The Modernization of Soviet Tourism 277well. Reports of group leaders on these trips abroad paid close critical atten-
tion to this behavior. It was forbidden even to visit relatives abroad with-
out permission, but many individuals slipped away from the group to visit
relatives in the Soviet army, friends made from earlier tourist encounters, or
more casual acquaintances. Although group leaders were normally chosen
because of their impeccable Party credentials, even one of these notables
skipped a celebratory banquet in order to spend a night on the town in Bul-
garia. The more comfortable a tourist became with travel abroad, the more
likely she was to “see with her own eyes” and go off on her own, rather than
travel with a group. When criticized for this behavior, one couple on a Dan-
ube cruise retorted that they had paid for the trip with their own money, and
they would come and go as they pleased.^41 We see here the old paradox in
which travel produced the self-actualizing individual, a social good, but that
very self-confi dence then led to violation of the norms of socialist collectiv-
ism. The stakes were highest, perhaps, on trips abroad, but the tension be-
tween discipline enforced mutually by the group and discipline internalized
through social norms characterized Soviet tourist practice whether at home
or in foreign settings. On the other hand, the solo bicycle feat of Gleb Travin
received wide publicity in the 1960s, acknowledging that travel alone could
also teach self-reliance and love of the native land.^42
The overwhelming preference for and growing insistence on the provision
of facilities for family vacations refl ected this celebration of self-actualization
and independence. Independent tourists had long been encouraged to form
their own compatible groups to ensure a successful tour. As growing num-
bers of Soviet citizens gained experience and confi dence in their ability to
arrange their own mobility through the native land, they wanted to travel
with their own selected group, their family, rather than bother with bonding
with strangers. The group, with its camaraderie, its collective discipline, and
its mutual surveillance, was losing its appeal.
In practice, Soviet tourism by the 1970s had shed the ideological baggage
of its proletarian youth and now offered a continuum of opportunities to
be and to see elsewhere. A sociological study of tourists at bases in many
of the prime tourist areas in 1974 produced thirty-four variants of vacation,
according to modes of transportation, with families or without, and the pri-
mary goals of the trip. All the respondents agreed that their vacation should
connect knowledge with improving one’s health, but they disagreed on
the extent to which knowledge should be the primary focus, as had been
the case since the 1920s. Of the respondents, 26 percent favored a trip that
was primarily about knowledge, whether gleaned from museums, architec-
ture, or monuments of culture—the essential tourist vacation. By contrast,
- GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 421, ll. 20, 30; d. 597, ll. 4, 20, 84; d. 407 (group leader
reports, 1961), l. 19; d. 422 (group leader reports, 1961), l. 9; d. 893 (group leader reports,
1965), l. 112; d. 390, ll. 6–7. - Kharitonovskii, Chelovek s zheleznym olenem (1960 and 1965); Travin, “Bez skidki
na vremia.”