90 Chapter 3
All travel contributed to the good life, but “proletarian tourism,” as de-
fi ned by the original Society for Proletarian Tourism and its successors, en-
abled the best life. Self-planned, autonomous ( samodeiatel'nye ) journeys
by small groups by foot, boat, bicycle, skis, or horseback most effectively
developed the qualities of the new Soviet person. Preparing, planning, and
executing the journey shaped the proletarian world view just as much as the
tourism objects—the places, people, and sights to be seen. The proletarian
tourist, a “son of the working class,” traveled “not to ‘get away from people,
to rest the spirit and temporarily to forget about daily cares,’ but to strengthen
the will, learn to subordinate his interests to that of the collective, to gather
new strength and impressions, so that when he returns to the work collective,
he is able to give to it much greater strength.” The proletarian tourist helped
the state by gathering in a scientifi c way new knowledge about the country,
locating new sources of raw materials, fi lling in blank spots on the national
map.^3 Reciprocity, both giving and receiving, distinguished the socialist good
life from its bourgeois competitors.
Two forms of tourism earned opprobrium as inappropriate models for pro-
letarian emulation. Tramping, or vagrancy ( brodiazhnichestvo )—travel by
an individual for romantic glory or self-satisfaction—received offi cial con-
demnation in numerous state publications throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
Nonetheless, as we shall see, this was a widespread phenomenon.^4 We have
also seen that tourism activists disdained the commercialism of organized
group tours. Yet this kind of tourism constituted an important element of the
Soviet Union’s offi cial leisure practice, as chapter 2 has shown. The packaged
group tour had become an integral part of Soviet tourism. But was it proletar-
ian enough?
In fact, the term “proletarian tourist” (like turizm itself) possessed two
meanings. On one hand, a Soviet individual who toured in the proletarian,
as opposed to the bourgeois manner defi ned by the activists in the OPTE and
tourism movement, could assume the proletarian label. During the 1930s,
the prescriptive proletarian tourist participated in autonomous, independent
trips; he or she did not follow the herd on a packaged, planned excursion.
On the other hand, any member of the working class, a production worker
( rabochii ) or later in the 1930s the more ambiguous trudiashchikhsia , a labor-
ing Soviet person, could be labeled a proletarian tourist. Any tourism per-
formed by the right-thinking Soviet person could be construed as proletarian
tourism. From these dual meanings arises the basic dilemma of proletarian
authenticity. Was the proletarian tourist the one who traveled in small inde-
pendent groups by foot, boat, or bicycle, or was he or she any Soviet person
who ventured out beyond the limits of everyday surroundings to experience
something new?- Turist-aktivist , nos. 8–9 (1932): 35–36; see also NSNM throughout its existence from
1929 to 1941. - KP , 4 March 1927; Biulleten' turista , nos. 4–5 (1930): 5–6; NSNM , no. 4 (1930): 1; V.
Antonov-Saratovskii, “Doloi brodiazhnichestvo!” NSNM , no. 7 (1930): 1–2.