Club Red

P. Koenker Diane

Description

The Bolsheviks took power in Russia 1917 armed with an ideology centered on the power of the worker. From the beginning, however, Soviet leaders also realized the need for rest and leisure within the new proletarian society and over subsequent decades struggled to reconcile the concept of leisure with the doctrine of communism, addressing such fundamental concerns as what the purpose of leisure should be in a workers' state and how socialist vacations should differ from those enjoyed by the capitalist bourgeoisie.In Club Red, Diane P. Koenker offers a sweeping and insightful history of Soviet vacationing and tourism from the Revolution through perestroika. She shows that from the outset, the regime insisted that the value of tourism and vacation time was strictly utilitarian. Throughout the 1920s and '30s, the emphasis was on providing the workers access to the "repair shops" of the nation's sanatoria or to the invigorating journeys by foot, bicycle, skis, or horseback that were the stuff of "proletarian tourism." Both the sedentary vacation and tourism were part of the regime's effort to transform the poor and often illiterate citizenry into new Soviet men and women.Koenker emphasizes a distinctive blend of purpose and pleasure in Soviet vacation policy and practice and explores a fundamental paradox: a state committed to the idea of the collective found itself promoting a vacation policy that increasingly encouraged and then had to respond to individual autonomy and selfhood. The history of Soviet tourism and vacations tells a story of freely chosen mobility that was enabled and subsidized by the state. While Koenker focuses primarily on Soviet domestic vacation travel, she also notes the decisive impact of travel abroad (mostly to other socialist countries), which shaped new worldviews, created new consumer desires, and transformed Soviet vacation practices.

Sujets

• Former Soviet Union
• Histoire
• Post-Soviet states
• Travel writing
• Tourism
• Russia
• History of Europe
• Russie

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 24 avril 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801467738
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

ClubRed

ClubRed

VacationTravelandthe Soviet Dream

D I A N E P. K O E N K E R

CornellUniversityPress Ithaca and London

Copyright©2013byCornellUniversity

Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsinareview,thisbook,orpartsthereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

Firstpublished2013byCornellUniversityPress PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica

LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData

Koenker,Diane,1947–author. Club Red: vacation travel and the Soviet dream / Diane P. Koenker. cm pages Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-5153-9 (cloth: alk. paper)  1. Tourism—Social aspects—Soviet Union—History. 2. Vacations—Social aspects—Soviet Union—History. 3. Socialism and culture—Soviet Union— History. 4. Culture and tourism—Soviet Union—History. 5. Soviet Union— Social life and customs. I. Title. G155.R8K78 2013 914.704'84—dc23 2012045247

CornellUniversityPressstrivestouseenvironmentallyresponsiblesuppliersand materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Clothprinting

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ForHannah,Joshua,andEleanor

Contents

Acknowledgmentsix List of Abbreviationsxi

Introduction: Vacations, Tourism, and the Paradoxes of Soviet Culture1 1. Mending the Human Motor12 2. Proletarian Tourism: The Best Form of Rest53 3. The Proletarian Tourist in the 1930s: Seeking the Good Life on the Road89 4. Restoring Vacations after the War128  5. From Treatment to Vacation: The Post-Stalin Consumer Regime167 6. Post-proletarian Tourism: The New Soviet Person Takes to the Road210 7. The Modernization of Soviet Tourism262  Conclusion: Soviet Vacations and the Modern World280

Bibliography287 Index299

Acknowledgments

I take great pleasure in recognizing the support and help I have re- ceived in preparing this book. The University of Illinois has assisted my work in many ways, including grants from the Research Board and a Mellon Faculty Fellowship. The staff of the Slavic Library and Reference Service at the University of Illinois and particularly Helen Sullivan have located and acquired crucial materials and have been an essential source of assistance throughout this project. I am also grateful for support for research travel and writing time from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the International Research and Exchanges Board, the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, and the U.S. State Department Title VIII program, which underwrites many of these agencies and services. It is a privilege to acknowledge the support from the staffs of archives and libraries who assisted me: the State Archive of the Russian Federation, Central State Archive of Moscow Oblast, Russian State Archive of Cinema and Photo Documents, the Komsomol archive of the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, the Central Archive of the City of Moscow, the Central Archive of Saint Petersburg, the State Archive of the City of Sochi, the Russian State Library in Moscow, the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, the British Library, and the library of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. I thank the Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History for permission to republish some material that appeared initially as “Whose Right to Rest? Contesting the Family Vacation in the Postwar Soviet Union,”Comparative Studies in Society and History51, no. 2 (April 2009), 401–425. ExpertresearchassistancecamefromChristineVarga-Harris,RandallDills, Erica Fraser, Maria Cristina Galmarini, and Lyudmila Kuznetsova. I have ben- efited from discussions and comments by audiences in London, Sheffield, Bielefeld, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, but I particularly wish to thank the par- ticipants of the Russkii Kruzhok and the History Workshop reading groups at the University of Illinois and especially my colleagues Mark Steinberg, John Randolph, Valeria Sobol, Lilya Kaganovsky, and Harriet Murav. Christian Noack, Eva Maurer, and Julian Graffy have generously shared insights and sources. Lewis Siegelbaum, a fellow traveler on our journey through Soviet