The Proletarian Tourist in the 1930s 103The Beaten Path: The Path of Least Resistance
Despite the ideological preference for small-group independent tourism,
most Soviet tourists encountered the pleasures of a vacation on the road by
taking an organized group tour. Activists scorned such package tours for
their inauthenticity, implying that tourists who chose to take package tours
lacked imagination and courage; they simply followed the beaten path, the
well-worn and hackneyed routes to the Crimea, the Caucasus, or down the
Volga. A beginning tourist might wish fi rst to encounter a Caucasus itinerary
on a group tour, in which the tourist organization provided all food, lodg-
ing, transportation, guides, and instruction, but “real tourists” would chafe
at such dependency. Package tours produced the stereotypical “tourists with
yellow suitcases,” like those in the fi lm One Summer who negotiated the
picturesque curves of the Georgian Military Highway riding in automobiles
with their lapdogs beside them. Tourism purists nicknamed this route Petro-
vka, after the fashionable shopping street in Moscow, reinforcing their pro-
paganda efforts toward independent touring as the most appropriate form of
proletarian tourism.^37
Polar distinctions between authentic solo tourists, Robinson Crusoes, and
the mindless followers of fashion—the idiot travelers or Phileas Foggs—
abound in the scholarly literature on tourism.^38 Tourists themselves internal-
ize these distinctions, suggest sociologists, producing the “self-hating tour-
ist.” Dean MacCannell describes a “pronounced dislike, bordering on hatred,
for other tourists, an attitude that turns man against man in a they are the
tourists, I am not equation.” But MacCannell rejects this formulation, arguing
for a basic authenticity for all tourists, whether Robinson Crusoe or Phileas
Fogg. Every tourist seeks to comprehend the differentiation of society, and
each one hopes to penetrate the “rear spaces” of his or her destinations as
well as their public fronts. Over time, argues MacCannell, tourists will gain
confi dence in their ability to share the experiences of others.^39 Traveling with
the guiding structure of a group tour, implies MacCannell, is no less authentic
than striding forth on one’s own to encounter the world, for it is the encoun-
ter that provides knowledge and value, not the means by which it is made.
Critics of Sovturism and the OPTE package tours shared the prevailing
contempt that MacCannell has sought to allay. These critics frequently la-
beled the package tour as inauthentic, commercial, and the path of least resis-
tance.^40 As a result, the historical record provides remarkably scant evidence
about the nature and scope of this most common form of Soviet tourism.
- NSNM , no. 1 (1929): 12; no. 4 (1929): 12; Vecherniaia Moskva , 30 August 1930;
NSNM , no. 3 (1939): 13; no. 4 (1937): 2; no. 9 (1929): 8. - Urbain, L’Idiot du voyage , 1–8. Daniel J. Boorstin famously dismisses contemporary
tourism as make-believe, as “pseudo-events.” “From Traveler to Tourist: The Lost Art of
Travel,” The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York, 1992). James Buzard
explores this theme through literature: The Beaten Track. - MacCannell, The Tourist , 13, 94, 102–103, 106–107.
- NSNM , no. 12 (1937): 6; no. 7 (1937): 15; no. 3 (1938): 6.