Tourist and excursion activities in the Nizhny Novgorod Region in 1918-1941.

Ryabova Ol'ga Vyacheslavovna ORCID: 0000-0001-9017-0983 PhD in History Associate Professor; Department of Service and Tourism; National Research Nizhny Novgorod State University named after N.I. Lobachevsky 603022, Russia, Nizhny Novgorod region, Nizhny Novgorod, Lenin, 27 orabova034@gmail.com Other publications by this author     Shimin Nikolai Andreevich PhD in Economics Associate Professor; Department of Service and Tourism; N.I. Lobachevsky National Research Nizhny Novgorod State University 603022, Russia, Nizhny Novgorod region, Nizhny Novgorod, Lenin str., 27, room 111 shimin@iee.unn.ru

Baranova Natal'ya Aleksandrovna PhD in Politics Associate Professor; Department of Service and Tourism; Lobachevsky National Research Nizhny Novgorod State University 603022, Russia, Nizhny Novgorod region, Nizhny Novgorod, Lenin str., 27, room 111 baranova@iee.unn.ru

Tourism today is an integral part of modern culture and everyday life, one of the indispensable elements of a real global civilization, one of the forms of active leisure activities, activities to restore physical and spiritual human strength. The meaning of tourism should probably be sought in the need and desire for movement, travel and knowledge. It should be noted that in the last century, the concepts of "tourism" and "excursion" were used in a different meaning than today. The word "tourist" implied an idle traveler traveling for recreation, not pursuing educational or research purposes. For example, tourists were called citizens trying to escape from the heat by traveling on Volga steamships ^[1]. Excursions could be called country trips (similar to modern picnics), river trips ^[2], and mountain climbing organized by the mountain club ^[3].

In the Russian Empire, before the revolution of 1917, a number of specialized magazines on sightseeing were published – "Excursion Bulletin. Russian Russians and Abroad" in Moscow, "The Russian tourist" in Yaroslavl, "School trips and the School Museum" in Bendery, Bessarabia province and "The Russian Tourist" in St. Petersburg. The target audience of the magazines "Russian tourist", "Excursion bulletin. Walking in Russia and abroad" and "School excursions and the school Museum" were teachers who organized school excursions. The Russian Tourist magazine was dedicated to the development of cycling and other types of active tourism and focused primarily on sports enthusiasts and independent travelers.

V. V. Bitner's book "The Tourist's Companion" was very popular among the leaders of the excursion groups, which was a guide to the collection of natural science collections, observation of nature, study of historical and archaeological monuments, paleographic documents. It was also possible to learn the basics of organizing sightseeing trips in the book ^[4].

With the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, the tasks facing the organizers of tourist and excursion work have changed. Tourist and excursion work is now ideological in nature and is perceived as a method of education and upbringing of young people in the direction necessary for the country's leadership. As an example, the works of N. A. Gainike ^[5], I. Egorov ^[6], V. P. Antonov-Saratovsky ^[7], L. M. Gurvich ^[8], Z. Bykov and N. P. Zimin ^[9], P. V. Lutenskov ^[10] can be cited. Since the 1920s, a series of pamphlets called the "Library of the Proletarian Tourist" began to be published, and travel guides were issued.

Nizhny Novgorod (since 1932 – the city of Gorky) did not stay away from this process. Even in the pre-revolutionary period, Nizhny Novgorod became one of the centers for organizing tourist and excursion activities, as it possessed unique objects of historical, architectural and artistic significance at the national level, such as the Kremlin, Kuzma Minin's tomb, Nizhny Novgorod Fair, temples of the city, famous Nizhny Novgorod factories - Sormovsky and Kurbatov) ^[11]. In addition Nizhny Novgorod had enough collective accommodation facilities to receive tour groups from other cities. But during the difficult years of the revolution and the civil war that followed, tourist and excursion activities, for obvious reasons, practically ceased. After the end of the civil war and the beginning of economic recovery, interest in tourist and sightseeing activities is revived. Soviet publicist A. Svobodov in the book "Literary and cultural excursions in Nizhny Novgorod (routes, themes and literature)" gives a detailed description and recommendations for conducting city excursions ^[12]. Nizhny Novgorod researchers in 1927 prepared a collection "Nizhny Novgorod on excursions", which also provided a list of sightseeing routes around the city and the region, and gave organizational instructions on the operation of the objects of the excursion display ^[13].

