242 Chapter 6
G. P. Dolzhenko asserts that a half million tourists traveled abroad in 1956
alone, but Anne Gorsuch suggests that the initial numbers were more modest:
she calculates that those traveling abroad between 1955 and 1964 numbered
approximately half a million in total. There is no question, however, about
the explosive growth in this traffi c. Dolzhenko estimates that 1.8 million tour-
ists traveled abroad in 1970, a fi gure corroborated by Turist , which reports
additionally that about 1 million of these travelers went to socialist countries
and 816,000 to capitalist countries. John Bushnell, estimating from a variety
of sources, suggests that between 1960 and 1976, approximately 11 million
Soviet tourists had traveled to Eastern Europe alone. The numbers were large,
and they were growing. A retrospective look at domestic tourism in 1989
reported that between 700,000 and 800,000 tourists signed up annually for
the all-union domestic itineraries; Turist wrote that a total of 2.6 million So-
viet tourists traveled abroad in 1976.^90 In terms of centrally planned tourism,
then, foreign travel had become the dominant form of the package tour.
Yet despite their popularity, or maybe because of it, these foreign excur-
sions produced great anxiety in a regime nervous about the impression that
Soviet citizens would make on strangers. For each group of thirty to sixty
people, a specially trusted leader assumed responsibility for their discipline
and behavior and fi led a report with tourist and trade union offi cials upon
their return. The many hundreds of such reports in the Inturist and trade
union archives open an unparalleled window onto the practices and attitudes
of the postwar Soviet tourist, allowing us to see the world outside through
the tourists’ eyes (as mediated through those of the group leader). Unlike the
diaries of independent tourist groups that tend to narrate epic encounters
with nature, these group leader reports focus on touristic consumption and
social interactions, both between hosts and guests and among guests. They
offer a unique perspective on the Soviet tourists’ subjective representations
of moving through touristic space, as Anne Gorsuch has argued.^91 There is
nothing comparable for domestic tourism, but some of the norms and atti-
tudes conveyed here can be used to characterize the postwar Soviet tourist
more generally.^92 Such reports must be used cautiously as sources, as Gor-
such suggests: most of their authors understood the limits of what could be
said and the consequences for their future foreign travel of fulfi lling their
solemn responsibilities as group leaders. The behavior of group members- Dolzhenko, Istoriia turizma , 154; Gorsuch, All This Is Your World , 18–19; Turist , no.
6 (1971): 14; John Bushnell, “The ‘New Soviet Man’ Turns Pessimist,” in The Soviet Union
since Stalin, ed. Stephen F. Cohen, Alexander Rabinowitch, and Robert Sharlet (Blooming-
ton, IN, 1980), 192; Turist , no. 12 (1989): 6; Turist , no. 6 (1977): 23. - Gorsuch, All This Is Your World , 22–24.
- The reports up to 1970 are contained in the archives of the central council and of
Inturist (to a lesser extent). There is evidence that after 1970, the reports were archived
only at the level of the regional tourism councils. See Aleksei Popov, “Sovetskie turisty
za rubezhom: Ideologiia, kommunikatsiia, emotsii (po otchetam rukovoditelei turistskikh
grupp),” Istorichna panorama: Collection of Scientifi c Papers , 6th ed. (Chernovei, 2008),
49–56.