, the end of the war was accompanied by a change in their policy towards national borders, including the rules of border crossing. In Russia, where radical political changes took place in the late 1910s – early 1920s, the authorities also tightened the control over the movement of people, including foreigners. Using Omsk as an example, the article demonstrates how the city, which used to be open to foreigners in the pre-revolutionary period, became a restricted-access city in the Soviet period. On the basis of the study of travelogues, newspaper articles, and published archival documents, the author shows how the admission of foreigners to Omsk was regulated in the 1920s–60s against the background of restricting access of foreign nationals to the cities and entire territories of national significance. The article shows that the formal transfer of the capital of Siberia from Omsk to Novo-Nikolaevsk after the Civil War had far-reaching consequences. However, until the mid-1920s, Omsk was still perceived as the main Siberian city. From 1926 to 1938, Omsk was one of the main stations on the round-the-world routes used by American travelers and pilots. Along with Moscow, Omsk played an important role in helping to set world records in the speed of travelling round the world. The Soviet authorities sought not only to control the process of travel but also to influence the Americans’ impressions of the USSR on order to shape a positive image of the country abroad. It has been shown that access to Omsk became restricted as a result of a number of decisions made by the Soviet central authorities in the 1940s–50s. It is important to note that in the post-Stalin era, the existing ban for foreigners to visit Omsk was not reconsidered. Only trustworthy representatives of the countries with which the Soviet Union maintained privileged relationships were allowed to visit Omsk on extraordinary occasions.

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