Post-proletarian Tourism 221Package Tours: Second-Best but Profitable
In 1983, Turist conducted a survey of its readers’ tourism experiences. Of
this self-selected group of respondents, 19 percent engaged in independent
tourism along complex routes, including the more extreme forms of sporting
tourism. Another 20 to 30 percent participated in independent tourism that
combined “a good vacation” with some physical effort but in which learning
about the surrounding world was more important than sport. The remain-
der, between 60 and 70 percent, purchased a putevka for a planned tourist
route aided by instructors and group leaders.^34 The tourist collective brought
strangers together to become friends and conquer obstacles: here was social-
ist collectivism in action.
Collective mutuality could come in many forms, and tourism encouraged
all of them. Individuals might arrive at a tourist base alone, and through
the encouragement of lectures and in practice, they would come to trust
one another and to work together. “The most important thing we got from
the base,” wrote a tourist in her diary from a Crimean hiking trip, “was that
twenty people came here, strangers, and they left as a collective ready for
all diffi culties that the coming trip might have in store.” The standard tour-
ist base routine provided many opportunities for these strangers to meet
one another, to work together on short tasks and training hikes, and then
to choose among themselves the smaller groups that would carry out their
long-distance treks or boat trips. “People come together for a weekend out-
ing, not knowing one another,” wrote another Trud contributor. “and then
suddenly in two days they have become friends, sharing in equal measure
joy and hardship.”^35
The very regime of the tourist experience was organized to promote the
socializing values of the collective. Upon arrival at the base, the instructors
introduced the tourists to the camp facilities and options available for trips;
by the second day they were already forming their smaller groups and train-
ing to carry out their long marches. While at the base camp, they practiced
techniques, but they could also engage in swimming, sunbathing, and sports.
Evenings, just as at rest homes and sanatoria, featured movies, amateur con-
certs, and dances. Tourists were also expected to devote a few hours a week
to housekeeping around the camp or to help local villagers with their agri-
cultural work. On the march they divided up their duties, but the group was
organized horizontally: “On a trip, everyone is a boss, there are no ordinary
tourists: one person is the group organizer, another the cultural organizer,
- Turist , no. 4 (1983): 20–21. (Participants in planned tours complained the magazine
focused only on the fi rst two kinds of tourists; the sporting tourists alleged the opposite.) - “The most important thing,” GARF, f. 7576, op. 30, d. 170, l. 3; TsAGM, f. 28, op. 1,
d. 6 (tourist base reports, 1959), l. 154; “People come together,” Trud , 20 September 1966.