In Moscow in July 1993, Russians stood for days in lines for foreign-travel papers. A contemporary report in The Independent follows Olga Kozakova at the Sevastopolsky district passport office on her second day of waiting. She hoped to travel to Germany, but her immediate goal was more modest: to get her name onto a waiting list to see an official.
Russia had changed its foreign-travel rules at the start of 1993, and passport offices were inundated. A new freedom and an old bureaucracy met in the same corridor. The desire to cross a national border was expansive; the first practical step was simply securing a turn at a local desk. This queue made visible the gap between changing a law and building the administrative capacity that lets people use it.