Tourism was originally seen in the Soviet Union primarily as a means of educating their own people, and regarding the foreigners, as a possible means of making propaganda for the Soviet Union. Before the Second World War, only a minor number of foreign tourists arrived in the country yearly. Usually the tourists from the Western countries represented the media, or were members of various delegations (trade unions, friendship groups, ertc.). In the 1930's cruising ships brought yearly a few thousands of Westerners to visit the country.
Post World War Two period witnessed certain important changes. Tourism rates grew rapidly in the West, even ten of millions of international travellers crossed the borders each year. It was also realised in the Soviet Union that they could profit financially of tourism, as well as to use it for propaganda purposes. Active planning of tourism was began as well as the buildings of hotels, resorts ans transportation system. In the mid-seventies some 4 million travellers from the Eastern block visited the country yearly, while only a few hundreds of thousands from the West. Among the most frequent visitors from the West were the tourists from Finland, a neighbouring country close to the former capital St.Petersburg.
In this presentation, notices, remarks, complaints and other information will be presented from the Western sources regarding the Soviet tourist industry. Information will be taken from the personal memoirs and travel descriptions by the tourists, articles in the periodicals as well as travel and guide books. Of great interest is the materials collected in Finland in the early 1980's : more than one hundred individuals personally recollected their trips to the Soviet Union in the 1950's to 1970's. Those memoirs were compiled by the so-called ordinary (mass) tourists of the charted bus tours to the Soviet Union, guided by the Intourist. It was an organisation created in the Soviet Union already in the 1920's to take care of foreign tourism to the Soviet Union.
While seen through the eyes of the ordinary tourists we find out that the tourist industry appeared to be very much routine -like. The Intourist tried to guide and control the visitors. It was thus a common rule that the trip followed certain regular routes and visits were made to the Leningrad targets such the Hermitage, Peterhof, monuments of the war victims, Lenin's statues. It was also customary that the Soviet guides arranged theater, opera, ballet, circus, restaurant, variete and other visits for the evenings. Therefore, actually not much time was left for non-guided programs. And it seems that most of the tourists really followed the daily program.
There was even control visible. Especially arrival to and leaving from the country with Soviet rigid customs and regulations systems was often commented - check of passports, visas, foreign currency and writing of blankets. Control was carried out in other forms also : the guides were schooled to follow certain routes, they knew the prohibited and allowed routes. It is also known thaht the guides were supposed to write reports on the tourist groups and their behaviour.
But, was il all routine like ? For a travel organiser such as Intourist and its workers, the guiding of the tourists was certainly routine trip. But for a tourist from the West, it certainly was not. A well known travel writer named Göran Schildt described in 1953 that going to the Soviet Union was like going to the planet Mars, a strange new Socialist society. Even for a common tourist everything was strange and new. A number of tourists with ideological sympathies (or with political purposes) expected to see only nice things, while a part of the common tourists were very critical, and a part of them were quite nonchalant - it was just a trip to another country. A part of the tourists were more interested in alcohol or night life.Thus, the travellers to the Soviet Union included many types of personalities. By and large the Intourist served the great majority of common (mass) tourists. However, it was also able to make various travel plans and programs for those who were not among the ordinary tourists. Those trips appear to be even more planned for serving the Soviet propagandistic aims.