Who Were These Tourists?
What was the breakdown of foreign tourism during the Cold War? In 1968, the largest number of foreign visitors came from West Germany, followed by the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Italy and then the United States. But who were these tourists? What did they want to see?
A unique category were those that came from socialist countries: Cuba, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. A camp named Sputnik opened in 1959, welcoming over 70,000 foreigners by the end of the 1970s. What was unique about this camp was that it was only open to “ideologically fit Soviet students and the best-performing workers.” A vacation and political propaganda all in one, with “peace campfires” and “national days” included.[1]
Similar to the Sputnik initiative, another youth camp named Artek was established in 1956. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev welcomed kids from all around the world. During the Cold War, the goal was to “convert these children into peace activists of a Soviet-led world peace.” [2] The camp remains open to this day and has hosted “some 1.5 million kids from more than 150 countries” ever since.[3]
One of the themes that comes out in the literature surrounding foreign tourism at this time is the debate over naming this Cold War Tourism or Tourism in the Cold War. What were people fascinated to come visit? Many in the West were intrigued by this alternative way of living and the “Cold War and communism could indeed serve as attractions in their own right.”[4] This was a sort of window to see “what life was like on the other side.”[5]
It’s important to note that there were alternative motives to visiting these regions. A big attraction to Western tourists were the spas of Bohemia and Budapest which “had long been established destinations for health tourists from all over Europe.”[6] The appeal to these spas was in part shaped by this defining of a ‘New Soviet Man’, “holidays in the USSR were decidedly purposeful... their function was to provide rest and recuperation, so citizens could return to with renewed diligence and productivity.”[7] While these were areas for Soviets themselves, Western tourists took full advantage of the concept of the ‘sanatorium holiday.’
Different areas in the USSR had different tactics to attract Western tourists. In Bulgaria for example, “Bulgarian tourism authorities attempted to raise the number of Danish tourists by pegging travel sales to an overall policy of increasing and strengthening Bulgarian-Danish relations.”[8] In general, an overall concern in these states was how to balance the influence that these foreign travelers would have on the internal, domestic political situation - many Soviet travel authorities had to come up with original ways to make sure there wouldn’t be too much liberal interaction between them.
One of the solutions was to make sure that the tourists were guided by trained agencies. On a trip to the USSR in 1959, for example, the American author Robert Heinlein and his wife used the Intourist travel agency to travel. In describing the experience, he writes: “We were prisoners of Intourist, seeing only what they want you to see and hearing only what they want you to hear.”[9]
[1] Eleonora Goldman, “What Were Foreign Tourists Allowed to See on Trips to the Soviet Union?,” Russia Beyond, Sept 18, 2019. https://www.rbth.com/travel/330988-foreign-tourists-soviet-union
[2] Jen Pinkowski, “Why American Kids Have Been Going Away to Soviet Sleepaway Camp,” Atlas Obscura, Jan 22, 2020. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/camp-artek-soviet-russia
[3] IBID
[4] Sune Bechmann Pederson and Christian Noack, “Tourism and Travel during the Cold War: Negotiating Tourist Experiences Across the Iron Curtain,” Routledge, 2019.
[5] “Crossing the Iron Curtain: Tourism and Travelling in the Cold War,” HSOZKULT, 2017. https://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-7287
[6] IBID
[7] Maryam Omidi, “Holidays in Soviet Sanatoriums: The Weird and Wonderful Wellness Palaces of the USSR,” The Calvert Journal, Oct 13, 2017. https://www.calvertjournal.com/features/show/9100/holidays-in-soviet-sanatoriums-ussr-tourism-photography
[8] “Crossing the Iron Curtain: Tourism and Travelling in the Cold War,” HSOZKULT, 2017. https://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-7287
[9] Eleonora Goldman, “What Were Foreign Tourists Allowed to See on Trips to the Soviet Union?,” Russia Beyond, Sept 18, 2019. https://www.rbth.com/travel/330988-foreign-tourists-soviet-union