Performing on the International Stage: Soviet Tourism to the Capitalist West in the Cold War

Internationalism -- the opening of the Soviet Union to the rest of the world through cultural exchange, international exhibits, and foreign tourism -- was one of the defining characteristics of the Khrushchev era. The Stalinist regime had prohibited most travel abroad, nourished ignorance about foreign countries, and permitted only domestic tourism.  Under Khrushchev, in contrast, to travel now also meant leaving home for someplace else. The majority of Soviet international tourism was to eastern Europe.  But for the first time, Soviet citizens (if carefully selected ones) were allowed to travel to the capitalist West.  They traveled as students of European history, civilization, and technology, and as consumers of leisure and material items.  But their principal function was a political one. The Soviet tourist traveled as an envoy for friendly relations between socialist East and capitalist West, a role consistent with the new policy of peaceful coexistence. Like the exhibits at the Soviet Pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair in 1958, Soviet tourists to capitalist countries were on display for curious viewers who were eager for a glimpse behind the iron curtain. Peaceful coexistence did not mean the end of competition, however, and tourism was also a means of selling Soviet strength and superiority through personal encounter and performance.  This paper explores the place of Soviet tourism to western Europe in the Soviet arsenal of ideological, technological, and cultural conversation and competition in the Cold War.