the price of a small apartment at that time. This system lasted several years, causing major public uproar from human rights activists and other liberals, and was abolished after several rulings of the Russian Constitutional Court, the last one in late 1997. Propiska and education Students not of the city in question were provided a temporary propiska in the dormitories of their university campuses (generally, dormitory space was not provided to students studying in the same city as their parents' residence, but they often wanted it to be free from their parents). After graduation or leaving school early (expulsion, withdrawal, etc.), this temporary propiska was terminated. In Soviet times, this was connected to a "distribution" system which was a mandatory official allocation of a first job placement for university graduates (even from the same city), where they had to work for around 2 years "to pay back the cost of their education". Only postgraduates were exempted from this requirement. This system was despised as being a violation of freedom, since nobody wanted to relocate from a larger city to a smaller one, but it still provided at least a propiska (and the dwelling space connected to it) to a graduate. Also, a "young specialist" could nearly never be fired, the same as a pregnant woman and other specific (in terms of labor laws) categories of people who were entitled to such benefits. After the end of the USSR, the distribution system was almost immediately abolished, leaving graduates with the choice of returning to their home town/village, to their parents or other relatives or struggling to find work in the large city where the school was located. To do the latter, some people became "propiska hunters", i.e. people marrying anybody with permanent propiska in a large city, just to retain their legal right to stay there after graduation. Since, once provided the permanent propiska was not revocable, the natives of the large city were very suspicious about senior-age students from smaller towns or villages when it came to marriage. Modern usage Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the propiska system was officially abolished. The Russian Supreme Court has ruled the propiska to be unconstitutional on several occasions since the fall of communism and it is considered by human rights organizations to be in direct violation of the Russian constitution, which guarantees freedom of movement. Several former Soviet republics, such as