The Proletarian Tourist in the 1930s 109fl ora, and fauna. Alpinism afi cionados could fi nd picturesque mountain
landscapes in a fi fteen-day tour from Alma-Ata to Lake Issyk-Kul. Tourists to
the Urals could choose from thirty-six interesting itineraries, visiting caves,
cliffs, rivers, forests, and industrial centers. But Trud ’s Sverdlovsk correspon-
dent lamented that this picturesque region so rich in natural beauty had been
ignored by the publicists of the trade union tourist organization: in 1937,
only eight thousand people had traveled there, of the reported ninety-three
thousand tourists to all destinations. Another On Land and On Sea journal-
ist pointed regretfully to the absence of tourists visiting the large number of
nature reserves across the Soviet Union, including sites in the Altai and Sibe-
ria. In 1935, he noted, Yellowstone National Park hosted 2.5 million visitors;
if Soviet tourists could only access adequate information about their own
national reserves and if the TEU could provide facilities on the Yellowstone
scale, these vast and varied reserves could become regular tourist destina-
tions.^53 The journalist confl ated two very different challenges to expanding
the Soviet tourist grid: knowledge about where to go posed one obstacle, but
the provision of tourism infrastructure off the beaten track proved to be a
more insurmountable problem.
The tourist cruise emerged in the 1930s as a distinct and popular form of
vacation sightseeing, a hybrid of a tourist itinerary and a comfortable rest
home. Cruise advocates emphasized the healing properties of a leisurely
journey along the country’s major river arteries or along the Black Sea coast:
“Sitting on the open deck, breathing the clean air of the river, woods, and
meadows, bathing in the river, taking sun baths—all this makes a river trip
the most healthful form of rest.” As a form of travel, steamers offered more
space and comfort than trains, featuring electric lights and steam heating,
baths, pianos, radio, salons for table games, quiet corners for reading, and
jazz and dancing to the accordion in the evenings. On a riverboat, passengers
could sit on the deck and watch the constantly changing scenery come to
them, a particularly attractive vacation option for elderly travelers for whom
a mountain itinerary would be too strenuous.^54
Tourist cruises had begun in the mid-1920s along the Volga, when the
Moscow health department chartered the river steamer Zhemchuzhina for
thirteen-day excursions. Sovtur organized its fi rst river cruises in 1928, with
an itinerary extending from Iaroslavl' to Samara. River tourists could also
travel independently aboard one of the many passenger and postal boats ply-
ing the central river systems (such as the ship carrying musicians to Moscow
in the 1938 fi lm musical Volga-Volga ). The river transport agencies added
special third-class accommodations in 1928, providing economy tourists
- TsGA SPb, f. 4410, op. 1, d. 398, ll. 44–45, 33; NSNM , no. 11 (1936): 5–7; Trud , 10
July 1938; GARF, f. 9520, op. 1. d. 8, l. 56; NSNM , no. 3 (1940): 10–11, 13. - I. I. Fedenko, “Vodnyi turizm,” in Spravochnik-putevoditel' po vnutrennim vodnym
putiam SSSR (Moscow, 1932), 161 (quote); Povol'zhe: Spravochnik-putevoditel' 1930 g.
(Moscow, 1930), 247; Vecherniaia Moskva , 4 June 1934; GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 8, l. 50.