94 Chapter 3
alpinists in 1930 that they warned German girls not to take part in mountain
trips in the USSR, where allegedly Soviet boys and girls “married” for the
duration of the tour and then bought a two-ruble divorce when the trip was
over.^9 Tourist travel offered romantic adventures similar to the spa vacation
but added scenery and healthy effort to the mix.
The completely independent group journey represented the most authen-
tic form of proletarian tourism. The tourist chose the route, studied it, and
formed a group of friends to carry out the trip, capturing the essential core
of tourism’s benefi ts, argued M. Shugal in On Land and On Sea in 1934. We
should never forget that tourism’s most important feature was “interesting,
healthy rest surrounded by nature, not motionless, but connected with move-
ment through tens and hundreds of kilometers.”^10 Like all tourists, indepen-
dent tourist groups encountered the nation, developed self-reliance and
self-esteem, toned their bodies, and practiced military skills, but independent
tourists accomplished all this more authentically precisely because they had
assumed the responsibility for organizing and carrying out the journey with-
out tutelage from above. Independent tourists could travel anywhere because
they created their own itineraries. This Soviet tourist, like the ideal Soviet
subject, was self-actualizing and self-motivating, voluntarily adopting and
following principles of mutuality, service, friendship among peoples, and
citizenship.
John Urry theorizes about the “tourist gaze,” constructed in relationship to
its opposite, nontourist, everyday forms of social experience. The distinction
between everyday life and the extraordinary experiences of tourism defi nes
the gaze. In encouraging the tourist to be a self-conscious and self-actualizing
traveler, the Soviet organizers of tourism simultaneously attempted to struc-
ture the ways in which tourists made sense of this distinction. They needed
to learn how to be tourists. “We gaze at what we encounter. And this gaze is
as socially organized and systematized as is the gaze of the medic.” Urry fur-
ther subdivides the tourist gaze into romantic (the self in “solitudinous con-
templation of nature”) or collective, in which the presence of large numbers
of people gave a sight its signifi cance as a “tourist attraction” (cities, seaside
resorts). The tourist gaze could also be historical—seeking to explore and
understand the past—or modern. And it could be authentic (the battle fi elds
at Borodino) or inauthentic (the Borodino diorama). Soviet tourism could
incorporate all these gazes, but the independent proletarian tourist was in an
ideal position to combine both the solo, romantic gaze and the collective gaze
simultaneously structured by the needs of society at large and by the inter-
ests of the small touring group. Urry continues that “the gaze is constructed
through signs, and tourism involves the collection of signs,” the constructed- Turist-aktivist , nos. 2–3 (1933): 7 (quote); Traskovich (chairman of the presidium of the
Central Council of the OPTE), in NSNM , no. 8 (1934): 11; no.16 (1934): 11; no. 16 (1930): 2. - M. Shugal, in NSNM , no. 15 (1934): 4; O. Arkhangel'skaia, Samodeiatel'noe putesh-
estvie (Moscow, 1939), 4.