The article by A. P. Anchikov and A.V. Naumov "From the history of children's and youth local lore and tourism in Nizhny Novgorod" examines the process of organizing an excursion station in Nizhny Novgorod in the 1930s, which became one of the first in the country ^[14].

But in general, it should be noted that tourist and excursion activities in the Nizhny Novgorod Region in the 1918-1941's were poorly studied. There are significant gaps that can only be filled by careful work with the funds of regional archives. The materials presented in this article make it possible to involve in scientific circulation the data of the State Socio-Political Archive of the Nizhny Novgorod region (hereinafter – GOP NO) and the Central Archive of the Nizhny Novgorod Region (hereinafter – TSANO).

At the end of 1917, tourist and excursion activities in the Nizhny Novgorod province almost completely ceased. This was primarily due to the events of the October revolution. The nationalization and municipalization of real estate, carried out by the Bolsheviks since the summer of 1918, leads to the fact that in Nizhny Novgorod a significant part of the hotel industry is out of circulation. In addition, since August 8, 1918, a pass regime has been introduced to enter the territory of Nizhny Novgorod. All this leads to the fact that the owners of the remaining hotel enterprises simply begin to close their businesses. This reaches such a scale that the Trade Union of employees of the Nizhny Novgorod tavern industry in its charter of 1918 puts forward a requirement to the owners of hotel and tavern enterprises not to allow closure without a valid reason ^[15]. It was decided to organize "working control over all types of dormitories through local working committees and the introduction of their representatives into the bodies in charge of dormitories and hotels and managing them" ^[16]. But these measures did not help much in the development of hotel enterprises. The revival of the tourist and excursion business occurs only with the beginning of the implementation of the New Economic Policy (NEP).

From the first years of Soviet power, almost all issues related to the organization of travel, tourist trips or excursions around the country were resolved in the public education authorities. Back in 1918, at the suggestion of N. K. Krupskaya, the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR organized the Central Bureau of School Excursions. In 1919, excursion sections were created at the Department of the Unified Labor School of the People's Commissariat of Education, the main task of which was to organize excursions in schools. At the same time, courses for the training of guides were opened, where lectures were given by prominent scientists of that period, for example, the director of the Hermitage, S. N. Troynitsky ^[17].

In 1921, the Central Bureau of School Excursions in Moscow was reorganized into the experimental and demonstration excursion base of the People's Commissariat of Education (OPEB). In Nizhny Novgorod, the Excursion base of the Cultural and Educational Department at the Nizhny Novgorod City Council is responsible for this area of activity ^[18].

One of the first excursions conducted by the Excursion Base took place in the summer of 1922 along the Nizhny Novgorod – Pavlovo route. The tourists were members of the Youth Union and workers of Nizhny Novgorod factories. The purpose of the excursion was to get acquainted with the modern geological phenomena of the Nizhny Novgorod province, as well as with the past of the earth's crust ^[18].

Quite quickly, the central authorities of the country began to introduce ideology into the excursion and tourist movement, primarily aimed at promoting the tasks and achievements of the Soviet state ^[19].

