Soviet Tourist Traps

“Foreign tourism,” says V. M. Ankudinov, head of the new Soviet Foreign Tourist Department, “is a powerful means of strengthening peace and good neighborly relations.” The Soviet Union, he continued, offers hospitality to all who come with a “sincere desire to understand the aspirations of its people.” According to Mr. Ankudinov, 6.5 million tourists have visited Russia since visitors were first allowed in in 1956, ten years ago. Last year, one million foreigners traveled to the USSR. By 1968, the Soviet Union plans to build 70 new Intourist hotels, 40 motels, 20 eamp sites in 40 major tourist centers.

It all seems very inviting. But the casual visitor to the Soviet Union should be eternally on his guard because Big Brother is ever watching him. The KGB’s interest in foreign tourists is nothing new; it is in the tradition of exaggerated suspicion with which all Russian governments, including those of the Czars, have always regarded foreigners. One entire department of the KGB is concerned exclusively with checking on nonsatellite foreign tourists traveling in the USSR. Other KGB departments are charged with watching over other kinds of foreigners such as businessmen, diplomats, visiting delegations and journalists. The KGB’s purpose is threefold: 1) counter-espionage and the recruitment of its own agents from among foreign tourists, 2) isolating the Soviet population from “contamination” by Western “bourgeois” ideas, and 3) ensuring that foreigners see only what they are meant to see and obtain a favorable or at least positive impression of life in the Soviet Union. To these ends the KGB has developed an elaborate and extensive system of surveillance which permits it to oversee all points of contact between foreign tourists and Soviet citizens. Nationals from Soviet bloc countries greatly outnumber tourists from the West; they are also strictly supervised but more openly and without apology.

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L. M. Taubinger

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“Foreign tourism,” says V. M. Ankudinov, head of the new Soviet Foreign Tourist Department, “is a powerful means of strengthening peace and good neighborly relations.” The Soviet Union, he continued, offers hospitality to all who come with a “sincere desire to understand the aspirations of its people.” According to Mr. Ankudinov, 6.5 million tourists have visited Russia since visitors were first allowed in in 1956, ten years ago. Last year, one million foreigners traveled to the USSR. By 1968, the Soviet Union plans to build 70 new Intourist hotels, 40 motels, 20 eamp sites in 40 major tourist centers.

It all seems very inviting. But the casual visitor to the Soviet Union should be eternally on his guard because Big Brother is ever watching him. The KGB’s interest in foreign tourists is nothing new; it is in the tradition of exaggerated suspicion with which all Russian governments, including those of the Czars, have always regarded foreigners. One entire department of the KGB is concerned exclusively with checking on nonsatellite foreign tourists traveling in the USSR. Other KGB departments are charged with watching over other kinds of foreigners such as businessmen, diplomats, visiting delegations and journalists. The KGB’s purpose is threefold: 1) counter-espionage and the recruitment of its own agents from among foreign tourists, 2) isolating the Soviet population from “contamination” by Western “bourgeois” ideas, and 3) ensuring that foreigners see only what they are meant to see and obtain a favorable or at least positive impression of life in the Soviet Union. To these ends the KGB has developed an elaborate and extensive system of surveillance which permits it to oversee all points of contact between foreign tourists and Soviet citizens. Nationals from Soviet bloc countries greatly outnumber tourists from the West; they are also strictly supervised but more openly and without apology.