Post-proletarian Tourism 229“The Great Beyond”: Expanding Domestic Destinations
As public agencies whose operating revenues depended on satisfying con-
sumer demand, central and local tourism administrations paid close atten-
tion to the expansion of tourist facilities in the most popular destinations.
Because their mission also included enlightenment and mobilization, tour-
ism authorities sought to popularize alternative destinations off the beaten
path, to open up the less-traveled regions of the Soviet Union to leisure travel.
Not coincidentally, directing more tourist traffi c away from the south and
the sea might help to reduce some of the well-known congestion along the
Soviet Union’s Black Sea coast. In the 1930s the TEU had tried to publicize
the Urals as an exotic new destination, but the war and its aftermath had
reined in its geographic ambitions. By 1958 the central tourism organization
offered only nine package tours to the Urals and the Altai region of Siberia
and three to Central Asia, all of them in Kazakhstan and focused around the
developing resort at Lake Issyk-Kul. Neither the cities of Central Asia nor the
natural reserves of Siberia at Lake Baikal and beyond appeared on the offi cial
tourist map in the 1950s.^60 Statistics for “tourist-days” for 1962, shown in
table 6.2, indicate the heavy concentration of tourism in the traditional areas.
Fully half of tourist-days were spent in the Russian regions of the USSR,
which included the capital cities but also the Caucasus Black Sea shore and
the North Caucasus.
The 1960 and 1962 reforms of the tourism agencies included the expan-
sion of this tourist geography as part of their mission. In the same 1962 report
that promised to replace tent bases with structures in the popular tourist
destinations of Crimea, Transcarpathia, and the Caucasus, the chairman of
the central tourism council announced plans to establish new tourist bases
- Turistskie marshruty po SSSR (1958). The offerings in 1956 were even sparser: three
itineraries to the Urals, three to Altai, and two to Kazakhstan. Turistskie marshruty po SSSR
(Moscow, 1956).
Table 6.2 Tourist-days for all-union itineraries, 1962
Region Tourist-days Percentage of total
Russian Federation 1,779,412 50.1
Georgia 674,687 19.2
Ukraine 661,687 18.9
Azerbaijan and Armenia 199,711 5.7
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania 174,736 5.0
Total 3,505,474 100
Source: GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 521 (statistical data, 1962), ll. 1–4.