240 Chapter 6
offi cials ventured beyond Soviet borders in the fi rst decade after the end of
hostilities. All of this changed quite dramatically in 1955, when Nikita Khru-
shchev’s embrace of the world stage at the July summit meeting in Vienna led to
an opening to the West known as the “spirit of Geneva,” including a sudden
proliferation of tourist opportunities abroad. Both the trade union tourism
authority and Inturist began to organize group tours abroad for carefully se-
lected Soviet citizens, primarily to fraternal neighbors in the communist bloc,
through exchanges that did not require the expenditure of scarce foreign cur-
rency. But tours were also arranged to some capitalist countries as well. Most
of this travel took place within Europe, although tourist groups from the Far
East might travel to Asian destinations such as Mongolia, China, Korea, and
Vietnam. Nonaligned countries around the world also hosted Soviet tourists.
Trud announced the departure of a group traveling to India on 8 March 1957,
the “thirteenth group of Soviet tourists” to travel there that year.^84 The appeal
of India as a destination may have been infl uenced by Indian popular cinema,
which, beginning with a fi lm festival in 1954, had become wildly popular as
a result of its exotic settings, upbeat music, and happy endings. Indian fi lm
stars visiting in the mid-1950s attracted huge crowds of fans.^85
In 1959 Trud reported on the expansion of international travel with the
headline, “Fifty Countries Await Soviet Tourists.” In addition to the familiar
destinations of the socialist bloc, tourists this year would travel again to In-
dia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Republic, and new itineraries had been
introduced that would take Soviet travelers to Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia,
and Iraq. For 1960 there would be trips to Mexico, Argentina, the United
States, and Canada and a cruise around Asia, calling at ports in Japan, China,
Indonesia, Ceylon, India, Somalia, Egypt, Greece, and Turkey.^86 Guidebooks
analogous to the annual domestic lists of itineraries did not exist, let alone
comprehensive fi gures on actual tourist travel, but the reports in the trade
union archives confi rm the growth and scope of these tours.
Soviet tourism abroad took the form of sightseeing rather than sports or
rest, but it remained resolutely purposeful and harnessed to the greater in-
terests of the regime and the economy. In theory, “specialized” groups of
employees in a single industry or type of work traveled together; their tours
were constructed to allow them to visit counterparts abroad, exchange knowl-
edge about production and work processes, and provide an economic basis
of friendship and fraternity. Those fortunate enough to be sent abroad would
then report back to their mates at home, sharing what they had learned about
production methods and technology.^87 Nature and sporting tourism never fi g-
ured very prominently in these tours; by the 1970s, tours abroad would often- Gorsuch, introduction to All This Is Your World ; Trud , 9 March 1957.
- Sudha Rajagopalan, Indian Films in Soviet Cinema: The Culture of Movie-Going after
Stalin (Bloomington, IN, 2008). - Trud , 28 November 1959.
- GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 375 (foreign tourism offi cials’ conference, September 1960).