Idiocracy of Russian Bureaucracy - Passport Registration for Visitors

It is necessary for all foreign visitors to register their passport with the local immigration department for any length of stay in the Russian Federation.  This registration painless if you are staying at a hotel, but if you are staying with a relative/host be prepared for a day of an endless convoluted loop of events.  Technically, one must register the passport in all cities visited.

We arrived at the office at 10 am only to discover that the office responsible for the registration would not be open until 2 pm.  We then decided to go make photocopies of all required documents and went home to have lunch.  Upon returning at 2:30 pm we were told that we can fill out the application form, but the registration can not be granted until it's reviewed and signed by the director, who was conveniently busy until 4 pm.  We proceeded with filling out the application form and left the facility to visit the local market in the mean time.

Feeling rather confident, we returned to the office for the third time with all required documents in hand for submission.  Bring it on! The clerk asked my wife that my registration can not be processed unless she comes back with a notarized translation of my US passport.  What!?! You've got to be kidding?  This was not my first time registering a passport on Russian soil. In all of my travels across four continents I have never encountered a situation where the international passport standard is challenged.  

My wife was about to give up and started to think of ways of getting my passport translated.  I retaliated by saying that such as request is stupid.  One, a passport is an internationally recognized identification document.  Recall that the passport is already written in three different languages: English, French and Spanish.  Two, it is arguably possible to go get my American passport translated with a week's time frame, but what if I had a Japanese or Bangladesh passport.  Where the heck can I find a Russian-bureaucracy-qualified translator for that language in the isolated "village" of Kumertau, Russia? My wife then presented this point to the window attendant who then accepted to process the registration.  Interesting huh?  I could not help but think she merely attempted to present an arbitrary obstacle with hopes of receiving some bribe money from a fearful sole.

After nearly an hour of waiting in the line the director called us in.  Without even looking at the visa or the completed paperwork the official asked for the dates of my visit and the purpose.  When my wife answered "to visit my family...he is my husband", the official challenged with a new question, "what is he going to do in Russia for two months?".  Talk about out of scope.  Clearly both the duration and the purpose of my visit had already been checked and approved by the Russian consulate and all this official had to do was to validate my presence.  Without being able to impose significant fear in us, the official eventually signed the application form which we had to take back to window attendant lady to finish processing. Sigh of relief.

But wait, we're not quite done.  The lady gave my host the bottom half of the registration form and said that she must bring that form back to the office after my departure.