The Modernization of Soviet Tourism 279generation, however, a new standard of vacationing had begun to emerge, one
that emphasized service, comfort, and pleasure. Just as Western Europeans
had colonized the beaches of the Mediterranean from the 1960s, post-Soviet
tourists in the 2000s fl ocked to new resort complexes abroad, particularly
on the Mediterranean coasts of Turkey and Crete. A 2005 television serial,
Tourists , conveyed the new synthesis of tourism and rest and offered viewers
a reminder of the difference between Soviet and post-Soviet leisure travel.^47
The tourists in the serial have purchased a commercial twelve-day package
tour to a modern and spacious Turkish hotel, offering multiple swimming
pools, tennis courts, exercise equipment, sand beach, unlimited food and
drink, and optional excursions. A quarreling wife, labeled by other tourists as
a sovok , a pejorative term for someone with a Soviet mentality, is constantly
complaining about high prices and bad service. Because of her intervention,
their expensive excursion to a fairytale castle is replaced with a cheaper bus
trip to a “fairytale” souvenir district. An aging celebrity actor, hired to make
a promotional fi lm for the hotel, becomes fed up with the conditions there
and with the bothersome tourists who spoil his fashionable Western polo
shirt with their autograph pens. Dressed in a plain replacement T-shirt, he
explodes on camera, “This hotel is a madhouse and I can’t stand it anymore!”
His tirade becomes part of the new promotional fi lm, which starts with the
tantrum, followed by a seductive female voice-over, “If you don’t want to va-
cation like this [i.e., in Russia], come to Turkey.” The fi lm then cuts to an ear-
lier take in which the actor, in his pristine polo, smarmily extols the features
of the hotel. Other attributes of the classic Soviet spa vacation remain the
same: the adults spend their time drinking and looking for sexual conquests,
and the son of a divorced father keeps witnessing “things that shouldn’t be
seen by children”; he is defi nitely interfering with his father’s good time.
A Turkish massovik, oozing with false bonhomie, organizes excursions and
evening programs straight out of 365 Games and Leisure Hours , including
a “battle of the sexes” and a contest for the best costumed Mister and Miss
Hotel. And at least some of the guests prepare to return to Moscow rested and
ready to resume their working lives. Medicine, however, has disappeared
from the vacation regime. The only doctors at the hotel are two plastic sur-
geons from a private clinic in Moscow who are among the tour’s vacationers.
In the new Russia, physicians consume leisure opportunities; they do not
produce them.
- Turisty, twelve-part serial, dir. Aleksandr Zamiatin, Ren TV, 2005. A sequel aired in