Vacations, Tourism, and the Paradoxes of Soviet Culture 9The Soviet preoccupation with the meaning of tourist travel originated with
the creation in 1927 of the Society for Proletarian Tourism, which aspired to
promote tourism among the masses of proletarian workers but also to codify
a particular, socialist form of self-conscious leisure travel. Proletarian tour-
ism was intended to be a mass movement, accessible to all and benefi cial
to all. As tangible fruits of the victory of the proletariat over the aristocracy
and the bourgeoisie, rest homes and health spas opened their doors fi rst of
all to these same proletarians, the new ruling class. In their distinctive fea-
tures—medicalization, offi cial priority for industrial workers, emphasis on
the group, and the purposefulness of both rest and tourism—Soviet tourism
and vacations represented attempts to create a unique and superior socialist
form of leisure travel.
Looking at the history of tourism from its beginning in 1927 until the 1980s,
we can observe how the consumption of leisure travel helped to produce and
reinforce new social distinctions and even stratifi cation in Soviet society.
But—and here is another paradox—by the 1960s, the industrial worker as the
ideal object of policy had given way to the middle-class consumer. If Soviet
tourism and vacations became a “mass” phenomenon, the new masses by
1960 turned out to be the Soviet middle class, whose name was “intelligen-
tsia.” Access to leisure travel, whether tourism or health resorts, came most
readily to and was most energetically sought by those with cultural capital,
the educated middle class whose ranks began to swell most signifi cantly in
the second half of the twentieth century and especially after 1960. The term
“bourgeoisie” retained its stigma of class-war opprobrium, but the late Soviet
vacationer and tourist was bourgeois in the descriptive sense of the term,
distinguished by an urban culture of prosperity without excess, modestly
consumerist, cultured and knowledge-seeking, and expecting comfort, ser-
vice, and small pleasures as entitlements. This middle-class reality would
coexist with the ideals of the aristocratic spa vacation well into the 1960s,
when tourism and vacation planners slowly began to abandon their grand
pleasure palaces in favor of the more utilitarian and mass-produced hotels.
The institutional structures of Soviet tourism and vacations also set them
apart from Western models and tsarist predecessors. From their inception,
Soviet vacations, including tourism, were considered services provided by
the Commissariat of Public Health or by the voluntary Society for Proletarian
Tourism. Tourism in the Soviet Union, unlike that in most other countries,
was not a branch of the economy but a social movement. Later, the Central
Trade Union Council would assume authority over both tourism and health
spa vacations, part of its broad mandate to promote the people’s welfare.
Throughout the Soviet period, the ability of the state to provide leisure travel
lagged behind the demand of individuals for vacations away from home, and
over time, increasingly loud voices emerged to suggest that this welfare func-
tion would be better organized on a commercial, or economic, basis. Until
the very end of the socialist regime, despite growing calls to create a “tourism
industry,” Soviet vacations remained organized, fi nanced, and distributed