Club Red : vacation travel and the Soviet dream / Diane P. Koenker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Koenker, Diane P.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tourism--Social aspects--Soviet Union--History.

Tourism.

Vacations--Social aspects--Soviet Union--History.

Vacations.

Socialism and culture--Soviet Union--History.

Socialism and culture.

Culture and tourism--Soviet Union--History.

Culture and tourism.

Soviet Union--Social life and customs.

Soviet Union.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (322 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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 1920's and '30's, 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.

Contents:

Introduction : vacations, tourism, and the paradoxes of Soviet culture

Mending the human motor

Proletarian tourism : the best form of rest

The proletarian tourist in the 1930s : seeking the good life on the road

Restoring vacations after the war

From treatment to vacation : the post-Stalin consumer regime

Post-proletarian tourism : the new Soviet person takes to the road

The modernization of Soviet tourism

Conclusion : Soviet vacations and the modern world.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-8014-6773-X

OCLC:

842209624