60 Chapter 2
Who Speaks for Tourism? The Bureaucratic Battle for the Franchise
While the Society for Proletarian Tourism developed its identity as a spon-
sor of low-cost, widely accessible small-group travel, the Commissariat of En-
lightenment, already involved in the tourist business, decided it too should
address the cultural revolution and the growing awareness of tourism’s social
benefi ts. In reaction to the Komsomol tourism campaign, the Commissariat of
Enlightenment in 1927 created its own joint stock company, Sovetskii Turist,
to organize excursions with educational character and to promote “the most
rational rest of toilers.”^19 It claimed the right to establish itineraries inside
and outside Russia, to organize transportation and tourist bases, and to ser-
vice both group and individual tourism, foreign and domestic. Shareholders
in Sovetskii Turist (known by its short form, Sovtur) included various state
agencies, of which the Commissariat of Health was a major player, pledging
to turn over to Sovtur some of its properties in the Mineral Waters resort for
conversion to tourist bases. The potentially lucrative foreign market attracted
not only the Commissariat of Enlightenment and its business offshoot Sovtur.
Various transportation agencies also competed to serve foreign tourists in the
1920s, and in April 1929 a second joint stock company was formed, this one
devoted to foreign tourism: the company for Inostrannyi Turizm, or Intur-
ist.^20 Thus by early 1929, at the start of the fi rst fi ve-year plan for industry,
three organizations were competing for state resources to provide domestic
and international tourism opportunities: the Society for Proletarian Tourism,
Sovetskii Turist, and Inturist.
Sovetskii Turist took seriously its “Soviet” label. As its chairman I. Egorov
explained in a 1929 article, “excursions and tourism without a goal should
not exist in the Soviet land.” Soviet tourists sought to strengthen their health
and marvel at the beauties of nature, but all tourists wished also to learn more
about the conditions and life of the many peoples with whom they shared this
country. The money these tourists spent could provide needed capital for the
local regions through which they traveled (a development strategy that remains
canonical to this day everywhere in the world). Sovtur’s most famous route,
along the Georgian Military Highway from Vladikavkaz to the Georgian capi-
tal Tbilisi, emphasized all the qualities of purposeful, knowledge-building, and
nation-building socialist travel. Tourists on this itinerary number 15 would en-
counter the complex ethnic makeup of the region, learn about its cultural and
economic life, and thrill to awe-inspiring views of snow-covered peaks, alpine- KP , 29 November 1927, discusses the role of the People’s Commissariat of Trade
(Narkomtorg) and other agencies in this endeavor. The fi rm was offi cially chartered on 10
October 1928. - GARF, f. A-2306, op. 69, d. 2070 (Sovetskii Turist correspondence, March 1929–Feb-
ruary 1930), ll. 11, 11ob., 7. On Inturist, see Matthias Heeke, Reisen zu den Sowjets: Der
auslandische Tourismus in Russland 1921–1941 (Münster, Ger., 2003), 31–50; and Shawn
Connelly Salmon, “To the Land of the Future: a History of Intourist and Travel to the Soviet
Union, 1929–1991” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2008).