Council for the Labor and Defense of the USSR adopted the decree “On the organization of the All-Union Joint-Stock Company for Foreign Tourism in the USSR.” Otherwise known as In-tourist (an acronym of Gosudarstvennoe aksion-ernoe obshchestvo po innostrannomu turizmu v SSSR and an abbreviated form of Inostrannyi tur-ist), the company was supported by a number of Soviet organizations such as the People’s Commissariat of Trade, Sovtorgflot, the People’s Commissariat of Rail Transport, and the All-Union Joint-Stock Company Otel’. A. S. Svanidze was its first chairman. Though Intourist was occasionally responsible for organizing the visits of more
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
prominent foreigners such as Bernard Shaw and Theodore Dreiser, in its initial years it played host primarily to international labor delegations as part of the movement to acquire foreign technical assistance. Only in the post-World War II period did Intourist experience rapid growth and an expansion of its services. This was the result, first, of the general postwar spirit of internationalism and faith in international organizations and, second, of the new friendships between the Soviet Union and the socialist countries of Eastern Europe. Intourist became a member of numerous national and international bodies such as the World Tourism Organization and participated in various conferences on tourism such as those hosted by the United Nations. More importantly, however, was the creation of a unified commercial organization for international tourism and satellite travel bureaus in each of the socialist Eastern Europe nations. This network facilitated exchanges among worker delegations, students, theater troupes, trade unions, kolkhozes, and other social groups. It was also during this time that Intourist constructed the basic infrastructure of hotels, autoparks, and restaurants used by foreign visitors until 1989, when the organization was withdrawn from the control of the central state apparatus and restructured as an independent enterprise.
Intourist’s operations raise numerous questions about the meaning of leisure and privilege in a socialist society. Its advertisements and exhibit materials throughout the Soviet period spur consideration of the various messages the state promoted about itself to the outside world. And its list of itineraries that, at one point, covered 150 cities of the Union republics-with cruises along the Dniepr from Kiev to Kherson, along the Black Sea to Odessa, along the Dunau to Rus in Bulgaria or to Dzurduz in Romania-give credence to the geopolitical power of the entity that was the Soviet Union.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Margulies, S. (1968). The Pilgrimage to Russia: the Soviet Union and the Treatment of Foreigners, 1924- 1937. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Ostrovskii, I., and Pavlenko, M. (1998). Intourist 1929-1999. VAO Inturist. State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) Fond 9612, opis 1, delo 2 and 123; opis 3, delo 557.
Three-fourths of Russia is more than 250 miles (400 kilometers) away from seas and oceans; Russia is the world’s most continental country. Even though Russia’s coastline is the second longest (after Canada), the presence of sea ice hampers traffic in and out of the country’s few ports during much of the winter. Murmansk, for example, Russia’s only warm-water port, is plagued by shorefast ice for two months out of the year. These and other factors hampered the development of a Russian navy until the eighteenth century, when Peter the Great built St. Petersburg, his famed “Window on the West.” Accordingly, Russian historic trade routes have been negotiated largely within its vast interior.
EARLY ROUTES
Commerce in the Black Sea Basin may be traced to intercourse between the Scythians and Greeks circa 250 B.C.E. Scythian nomads extracted grain, fish, and slaves from their sedentary subjects and traded them in the Greek ports for wine, cloth, metalware, and luxury items. Before the Hun invasion (375 C.E.), Persian Alans and Germanic Goths established a commercial confederation between the Baltic and Black Seas.
International trade in Eastern Europe after 850 C.E. literally created Kievan Rus. Using the interlocking system of rivers and portages on the Russian plain, Varangian (Viking) traders and soldiers sought the markets of the lower Volga and Don rivers, where they traded fur, slaves, and wood items for silver coins and spices from Central Asia, Arabia, and Byzantium. Originally traversing the Saracen Route between the Gulf of Finland, Lakes Ladoga and Onega, down the Volga River to the Caspian Sea and beyond, the Vikings eventually preferred trade with Byzantium, which was in its heyday. After the founding of Kievan Rus in 879, the Dnieper (Dnipro) trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks carried flax, hemp, hides, slaves, honey, wax, grain, and furs from the north in exchange for silks, naval equipment, wine, jewelry, glassware, and art items (particularly icons after the introduction of Orthodox Christianity in 988).
The collapse of the Khazar Empire (600-900 C.E.) opened the steppes to menacing Kypchak Turks, who eventually cut off Kievan Rus from the all-important salt deposits (virtually the only food preservative) of the Crimea; thus, the major trade routes shifted from a north-south orientation to
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
1563
east-west paths. Beginning in the eleventh century, salt was hauled from Halych in Galicia-Volhynia to Kiev. Later, the importance of the salt of Galicia-Volhynia to not only the Kievan Rus, but also the Teutonic Knights of the Baltic coast, brought a reemphasis of the north-south Baltic-Black Sea trade west of the Crimea. Galicia-Volhynia’s power and influence, based on the salt trade, lasted well into the second century of Mongol-Tatar domination of the rest of Russia (1237-1387).
The Mongol Yoke (1237-1556) isolated the Russians from the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the High Gothic period, among other major changes in the West. Because they survived on tribute paid by their Russian subjects and the customs duties paid by those involved in international trade, the Mongols permitted merchants the use of the north-south trade routes, this time between the Baltic, Novgorod, and Muscovy (in the north) and the Arabic Middle East and the Black Sea (in the south). They even encouraged the revival of the Crimean ports, which were then under the leadership of Italian merchants from Venice, Pisa, and Genoa; cities with Greek names then became Italian.
POST-MONGOL TRADE
Ivan the Terrible’s defeat of the Astrakhan Tatars in 1556 largely sealed the fate of the former Golden [or Kypchak] Horde. The Volga trade route was now in Muscovy possession all the way to Central Asia, from which the tsar could import horses, which would serve in his Swedish campaigns. Ivan also sought trade with Great Britain: in the second half of the sixteenth century, he established commerce between the White Sea port of Arkhangelsk (logs and lumber) and Hull in eastern England (finished products).
An unlikely servant of Tsar Ivan was a cossack named Yermak, who raided the Volga riverboats laden with horses from Central Asia. Yermak and his minions would later defeat the Siberian Tatars and claim Western Siberia in the name of the tsar in the 1580s. This event opened Siberia and the Russian Far East to Russian expansion and trade.
First using the river and portage method, cos-sacks and merchants traversed Siberia from west to east, reaching the Pacific coast within a century. Along the way, they traded trinkets to the natives for valuable furs. The Russian quest for fur led them to Alaska, down the North American Pacific coast to San Francisco (Fort Ross), and even to Hawaii. Later, coach transportation was used on the bone-jarring Great Siberian Tract. Between 1891 and 1916, Russian laborers built the Trans-Siberian Railway, which is still the only transcontinental thoroughfare in the country. Between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, a trade route flourished between Russia and China at the border crossing of Kyakhta. Chinese tea, silks, furs, and luxuries were imported in exchange for Russian raw materials.
SOVIET TRADE POLICY
For much of the period that it existed, the Soviet Union was an island that strove for self-sufficiency while remaining insulated from the rest of the world. Like that of imperial Russia, Soviet foreign trade was limited in total