In the summer of 1923, the All-Russian Agricultural and Handicraft Industrial Exhibition was held in Moscow, the purpose of which was to show the achievements of agriculture and ensure the "link between the city and the countryside." The Nizhny Novgorod Excursion Base organizes a trip of a delegation of workers and peasants of the province to Moscow. During the organization and conduct of the trip, the Excursion base faced a number of problems. The trip was free for the tourists themselves. The Nizhny Novgorod Gubkom was able to find the necessary funds only after organizing and holding "evenings, performances and paid lectures with deductions in favor of excursions" ^{[20, p.6]}. The Bureau for Organizing and sending tourists at the Nizhny Novgorod City Council was formed. In the building of the former Theological Seminary (the building was located on Minin and Pozharsky Square, where one of the buildings of the Nizhny Novgorod Pedagogical University is located today), tourists underwent a sanitary and medical examination and, if necessary, visited the bathhouse ^{[20, p.70]}. Then they were registered at the Tour Desk on duty, where they received a loan of 500 rubles and a referral to an apartment. The return trip from Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod was also free. But the travel conditions were extremely poor. So, the sanvrach and the head of the department of the Nizhny Novgorod Tourist Committee noted that "for the boarding of tourists at the Moscow Exhibition, the wagons turned out to be commercial without any equipment, there are not even boards" ^{[20, p.43]}. But in general, the excursion to the exhibition was successful. According to eyewitnesses, the tourists received not only free accommodation and meals in Moscow, but also the opportunity to visit "local enterprises that manufacture agricultural equipment and process agricultural products." Additional excursions were also organized "to model state farms-collective farms and cooperatives" ^{[20, p.6]}.

The experience of holding such events was recognized as successful. The instructions of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union of 1925 on the organization of mass union excursions indicate that "the excursion method is the best weapon of political education and communist education of the broad masses of workers" ^{[21, pp.13-14]}.

In 1925, Glavpolitprovet developed several options for excursions to the political and industrial centers of the USSR. The most popular were long-distance excursions for workers to Moscow and Leningrad. The ticket price included accommodation, 3 meals a day, excursions, visits to theaters and museums. The fee for the tour was set at 2 rubles. 50 kopecks per person per day. At the same time, trade union members received railway tickets with a 50% discount ^{[21, pp.13-14]}.

The state did not forget to take care of the restoration of the health of the citizens of the USSR. Glavpolitprovet develops excursions "to workers' health repair shops in the Crimea and the Caucasus" ^{[21, p.15]}. The cost of a 16-day trip to the Caucasus was 51 rubles. 36 kopecks. At the same time, the tourist received a round-trip railway transfer, overnight accommodation in equipped rooms and 3 meals a day. Medical services were paid additionally ^{[21, p.16]}.

For all its positive aspects, long-distance excursions do not receive proper development. The main obstacle to this was their high cost. Only the Experimental and Demonstration Excursion Base and the United Excursion Bureau of the NKP of the RSFSR had preferential railway coupons, so there were not enough of them for all willing trade union members ^{[22, p.1]}.

In 1926, only 15 thousand local excursions were conducted in the country. Therefore, the local authorities were tasked with urgently developing this type of tourist and excursion activity, in order to "monopolize all possible excursion work in the province in the sense of the planned direction of tourists to factories, factories, museums, etc., in order to promote Soviet construction" ^[23].

In 1926, the Nizhny Novgorod Provincial Excursion Base developed three types of thematic excursions around the province. The first type was industrial, which provided excursions to factories and factories, such as the Krasnoe Sormovo plant, the Telephone Plant named after Lenin", Krasnaya Etna plant, Balakhninskaya power plant, Rastyapinsky Chemical Plant, etc.

The second type is socio–political excursions with a tour of museums such as the Museum of Historical, Household and Revolution (the former house of merchant Rukavishnikov), the Art Museum (the former house of merchant Sirotkin), the House of Defense (on Sverdlov Street).

The third type is excursions of natural history and science. The following stops were offered for inspection here: the Natural History Museum, the Venereological and Bacteriological station, the Meteorological station, the Radio station, the Telephone station, the Biological and Local History offices of the Pedagogical Faculty of the NSU, etc. ^{[22, pp.13-14]}.

To serve the tour groups, group guides (as guides were called at that time) were recruited from among the scientific staff of higher educational institutions. With an average number of 30 people in the excursion group, the group payment was 3 rubles per hour or 75 rubles per month ^{[22, p.80]}.

Another task facing the leadership of the Provincial Excursion Base was to help organize local history work. From 1924 to 1929, the Nizhny Novgorod Scientific Society for the Study of the Local Region worked in the Nizhny Novgorod Province at the Provincial Department of Public Education. At its first administrative meeting, which took place on December 21, 1924, the historian S. I. Arkhangelsky, who later became the first dean of the Faculty of History and Philology of Gorky University and an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, was elected chairman.

