Post-proletarian Tourism 243therefore occupied a large space. But the reports were not merely about sur-
veillance: they also provided offi cials with voluminous information about
how tourism was organized and consumed abroad. Filtered through reports
like these and aided by visits of offi cial delegations, trips to Eastern Europe
and beyond helped to change the profi le of Soviet tourism from a volunteer
enterprise of enthusiasts to a leisure industry based on rational, pleasurable,
and organized consumption.^93
Soviet tourists to foreign countries, even socialist lands, carried signifi -
cant extra baggage in addition to their modest suitcases. The disciplinary
responsibility of the group leader and other covert surveillance agents
placed tourists under special scrutiny. Each tourist group received exten-
sive briefi ngs on what to expect and how to behave; only the most politically
experienced were entrusted with explaining Soviet policies to inquiring
hosts.^94 Soviet tourists were not mere sightseers; they were representatives
of the oldest and most politically developed socialist nation in the world,
and as such, they tried to distance themselves from “ordinary” sightseers.
They were fact fi nders and goodwill ambassadors, emphasized the head of
Inturist in 1962 (just like the shock workers in 1930 aboard the Abkha-
ziia sailing around Europe). In their specialized occupational groups, they
transmitted professional knowledge, and the high point of their tours was
often reported to be friendly meetings with worker collectives in their spe-
cialties.^95 Mingling among tourists from other countries, both capitalist and
socialist, Soviet travelers were expected to be able to tell about their na-
tion’s achievements and illustrate the successes of the Soviet system. Anne
Gorsuch elaborates on the performative responsibilities of Soviet tourists
abroad, which were especially critical in the fi rst decade of foreign tour-
ism. “Tourists to Western Europe were on a vacation, but it was a working
vacation,” she writes. Soviet tourists abroad and particularly to capitalist
countries “combined in an ensemble meant to display and perform a new
internationalist, post-Stalinist Soviet identity.”^96 Ethnic non-Russians had
a particular responsibility abroad. Tourists from Central Asia “travel to the
countries of the socialist camp and to capitalist countries in order to show
- I deliberately looked only at trip reports to Eastern Europe and a few nonaligned
countries, since my purpose was to use them to understand how Soviet tourists traveled as
socialists. The added complexity of encounters with Western capitalism is not the goal of my
study. Gorsuch, All This Is Your World , provides a complex analysis of the anxieties and ad-
ventures of travel abroad in the Khrushchev period, including the “near abroad” of Estonia,
Eastern Europe, and the capitalist West. - Popov, “Sovetskie turisty za rubezhom,” describes the formation of the “ideological”
group, a subset of the tourist group that would serve on the front lines of international com-
munication. - GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 468 (foreign tourism offi cials’ conference, March 1962), ll. 47,
491, 161; d. 407, l. 59. - Gorsuch, All This Is Your World , 109, 110.