284 Conclusion
exercise of where and how to travel, through the knowledge of the world
gained through travel, and through the knowledge of self that the experi-
ence of travel provided. We have seen that Soviet women in particular took
advantage of these opportunities, a quest for liberation that is often obscured
by the attention rightly paid to the double burden of women under socialism.
If the history of vacations reveals the failures of the planned economy as a
system of economic growth, it also reveals that the system was adaptable and
possessed the potential for change. The regime consciously chose to model
Soviet health spas on an aristocratic standard of grand scale and luxury: the
Soviet proletariat should inhabit palaces, not townhouses. The regime re-
sorted to a succession of administrative solutions in its effort to provide mass
access to leisure travel. When the voluntary Society for Proletarian Tourism
and Excursions failed to meet the goals of tourists and the state, the responsi-
bility for tourism passed to the trade unions, which possessed greater author-
ity to mobilize resources. In addition, in 1960, the administration of health
spas moved from the Ministry of Health, with its narrow focus on medicine,
to the trade unions, again because of their superior organizational capabili-
ties but also because they represented a broader segment of social interests.
If offi cials were slow to recognize the power of demand for family vacations,
the system itself provided the opportunity to assess this demand and try to
implement changes. But it also created the conditions for bottlenecks that
made change very slow.
The periodization of Soviet history conventionally distinguishes the Sta-
lin era from the years that followed and, more controversially, counterposes
Khrushchev’s liberalization to the economic stagnation and political repres-
sion that came to characterize the years under Brezhnev from the mid-1960s
to the mid-1980s. The history of Soviet tourism and vacations possesses its
own trajectory, which tends to soften some of the rigid boundaries between
eras. Tourism and health vacations began in the 1920s with a largely purpose-
ful, medical, and state-oriented agenda, but by the mid-1930s the consumers
of these journeys had transformed leisure travel into an experience empha-
sizing individual pleasure, comfort, knowledge, and even escape. Neither
the war nor the death of Stalin signifi cantly altered these overall objectives.
The inability of the economy to mobilize the resources necessary to expand the
opportunities for leisure travel posed a far greater constraint. A signifi cant
turning point came in 1955 with the opening of tourist travel abroad. This
decision too represented a confl uence of state and individual interests. Al-
lowing Soviets to travel abroad signifi ed a vote of confi dence by the state in
the ability of selected tourists to benefi t from the exposure to other cultures,
a wager that the comparisons would not become destabilizing. The contin-
ued development of the Soviet system depended on knowledge, including
knowledge of the world. Purposeful factory-to-factory exchanges were part of
this, but so was the way in which foreign travel helped tourists learn how to
learn. Increasingly from the mid-1950s the interests of Soviet citizens as con-
sumers came to be represented as the regime’s raison d’être, a goal confi rmed
in the 1961 Communist Party program.