Dear Matt,
VN uses the term "volchiy bilet" in "Drugie berega,"
Chapter Thirteen, 1 (which corresponds to Chapter Fourteen,
1, of Speak, Memory). He compares to it the so-called "Nansen"
passport, whose holder "was little better than a criminal on parole" (SM). (I
remember that, in the Foreword to Despair, there is a phrase:
"Hell shall never parole Hermann," but I'm not sure there is a connection to
volchiy bilet.)
According to Dahl's dictionary, volchiy bilet is
a "half-year respite given to a criminal sentenced to exile and spurned by
society." With time, this term got a broader sense and began to
mean any document (usually, a passport) with negative notes in it that would
make the life of its holder much more difficult.
Volchiy bilet echoes two other popular terms:
zhioltyi bilet ("yellow card"), a document given to prostitutes
("street-walkers") in the pre-revolutionary Russia (cf. Sonya Marmeladov
in "Crime and Slime"), and belyi bilet ("white card"), a
military-service card that exempts its holder from military
service.
I tried to contact you directly and send you at least
a part of my article that mentions Freud's "wolf-man" but was spurned by your
Mail Delivery System.
best,
Alexey