260 Chapter 6
important feature of tourist trips abroad, as we have seen. And it offered prac-
tical advantages in solving logistical challenges of tourist travel: it was far
easier for tourist bases and transport agencies to plan for and manage groups
of twenty-fi ve or thirty or even four than to account for every one of the mil-
lions of Soviet tourists as individuals. The foreign tourist agency, Inturist,
did not permit foreign travelers to journey as individuals until 1963.^150 Even
in 1989, during my family’s Inturist excursion to Uzbekistan, we were known
as the “Group of Four from the USA.”Soviet tourism continued into the 1960s and 1970s to compare unfavor-
ably to the health spa as a vacation option, even as opportunities for both
stationary rest and active travel expanded in the years after the Twentieth
Party Congress. Tourism lagged behind health spas in the quality of its fa-
cilities, and since it did not qualify for social insurance subsidies, a touring
vacation was more expensive than a stay at a rest home or health spa. But
as the living standards of Soviet urban citizens began to rise in the 1960s
and opportunities arose to participate in a more developed tourist industry
abroad, the growing Soviet educated class increasingly sought vacations that
offered active knowledge production, varied scenery, and new experiences.
Tourism, with its multiple modes of transportation and infi nite number of
destinations, offered new possibilities for Soviet citizens to encounter their
country and experience other cultures abroad. Tourist vacations required less
state expenditure than health resorts because there was no need to provide
expensive medical services. By 1975 the number of Soviet citizens vacation-
ing in tourist facilities exceeded the number in health institutions for the fi rst
time, and given the numbers of additional tourists traveling on their own and
traveling abroad, one can say that in the seventh decade of the Soviet experi-
ment, tourism had fi nally become a mass phenomenon.
As vacations became more comfortable, whether in new hotel-like tour-
ist bases, on cruise ships, or on trains, Soviet tourism remained purposeful.
Tourists abroad were expected to bring back new ideas and approaches to
their work responsibilities, whereas tourists at home were meant to develop a
deeper appreciation of their national past and socialist achievements. Soviet
tourism remained a collective endeavor, in which travel did not just provide
new impressions and expand one’s base of knowledge but positively rein-
forced group bonds and taught the virtues and joys of collaborative encoun-
ters with new surroundings.
As Soviet tourism expanded in absolute numbers, it also diversifi ed in
the types of travel from which Soviet vacationers could choose. Though not
everyone could manage to receive a place on a group tour abroad, opportuni-
ties to visit Soviet cities and distant republics offered an increasing range of
travel alternatives. The expansion of tourism possibilities paralleled the ab-
solute growth of an educated professional and technical class. No longer an- Trud , 20 September 1966; Salmon, “To the Land of the Future,” 228–229.