Adelina Ştefan (University of Ostrava, the Czech Republic) presents a study of East-West Commodity Exchanges on the Romanian Black Sea Coast. The presentation traces the material transfers between the Western and socialist worlds, which were guided by maritime tourism. The study shows how foreigners' travels to Romania facilitated official and unofficial exchanges. Adelina Ştefan analyzes the contradiction between the task of attracting foreign currency and the temptation of “conspicuous” consumption.

Alexey Kotelvas (University of Florida) explores the utilization of Soviet maritime tourism in the field of propaganda. The presentation shows the complex reasons why international sea cruises became an iconic form of Soviet outbound tourism.

Igor Tchoukarine (University of Minnesota) analyzes socialist tourism in a broader dialogue with Western partners. The author shows that the models of socialist and liberal internationalism competed with each other in public discourse. Both concepts, along with the so-called technocratic internationalism, contributed to the post-war infrastructure of international tourism.

All three papers allow talking about tension between the economical reason and ideology, necessity of transnational interactions and security, which addressing us to the previous historiographical debates on international encounters of socialist countries, their gradual transformation in the post-war period.

Rachel Applebaum, Tufts University, a researcher on transnational socialist history, will comment on the presentations. The chair of the panel is Erik R. Scott – the professor at the University of Kansas, the director at Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies, the editor of the Russian Review, well known for a number of publications on transnational and boarder history.