Restoring Vacations after the War 143a parallel institution to provide a new model for the development of mass
tourism, the Moscow Tourist Club. Volunteer activists here organized sec-
tions according to the type of travel, advised prospective tourists (13,000 in
1950) on potential itineraries, certifi ed planned trips of independent tourist
groups (530 groups with 2,500 people in 1950), and archived the trip reports
of groups upon their return. Together with the more active local sports soci-
eties, the Moscow Tourist Club and others began to organize annual tourist
rallies ( slety ), at which tourist collectives would compete in a range of tourist
skills—orienteering, building fi res, and cooking meals on them. At day’s end
all the tourists would gather around the central campfi re and share songs
and tourist memories. The Bolshevik Sports Society boasted one of the more
active tourist sections, and in 1950 it sponsored its own “all-union rally” at
a site near Khosta on the Black Sea.^37 In the coming years, the annual May 1
rally would offi cially launch the independent touring season. Participants in
these rallies were the successors to the intrepid independent tourists of the
1930s. Tourist clubs became centers of independent and autonomous enthu-
siasts, drawn largely from the ranks of students and educated professionals.
Their subculture of active tourism would become a hallmark of the Soviet
urban intellectual by the 1970s. The Moscow Tourist Club survived well be-
yond the end of the USSR.
The TEU sought also to serve “genuine” tourists on selected packaged
itineraries designed to teach and test basic tourist knowledge and skills, cul-
minating in the award of the badge “Tourist of the USSR.” The badge had
been adopted in 1939, modeled on the military preparedness badge (GTO—
“Prepared for Labor and Defense”) and capitalizing on the popularity of the
sporting Alpinist SSSR badge awarded to participants in mountaineering
camps and expeditions. The tourist authority planned in 1939 to award twen-
ty-fi ve thousand such badges, and after the war the badges would provide
a convenient metric for the success of mass tourism.^38 For the tourists, the
badge also offered tangible motivation for their rigorous trips. A diary kept by
the Leningrad tourist Smazkova from her 1951 rowboat trip through Karelia
captured her anxiety on the eve of the fi nal test, administered by a visiting
commission, and the joy and celebration as each of the participants, bonded
as a tourist collective through the common rigors of their trip, received her
treasured prize. Tourist bases in the Caucasus earned praise for their celebra-
tory welcome of each group as they returned from their 180-kilometer test
treks: at Krasnaia Poliana, the successful hikers were greeted with bouquets
of fl owers and specially prepared fruit compote.^39 This was supposed to be
the future of mass tourism, bouquets and rucksacks for all.
- Tsentral'nyi arkhiv goroda Moskvy (TsAGM), f. 28, op. 2, d. 48, ll. 74–77 (Moscow
Tourist Club report, 1950); Trud , 17 June 1950; 7 June 1953. - NSNM , no. 12 (1938): 2; NSNM , no. 1 (1939): 4; see GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 116 (re-
ports on Tourist USSR badges, 1949). The program appears in detail in NSNM , no. 4 (1939):
- GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 204 (trip diary, 1951); d. 260, l. 12.