Post-proletarian Tourism 213nothing left for tourism, said the delegate from Kuibyshev. The representative
from Perm noted that the amount of money received from the oblast social
insurance fund was only 10–12 percent of the sum given to rest homes. With
inadequate funding, the tourist organizations found it impossible to provide
attractive services, further depressing the demand for tourist vacations.^8
Continuing disappointment with the provision of tourism services
prompted a more radical reform in 1962, inspired perhaps by the adoption
of the 1961 Party program, which placed a new emphasis on democracy
and “communist self-management.”^9 Trade union authorities and Communist
Party offi cials had decided that the TEU, the coordinator of Soviet tourism
since 1936, had become too centralized, too administrative, too professional,
and too cut off from organizations and agencies with their own interests in
tourism. Incapable of expanding tourism opportunities, the TEU structure
had failed to make tourism the mass movement of the activists’ dreams. A
July 1962 decree of the Central Trade Union Council dissolved the central
TEU and all oblast TEUs working under local councils. In their place, the
central council created “councils on tourism,” with representatives of all the
stakeholders: trade unions, the Komsomol, enterprises and economic organi-
zations, sports societies, voluntary sports organizations, enterprise tourism
cells, the volunteer organization to promote air defense, children’s excursion
stations, and tourist clubs. The Ministry of Education, so closely engaged in
the original Soviet tourism project Sovtur, did not receive representation in
the new councils despite its role in local and museum excursions. Perhaps it
stood too close to the state bureaucracy. Instead of paid bureaucrats, tourism
decisions would be made by enthusiasts and volunteers represented in these
new councils, and this would help to reinvigorate mass tourism and popular-
ize the expansion of package tours. The big tent of the councils could accom-
modate all variants of Soviet tourism, from weekend outings to independent
long-distance trips to package tours to the expansion of the tourist base and
hotel infrastructure. In fact, if we judge by the example of Moscow, the re-
organization may have changed the name of the tourist authority, but the
leading actors remained the same, and the new representatives from public
organizations exercised little infl uence in tourism affairs.^10 These councils,
just like their TEU predecessors, were expected to be self-fi nancing, oper-
ating with monetary contributions from the constituent partners and from
revenues generated by tourist putevki. When it came to tourist vacations, the
centralized state deferred to local initiative, enthusiasm, entrepreneurship,
and funding.^11
- GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 381 (tourist offi cials’ conference, September 1961), ll. 15, 30,
62–69. - Programma kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soiuza , 109.
- TsAGM, f. 28, op. 3, d. 2 (Moscow tourism council plenums, 1962), ll. 1–2, 27–35; see
Turist , no. 9 (1969): 2, in which the education ministry’s role is strictly defi ned. - A. Kh. Abukov, Turizm segodnia i zavtra: Turistsko-ekskursionnaia rabota profsoiu-
zov (Moscow, 1978), 22.