Soviet Vacations and the Modern World 285From the perspective of Gorbachev’s dramatic perestroika, the Brezhnev
era seemed stagnant. In fact, however, the consumer economy remained the
focus of the Soviet regime, and the years after 1968—the date linked so closely
with the repressive assault on dissidence in cultural and political life—saw
the greatest expansion of tourism and vacation facilities. A half-empty in-
terpretation might explain this expansion as part of a cynical bargain to
distract citizens from their lack of freedom through the provision of goods
and services.^7 If the glass is seen as half full, the expansion of leisure travel
opportunities represented the good life for the many and not the few, the
promise that had animated the socialist revolutionary impulse from its very
beginning.
The right to rest (including the right to travel freely in order to rest) con-
stituted only one of the vaunted benefi ts of the 1936 Soviet Constitution, and
yet the right to travel became one of the enduring memories of the late Soviet
experience. Among the informants in an oral history of Soviet high school
graduates from the class of 1967, memories of travel abroad and around the
country appear in every account, along with regret that new borders have
bounded the once-unbounded space.^8 The state regulated movement for plea-
sure, production, and punishment, but it also actively promoted mobility,
and in this process it created the autonomous citizen-subject of Lefort’s para-
dox. The accounts of generations of Soviet tourist travelers from the 1920s to
the 1980s reiterated the liberating and state-building values of travel: tourists
became better acquainted with their native land (including through compari-
son with others); they made new friendships and cemented family relations;
they recovered their physical and mental health. They had a good time. And
they learned self-reliance, to live apart from the state’s direct tutelage. This
was the state’s reward to its citizens (as long as they remained loyal to the
state), and with the development of the Soviet economy, access to leisure
travel became increasingly normal and increasingly independent of state
control.
In June 2008 the New York Times reported on the transformational effect
of pleasure travel, citing the Russian writer Viktor Yerofeyev:
“Through all this travel, we are seeing a change in mentality at home,” Mr.
Yerofeyev said. “People are now seeking pleasure, whether it is in the night
clubs of Moscow or in restaurants. Travel is a continuation of that pleasure.
Just to have pleasant lives, not to suffer, to feel positive. Their life compass
changes, from ‘I don’t care about anything’ to ‘I would like to have a better
life.’ Travel is a part of this.”^9- James R. Millar suggests the Brezhnev regime struck a “little deal” with its citizens,
permitting an illegal private market to emerge to satisfy consumer needs in exchange for
political passivity. Millar, “The Little Deal.” - Raleigh, Russia’s Sputnik Generation. While I was conducting this research, informal
conversations from archive reading rooms to dinner tables confi rmed this regret. - Clifford J. Levy, “Free and Flush: Russians Eager to Roam Abroad,” New York Times ,
15 June 2008.