The export of the Soviet model of outgoing tourism: on the example of separated Germany

The specificity of Soviet outgoing tourism in the second half of the 1950s–1980s is analyzed in the essay. The mechanisms of tourist trips’ organization, peculiarities of rout policy and choices of objects of demonstration, processes of regulation of intercultural contacts are shown on the example of Soviet citizens’ visits to the socialist GDR and the capitalist FRG. The statistical data used in the essay allow to trace the dynamics of tourist relations of USSR-GDR and USSR-FRG during the examined period. Special attention is paid to the questions of memory about World War II in the tourist context, including visits of the key «places of memory» in the territory of the GDR, such as Buchenwald, Karlshorst, Seelow Heights. The participation of the Society of German–Soviet Friendship ( Gesellschaft für Deutsche-Sowjetische Freundschaft ) in the welcomng tourist groups from the USSR is described. The author shows that Eastern Germany was a very favorable place for the «export» of the Soviet model of outgoing tourism, whereas Western Germany was an uncomfortable and undesirable tourist partner for the USSR. The principle of world’s division to «our» and «stranger» spaces was characteristic for the Soviet model of tourism. An attempt to compare the official cliché of perception and veritable impressions of Soviet citizens who visited separated Germany during the «Cold War» has been also made. For example, the GDR was not only a «country of friends» and «our Germany» for them, but also a «showcase of socialism», an original «window to Europe».