246 Chapter 6
the amount of time spent learning about old kings and visiting “monuments
of the past.” Worst of all was the “excessive” amount of time spent touring
churches and chapels, an especially common complaint from tourists to so-
cialist Poland. “The entire group received an unpleasant impression from
the religious spirit everywhere: the infl uence of the Catholic Church is enor-
mous, and the Polish guides did not show us any of the new life of the coun-
try, and the great work that maybe is being done there.”^105
It is possible that the preferences expressed in the reports refl ected those
of the party loyalists who were trustworthy enough to lead these groups and
had been thoroughly briefed on the purposeful nature of Soviet tourism. But
not all group leaders complained about their sightseeing agenda. Many re-
ports and individual accounts expressed unalloyed wonder at all the tour-
ist objects they were shown, from churches to museums to train stations.
Indeed, although Soviet tourists brought with them particular expectations
about how to be a good socialist tourist, these trips abroad—much more than
the standard tours of the homeland—helped teach Soviet citizens how to be
tourists, how to see, what to value in a guide and a guidebook, and how to
assimilate what they had learned.
As Soviet tourists ventured away from home, whether domestically or
abroad to the place that sociologist Orvar Löfgren calls “Elsewhereland,”
they joined the larger movement of modern tourists seeking integration into
an expanded social universe. The tourist gains pleasure from successfully
encountering the extraordinary, writes anthropologist John Urry. Dean Mac-
Cannell suggests that “all tourists desire this deeper involvement with soci-
ety and culture to some degree; it is a basic component of their motivation
to travel.” He goes on to argue that the method by which tourists gain this
deeper involvement is in the navigation of the system of signs known as
tourist attractions. The sights on a tourist itinerary, whether cathedrals, steel
mills, or war memorials, gain their meaning through the “ceremonial ratifi ca-
tion” of the itinerary itself.^106 The tourist object, the sight, is not just a spot
on a map but a cultural production. Tourists learned how to interpret these
productions with the aid of the tour guide and guidebook and by sharing
their impressions with their fellow travelers.
The reports of Soviet tourists abroad allow us to appreciate how this tourist
knowledge was produced. Travel abroad intensifi ed the tourists’ engagement
with these cultural productions precisely because they were so different from
the familiar everyday tourist objects at home, whose signs were mediated
through the well-understood codes of Soviet ideology. They learned from
one another as well as from their guides how to respond. Take, for exam-
ple, reactions to visits to sites of Nazi death camps. Tourists heard from the- GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 409, l. 134; d. 491, l. 51; d. 878 (group leader reports, 1965),
l. 149; for Hungary: d. 699 (group leader reports, 1964), l. 93; for Poland: d. 1104, l. 4; d. 407,
ll. 124, 169, 110 (quote); d. 691, l. 35; d. 721 (group leader reports, 1964), l. 51. - Löfgren, On Holiday , 1–5; Urry, The Tourist Gaze , 11; MacCannell, The Tourist , 10, 14.