126 Chapter 3
permission to fi nally realize his globe-cycling dream.^93 In fact, Travin the cyclist
appears to have had much in common with hundreds of thousands of young
men around the world (but how many women?) who were crazy to travel,
whether with a stated purpose (thirty thousand kilometers on foot) or just
to drift where fate would take them (like Odysseus). Hoboes in the United
States, cyclists like Adolf de Groot, and the many vagabonds who were de-
nounced in the Soviet tourist press all represented very similar phenomena.
Yet however much Travin yearned to break free of the borders of his one-
sixth of the globe, he was also a Soviet man, and not only did his tour of
self-reliance physically retrace the limits of the geographic space in which
he lived, but his encounters also repeatedly tied him to the nation-building
project of the USSR. Sharing knowledge constituted an important ritual of
Travin’s tourist experience, as it did for offi cially approved tourists in the
1930s. In his account the Nenets and Chukchi fi gure as prominently as the
polar bear and the ice caves. When Travin made his polar journey, much of
the country was still unmapped, and he frequently crossed paths and shared
information with explorers, geologists, and geographers who were offi cially
charged with fi xing the new national geography. He learned about the cus-
toms of the many different peoples of the Soviet Union—discovering, for
example, that in Kazakhstan it was an insult to refuse to drink sour milk. He
himself brought knowledge to others, giving geography lessons in the Arctic
settlement of Russkie Ust'e because there was no teacher in the school. When
he requested permission (and a bicycle) for his travel around the world, he
emphasized the value to the USSR that his trip would produce: “To go abroad
on a foreign bicycle would be shameful. I hope to properly demonstrate the
Soviet bicycle before the foreign masses both in central places and in distant
regions of America, Africa, and Western Europe.” Travin’s story eventually
became known, commemorated to this day in an exhibit in the Pskov city
museum, but how many other young men of his generation followed their
own independent tourist programs, without groups, without permission,
without a medical regimen but in search of a very similar experience of self-
knowledge and discovery?^94By the end of the 1930s, the parameters of Soviet tourism had been estab-
lished. It offered both pleasure and purpose, and depending on one’s own
preferences, it could be experienced through rigorous participation in inde-
pendent tourist groups or in the relative comfort and security of organized
group travel. It could be ascetic, emphasizing experience and knowledge. It
could be material, providing nourishing food, warm baths, and a comfortable
touring car. Adventure and pleasure constituted different sides of the Soviet- Travin, “Bez skidki,” 58; Kolmogorov, “Memories,” 148; Kharitonovskii, Chelovek ,
212, 209. - Kharitonovskii, Chelovek , 72, 209; Travin, “Bez skidki,” 60–61; http://culture.pskov.
ru/ru/persons/object/161.