276 Chapter 7
itinerary, and offi cials and architects began to plan both its restoration and
the construction of a tourist complex that would permit its exploitation as a
major tourist attraction. In 1966, three hundred thousand tourists had visited
Suzdal', despite the utter lack of any kind of tourist infrastructure there. Now
planners and architects proposed to construct a network of motels, hotels,
and restaurants and an array of recreational facilities such as sports fi elds and
cinemas, to turn Suzdal' into a fi rst-class tourist destination, a “mecca of Rus-
sian tourism.” Ancient Russian structures would house themed restaurants
featuring bear meat stews and mead beverages, re-creating the ambience and
cuisine of old Rus. Purists objected that opening these cities to mass tourism
would destroy these unique monuments of culture. Architectural profession-
als acknowledged that people would prefer to see these great ensembles as
individuals rather than in a group, revealed to their gaze only, but the state
could not afford to engage in expensive restoration projects without the rev-
enue supplied by mass tourism. And tourists deserved comfort and entertain-
ment as well as knowledge, they insisted.^38
The consequences of mass tourism could be seen in nature as well as in
historical cities, and there were anxieties that tourism through nature was
causing ecological harm. At Lake Seliger, warned one tourist in a letter to
Literaturnaia gazeta , tourists set up their camps, tearing up all the saplings
for tent poles, and then moved on, taking their songs and memories with
them, leaving behind empty cans, broken bottles, paper, and uprooted trees.
“It must be admitted,” said a sports society offi cial in 1966, “that not all trips
and travels support the goals of Soviet tourism. There are many instances of
the wrong attitude toward nature: arson in the woods and senseless destruc-
tion of plants. There are cases when outings and trips are transformed into
picnics without purpose.” The nongovernmental Society for the Protection
of Nature gained a seat at the tourism council table in the 1960s in order to
defend environmental interests against those of the vandalizing tourists.^39
As with the campaign against vagrancy in the 1930s, tourist offi cials in
the 1960s worried that unorganized groups of wild tourists were celebrating
inappropriate values of hedonism and individualism, undermining the com-
munist project. Individuals who held themselves aloof from the group also
violated norms of Soviet tourism. These tourists had been labeled brodiagi
(tramps) in the press campaigns of the early 1930s, and the phenomenon of
vagrancy, purposeless solo traveling, or worse, picnicking, continued to draw
criticism in the 1950s and 1960s.^40 Quitting the collective on trips abroad
compounded the crime of antigroup values by creating security anxieties as- M. Orlov, “Mekka russkogo turizma,” LG, 22 February 1967, 11; Oleg Volkov, “Snova
o Suzdale. Restavratsiia ili restoratsiia?,” LG, 10 April 1968, 10; M. Orlov, “Ne pamiatniki i
‘narpit,’ a poznanie i otdykh!” and V. Vybornyi, “Izderzhki polemiki i izderzhki praktiki,”
LG, 1 May 1968, 10. - LG, 25 November 1961, 2; GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 921, ll. 123, 127 (quote); Trud, 23
May 1968. - GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 921, l. 18; d. 447, l. 122; d. 578, l. 137; Turist, no. 8 (1969): 2.