Club Red. Vacation Travel and the Soviet Dream - Diane P. Koenker

236 Chapter 6

Compared with other types of tours (see table 6.3), these cruises were priced

in the same range as river cruises, but when the cost of travel to the tour’s

starting point was factored in, they were more expensive than tourist trains.

Automobile Tourism

With the increased production of passenger automobiles in the 1960s and

later, traveling to a vacation destination “in your own car” became possible

for many Soviet citizens and desired by many more.^75 Just as with other kinds

of travel, offi cials sought to control and manage the message and meaning

auto tourists derived from their travels. We want to attract the broad mass

to auto tourism, insisted S. S. Vol'kenshtein, chairman of the Moscow club

of automobile tourists in 1965. “But we also want to steer their travels in

Tourists taking the sea breezes on the deck of a cruise ship on the Arctic Ocean. Turist, no. 2

(1967): 5.

75. See Siegelbaum, Cars for Comrades.