Post-proletarian Tourism 249
Some of these tourists were so unhappy they demanded to return home
before the end of their visits. Even if a trip abroad was the “great event in their
lives,” not all Soviet travelers mastered the techniques of modern sightsee-
ing.^113 Soviet tourists abroad (including group leaders) ran the gamut from self-
satisfi ed patriots interested only in confi rming their prior impressions, to the
genuinely curious, bringing open minds and eagerly soaking up all the new
experiences to which they were exposed. The superior, proud, and patriotic
tourist abroad traveled outside familiar borders carrying a portable shell of So-
viet identity, under which all observations could be categorized. Their lens of
Soviet patriotism allowed them to celebrate Soviet achievements and to take
umbrage when they perceived real or imagined slights. For some of them, the
goal of tourism was less to expand their horizons than to confi rm their own
sense of socialist supremacy. This imperial hauteur might also have masked
an underlying fear of inferiority, akin to MacCannell’s shameful tourists who
are afraid they are not seeing everything the way it “ought” to be seen.^114
Celebrating and honoring Soviet achievements past and present, the tour-
ists could remind themselves of their privileged place in the world. Tourists
to Czechoslovakia at the time Yuri Gagarin completed the fi rst manned space
fl ight in 1961 happily joined a rally and festive dinner to mark the day of the
“triumph of Soviet science.” When sharing production experience with their
work counterparts, Soviet tourists were proud to see that their hosts had bor-
rowed techniques from the USSR. Every tour included visits to Soviet war
monuments, reinforcing the sense that the locals owed their liberation to the
efforts of the Soviet army and people.^115
Correspondingly, when the hosts seemed unimpressed with these achieve-
ments (“America also helped to liberate us”), the Soviet guests took offense.^116
In Poland they felt insulted when taken to see the grave of Marshal Pilsudski,
whom the Soviets knew as the leader of anti-Soviet troops during the Rus-
sian civil war. They cared little about Pilsudski’s place as the fi rst marshal
of the Polish people. Many groups expressed irritation when their dining
tables were not marked with small Soviet fl ags, especially when other tour-
ist groups had their national fl ags on display. They seemed surprised when
encountering openly hostile behavior, such as the refusal in 1964 of a Polish
elevator operator to take a tourist to her fl oor: “The Russian pig can climb
on her own.” In Czechoslovakia, a group managed to win an apology from
the tourist agency Cˇedok for a bus driver who called his passengers swine.^117
- GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 421, l. 5; d. 426, l. 175; quote from d. 1315, l. 4.
- MacCannell, The Tourist , 10.
- GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 409, l. 171; d. 491, l. 3; d. 597, l. 55; d. 504, l. 69.
- GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 504, l. 69; only the Bulgarians seemed to be grateful, noted
one group leader. Ibid., d. 893, l. 68.
- GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 597, ll. 124, 131; d. 407, l. 155; d. 488, ll. 4–5; d. 721, l. 30
(quote); d. 598, ll. 88–89. On Soviet-Czechoslovak tourist relations, before and after the Soviet
invasion of August 1968, see Rachel Applebaum, “A Test of Friendship: Soviet-Czechoslovak
Tourism and the Prague Spring,” in Gorsuch and Koenker, The Socialist Sixties , 213–32.
