Registration

What is a registration and why do I need it?

A Russian visa registration is a paper slip with information about your trip and your personal data (date of birth, passport number etc) on it. It consists of two parts - the biggest one goes to the Migration Service and the second slip should be kept inside your passport.

The registration process is meant to help the Migration Service understand when you arrived and when you plan to leave the country.

Apparently they need this information so that they can make statistics on how many tourists enter Russia each year, where they go and what they do there. Others may argue that it’s all a hangover from the Soviet organised Intourist days. But either way it’s still very important to make sure you are registered.

If police in the street stop you and ask for your registration or customs officials ask you for it at the border and you can’t produce a paper, you will be facing a large fine. So make sure you don’t lose it!

Tourist Visa registration

If you are staying in a hotel, the receptionist must take care of your registration upon your arrival. It is their responsibility (although it’s also their decision if they want to charge you extra for this service or not). You can also get tourist visa registered through local travel agencies.

Business visa registration

The maximum period of registration for a business visa is 3 months. You can easily get registered if you know the address of your inviting company in Russia. In the first 3 business days (weekends and public holidays are not counted) you should visit their office and hand in your documents for registration.

Student visa registration

For universities it is easy for them to register you: just bring them your passport with your Russian visa and immigration card, and the university's foreign department will pass your documents to OVIR (immigration officials) to register your visa. Normally, the registration can be done for the entire duration of your visa.

With some invitations from universities or schools you get only a single-entry visa, and if you would like to leave the country for holidays you need to ask for an exit visa at the foreign department of the educational institute. This can again take 1-2 weeks! When you return from your holiday you need to be re-registered. Take your passport, visa and new migration card to the university.

Private Visa registration

If you have been invited to stay with friends or family they should come with you to the local OVIR office within thee working days of arriving in Russia to start filling in forms. If you are lucky, this may only cost you one day of time and stress, but you get a real Russian experience, i.e. long queues, irregular hours, bureaucratic nit-picking and unfriendly faces.

Can I register myself?

If you like frustration, confusion, waiting for a long time and filling in a lot forms you could also try to register yourself personally at the OVIR (Russian Visa and Registration Department) or the post office. Unless you are desperately keen to undergo this very Russian experience, we advise you to go to a travel agency or hotel and pay them to register you (although the costs can vary widely and sometimes even get as high as 3,000Rbl).

A visit to the OVIR office can take a couple of hours, and you will need a special letter from the owner of the flat you are staying in stating that they agree to have you registered temporarily at their place. Most people won’t be ecstatic about giving you such a letter, because of fears of extra taxation and because of course it costs them time to make this extra paperwork.

If you are staying with a friend or relative or know Russians living in the city you have one more option. If this person has the authorization known as a 'propiska' (note that not everyone does), they can register you at any Post Office for a minimal sum (around 150Rbl). This registration process requires a lot of patience and even involves buying each copy of the registration form itself. Post offices tend to run out of the forms given to them by the OVIR very quickly and so they will charge you the 9Rbl it costs them to photocopy the double sided form.

The Kafkaesque situation will then continue as after filling in the complex form and handing it in for scrutiny (be careful not to make any mistakes in the form or they will make you fill the whole thing out again), you will then have to supply your own envelope and find the address of your local OVIR office in the telephone book to put on the envelope. After you’ve done that they will then give you the paper which proves you have been registered and then set your precious forms free into the Russian postal system.

So the lesson to be learned here is that if you are not staying in a hotel, then save yourself some time and ask a travel agency to do the registration for you!