chapter seven
The Modernization of Soviet Tourism
I
n 1978 the trade union chief Aleksei Abukov described the three
stages of Soviet tourism. The fi rst stage, from the 1920s to 1936,
saw the birth and development of a voluntary movement of enthusiasts. As
a movement, he wrote, it did not correspond to the growing expectations of
Soviet citizens for purposeful and pleasurable leisure travel, and so the re-
sponsibility for tourism passed in 1936 to the Central Trade Union Council.
This organization understood tourism as a social benefi t, expanding tourist
opportunities in the 1950s and 1960s, until the demand for destinations and
the complexity of services outstripped the trade unions’ ability to provide
them. The modern era of Soviet tourism began in 1969, with the government
decree on the “further development” of Soviet tourism: only now, wrote Abu-
kov, had tourism become an “industry,” a full-fl edged sector of the developed
socialist economy.^1
As Soviet tourism evolved from a social movement to a welfare benefi t to
an industry, its growth and transformation in the 1960s and 1970s resulted
in the narrowing of the differences between the classic spa vacation and the
modern tourist vacation. Exposure to new models of tourism abroad and
rising standards of living produced a newly discriminating consumer of va-
cation experience who now expected to combine the comfort of a health re-
sort with recreation, culture, and choice. Activists no longer needed to train
people to be tourists: the mobile, literate, and predominantly urban Soviet
individual had acquired this knowledge in the process of traveling domesti-
cally and abroad. Having privileged the self-actualizing function of tourism
since its very beginning in the 1920s, the Soviet regime could now acknowl-
edge the success of that project: the Soviet consumer’s ability to make his or
her own choices. Trade union tourism offi cials recognized that under devel-
oped socialism, their primary responsibility had shifted from promotion of
tourism as a social good to aligning the production of vacation opportunities
to correspond to the demands of their consumers. As Abukov noted in ad-
dressing his offi cials in 1969, “We need to remember that the tourist does
- Abukov, Turizm segodnia i zavtra, 16–38.