Post-proletarian Tourism 245of them wished to witness socialist modernity and not the bourgeois Eu-
ropean past. Presented with their planned itinerary in Romania, a group of
tourists expressed their disappointment: “The program surprised us, there
was not one planned meeting with workers, not one visit to an industrial
enterprise or agricultural cooperative. It was an ordinary tourist program.”
Factory visits appeared on many itineraries, and tourists especially looked
forward to exchanging stories of work experience with their fraternal coun-
terparts.^101 Here we must worry about whether these accounts refl ect real
desires or the wishes of the authorities who would read the reports, but I
accept the interest in socialist modern as genuine. Industrial tourism had
long occupied an honored place in the Soviet tourist movement, even if the
exclusively industrial itineraries did not outlive the fi rst fi ve-year plan. The
chairman of the TEU in 1961 recalled fondly his fi rst industrial visit to the
Gor'kii auto plant as a schoolboy during a Volga cruise in 1936: “I remember
it to this day.”^102 Organizing specialized tourist groups by occupation maxi-
mized the utility of such trips abroad. A group of staff in the Soviet chemical
industry visited counterpart enterprises in Czechoslovakia in 1961, learning
about worker pay, training, and production processes, knowledge they could
usefully apply back home. Soviet tourists abroad had a mission; they were
serious travelers and had a duty to learn and to apply what they had learned.
A trip without meetings with workers and visits to enterprises was consid-
ered incomplete.^103
In visiting historical sites abroad, Soviet tourists likewise wanted most of
all to see places that represented the greatest achievements of socialism. Me-
morials to World War II battles and victims occupied a solemn place on itin-
eraries, and each successive wave of Soviet tourists brought fl owers to place
on such commemorative sites. They also expected to learn about the great
moments of the socialist revolution: tourists to Hungary, evidently oblivious
to the violent 1956 uprising against Soviet rule, were disappointed that their
guides in 1962 were unwilling to answer questions about the “revolution-
ary struggle of the Hungarian people” and the economic achievements of
the Hungarian People’s Republic. Likewise, a visit of a group from Altai to
Romania in 1963 regretted not learning more about the building of social-
ism in contemporary Romania.^104 Group leader reports regularly protested
- GARF, f. 9612, op. 1, d. 563 (group leader reports, 1963), l. 45 (quote); GARF, f. 9520,
op. 1, d. 410 (group leader reports, 1961), ll. 154–155, 3; GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 426 (group
leader reports, 1961), ll. 30, 173, 218; GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 691 (group leader reports,
1964), l. 41. - GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 381, l. 103. My personal tourist bias may play a role in my
interpretation: I retain vivid memories of my own visits to industrial enterprises that were
part of a larger journey, from the Quaker Oats plant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (“oats shot from
guns”) to Ford’s River Rouge plant in Michigan to the robot-driven Perrier plant in southern
France. - GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 409, ll. 167–170; d. 1104, l. 19.
- GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 488 (group leader reports, 1962), l. 2; d. 701, l. 16; d. 875
(group leader reports, 1965), l. 2; d. 491, l. 52; d. 598 (group leader reports, 1963), l. 35.