“Show All the Advantages of Socialism”: Foreign Tourism in the USSR and Soviet Management of Visitors’ Impressions

Abstract

Throughout the entire Soviet period, Intourist was supposed to not only bring foreign currency into the federal budget but also help foster a positive image of the Land of the Soviets among foreigners and popularize abroad a new social order and culture and progressive domestic and foreign policies. To this end, a specific set of presentational practices were utilized, which the political scientist Paul Hollander dubbed “hospitality techniques.” They were based on heightened attention to visitors when services were provided to them, as well as a selective presentation of reality in which the best was passed off as the typical. The Soviet authorities sought in this way to influence not merely the minds of foreign visitors by offering them reasonable explanations of the advantages of socialism but also their emotional world. There was a good reason that one Soviet document in 1971 openly acknowledged that foreign tourism was one of the channels of the ideological struggle, “whose front runs through people’s hearts and minds.” The authors of the book Through the Soviet Looking Glass [Sovetskoe zazerkal’e] also assert that an intense struggle developed during the Cold War for the inner world of every single individual (in this case, every tourist). It was not enough to see, learn about, and understand the Soviet Union—it had to be loved as well. Clearly, what was important in this case was not only to alter the world view of visitors to our country but