Proletarian Tourism 73equipment like bicycles and ski poles. Only alpinism was likely to receive
any support at all.^47
Proletarian tourism, as the mass movement of young enthusiasts envi-
sioned by its Komsomol founders, seemed to have lost its momentum by the
second half of the 1930s. The OPTE had been dissolved because it had failed
to develop tourism adequately, but the independent, active, proletarian side
of tourism continued to languish under the joint sponsorship of the trade
unions and physical culture committee. A letter from several tourists asking,
“Who answers for tourism?” appeared in the central Party newspaper Pravda
in March 1937 and triggered a plaintive debate. Under the OPTE, thirty paid
tourism consultants in the Soviet Union’s largest cities and several thousand
activists had promoted independent tourism. The TEU employed only twen-
ty consultants to help tourists, and the demise of the factory cells had left
aspiring tourists with no source of advice and training. The publication of
literature to guide independent tourists had ceased. The activist core had
disappeared, the new TEU devoted all its effort to promoting the expensive
and profi table package tours on the traditional itineraries, and the proletar-
ian mass had lost its access to independent, healthful, and self-actualizing
tourism.^48
Pravda responded by summoning leading tourism offi cials and activists to
a conference at its editorial offi ces.^49 The Central Trade Union Council agreed
to reorganize its operations in order to devote more attention to the indepen-
dent side of tourism; the Central Committee on Physical Culture and Sport
pledged to create a new section to train tourism instructors. Still the mass
of would-be independent tourists found little support: the TEU remained
“indifferent” to tourism as of 1939, and in 1940 it withdrew entirely from its
role in alpinism and handed over responsibility for this form of tourism to
the trade unions’ physical culture sections. Furthermore, it ruled that social
insurance funds would be used only to support tourism vacations on package
tours, not for independent tourism or training.^50
Tourism purists may have felt badly served by the trade union tourist ap-
paratus and ignored by the daily press, but their voices dominated the pages
of On Land and On Sea. Its issues featured inspiring accounts of individual
group trips, adventure fi ction, travel writing, descriptions of interesting itin-
eraries in far-off corners of the Soviet Union, and regular columns on tourist
- Sports organizations were created in 1936 by the All-Union Council on Physical
Culture and Sport. Fizkul'tura i sport , nos. 19–20 (1937): 6; NSNM , no. 7 (1936): 25–26; no.
1 (1939): 4; GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 8, ll. 52–53; NSNM , no. 7 (1937): 15; Trud , 12 April 1938;
26 April 1941. - Pravda , 28 March 1937; 29 March 1937; NSNM , no. 1 (1938): 4; Trud , 11 April 1937;
NSNM , no. 5 (1937): 4; NSNM , no. 12 (1937): 6; GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 69 (conference on
mass tourism, June 1948), l. 3. - The meeting at Pravda was memorable enough that it was recollected ten years later
at a conference of tourism activists. GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 69, l. 6. - NSNM , no. 5 (1937): 4; no. 1 (1939): 4; no. 5 (1940): 4, 22.