278 Chapter 7
22.7 percent asked for an “average amount” of knowledge-producing excur-
sions and minimal medical attention; 21.9 percent preferred a combination
of excursions with more physically demanding overnight trips and sports;
23.6 percent favored a vacation spent primarily at ease, with perhaps a brief
excursion every day—the classic kurort vacation. Only 4.6 percent wanted
unmediated physical hiking and sports, a holdover from the physical culture
movement that would eventually be labeled “adventure tourism.” In short,
concluded the study’s analyst, two-thirds of Soviet citizens wanted a vaca-
tion that expanded their knowledge. At the same time, most of them, even
those embracing active tourism, wanted to base their stays in comfortable
hotels.^43
Soviet tourism and vacations thus preserved their original dual mission
of purpose and pleasure. As we have seen in chapter 6, the tension between
these two goals would continue to divide tourism planners, but increasingly
they recognized that the real Soviet tourist could subscribe to any of these
variants, and even, over the course of his or her life, to all of them. The mod-
ernizing Soviet tourist enterprise sought to respond to these preferences of
mature and knowledgeable leisure-time consumers through increased invest-
ment and more rational organization. It sought to cater to the needs of indi-
vidual families in addition to facilitating group travel on trains, boats, and
buses. It expanded tourist travel abroad. And it continued to lag in its ability
to meet the demand of the Soviet consumer for leisure travel: in announcing
what would turn out to be the last fi ve-year plan in 1985, trade union secre-
tary V. I. Smirnov acknowledged that tourist facilities could satisfy only 20
percent of the demand for putevki during the peak season.^44 Abukov pledged
in 1986 to increase the scale of tourism services by 48 percent by the year
2000, but he acknowledged, not for the fi rst time and probably not the last,
that this “would take time.”^45Epilogue: The Journeys Continue
In the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the 1993 Consti-
tution of the Russian Federation affi rmed the right to rest in its article 37;
article 27 added something new, the guarantee that every citizen had the
right to travel freely within the country and abroad. Like the right to rest
itself, the semantic distinction between tourism and rest would outlast the
Soviet Union. A hiking trip in Karelia was tourism and a common experience
for Soviet student youth, but a family automobile trip to the Caspian Sea
shore was most defi nitely rest , I was told in 2001.^46 For a younger post-Soviet- L. Prilutskii, “Slagaemye otdykha,” Turist, no. 9 (1974): 19.
- Turist, no. 12 (1985): 2–3.
- A. Kh. Abukov, “Trebuet vremia,” Turist, no. 1 (1986): 1–3.
- Constitution of the Russian Federation, http://constitution.garant.ru/rf; personal
communication with E. I. Pivovar.