Post-proletarian Tourism 257and collectivity. Whether in small independent groups of friends or in pack-
aged group tours by land or by sea, Soviet tourists distinguished their so-
cialist experience from tourism elsewhere by the substantive and purposeful
content of travel. Working at tourism, they gained physical, mental, and cul-
tural benefi ts. Unlike purportedly idle Western tourists, Soviet tourists en-
gaged the world, domestic and foreign, in order to improve their capacity for
work and citizenship. A Soviet tourist trip brought personal growth, whether
through physical training, expanding one’s cultural horizons, or developing
confi dence in the ability to encounter new and strange situations. The tour-
ist embarked on this journey of personal development fully cognizant of the
task at hand: to be a conscious tourist meant to understand the meaning of
tourism itself. Among the requirements for earning the Tourist USSR badge,
candidates had to answer questions on the proletarian tourism movement
and its distinctive goals.^142 The emphasis on purpose remained central in the
tourism prescriptions of the 1960s and 1970s, coexisting uneasily with a new
acknowledgment of consumer pleasure.
The physical and medical benefi t of tourist travel remained a fundamental
tenet of Soviet tourism. A socialist vacation, whether taken in one place at a
rest home or spa or spent on the road, healed and strengthened the organism
and restored the vacationer’s fi tness for work. While good health was a goal
for every member of society and contributed to individual well-being, the
right to rest never lost its intimate connection with the obligation to work.
Illness was not just a personal calamity: it led to missed work days and a loss
of production. The trade union secretary N. N. Romanov noted in 1962 that
sick leave was taken by two million workers every day; active tourism could
help to reduce this tremendous drain on the economy. One study in the early
1960s found that tourists became ill half as frequently as workers who did
not engage in tourism, a fact that might be used to pry more funds out of fac-
tory managers reluctant to support local tourist groups.^143
Tourism produced knowledge, and knowledge helped develop the indi-
vidual and improve one’s ability to contribute to the collective good. The
unique value of socialist tourism, insisted its proponents, derived from the
ideological and political benefi ts of knowledge produced in travel. A Soviet
tourist traveled to new places in order to acquire knowledge of their fl ora
and fauna, the life and achievements of the local populations, and the glori-
ous history of events that took place there. “Rest is all very well, but tourism
ought to be an active form of developing the mind of young people, fostering
their feelings of patriotism and pride in their great country.” Tourism broad-
ened one’s horizons and made tourists better citizens, and only purposeful
- GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 467 (excursion leaders’ scripts, 1962), contains a text for
the obligatory opening lecture on the tourist movement. On the badge requirements, TsAGM,
f. 28, op. 1, d. 6. - GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 447, l. 117; d. 921, ll. 185–186.