On June 26, 1930, in accordance with Krayono Order No. 142, the scientific society will be renamed the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Excursion and Tourist Station. Her work was structured in four directions:

1. training of tourist personnel for the regions of the region through training courses at the station;

2. development of tourist routes in the territory of the region (hiking and boating);

3. identification of monuments of revolutionary events in the Nizhny Novgorod region;

4. organization of reception of schoolchildren from other cities at the excursion base for 60 places ^{[14, p. 122]}.

In 1930, the Nizhny Novgorod Regional excursion and tourist station was visited by pioneer students from Moscow, Ryazan, Cheboksary and Vyatka. Boat routes from Gorodets to Nizhny Novgorod were recognized as the most popular ^{[14, p.122]}.

In 1929, the Society of Proletarian Tourism of the RSFSR (OPT RSFSR) was founded. In 1930, the OPT of the RSFSR merged with the Soviet Tourist Society, and on their basis a new association arose – the All-Union Voluntary Society of Proletarian Tourism and Excursions (OPTE). Very soon, OPTE cells appeared in many regions of the country, the Nizhny Novgorod Region was no exception.

In Gorky (since 1932 Nizhny Novgorod became known as Nizhny Novgorod), the Gorky Regional Council of the OPTE was established, which included 2 camp sites (with 110 beds), one water station and a tour desk ^[24]. But unexpectedly, the fairly stable operation of the OPTE was terminated in 1936 by a decision of the Government of the country.

The actual receivers of the OPTE cell in the Gorky Region became the Management of the Volga Routes, the main fund of which in 1936 consisted of a Tourist House (with an area of 1828.7 sq. m.) and five leased steamships with a total number of beds / places for 1060 people ^[25].

Since November 1937, the management of amateur tourism and local excursion work has been completely taken over by the methodological department of the Volga Routes Management. In the first years of its activity, the methodological department of the Volga Routes Management faced a number of problems caused by frequent changes of leadership (3 heads were replaced in just one year ^{[26, p.2]}), insufficient inventory and low level of personnel training. Thus, according to the reports of the Volga Routes Department, tourist equipment for amateur tourism, usable, amounted to no more than 20% of the required amount ^{[26, p.1]}. The leadership of the methodological department had to involve "not only teachers, but also students of the Industrial College, it was difficult to prepare lectures, since these persons are free from their direct duties at different times. There was no thorough preparation for the trips" ^{[27, p.8]}.

It is worth mentioning separately about the level of services provided on excursion steamships. The average cost of a ticket was 600 rubles, which at that time was a significant amount. But in the reviews of tourists, we find many negative facts: "In the cabins of the steamer "Pearl" it is very crowded, sleeping bunks are placed one above the other, you can only sit on bunks, since there are no places for chairs, ... the deck was painted during the voyage, embarrassing tourists. …The restaurant serves tasteless dishes, for example, pasta, semolina cutlets, coffee is served in the evening, not in the morning" ^{[27, p.55]}. Tourists of the Bayram-Ali steamship noted that "in Kuibyshev, their guide was the steamer's caretaker, unfamiliar with the city, and he took them through the streets for a very long time to find the Frunze Museum. The food was not very good. There was no water in some places. There are few dairy products and fish" ^[28].

The situation was no better in the hotel industry of Gorky. In the Resolution of the Commission of Execution under the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR No. 19 "On the condition of hotels in Gorky, Ivanovo and Ufa" dated May 25, 1933, it was indicated that as a result of the inspection, the poor sanitary condition of hotels and the quality of food in canteens and buffets were established ^[29]. Bedbugs, cockroaches and dirt in the rooms were commonplace. Furniture (tables, chairs, hangers) and bed linen were sorely lacking. The hotels could not even "provide visitors with an uninterrupted supply of boiling water." There was no cultural service for the guests (radio, newspapers, magazines, chess, etc.). The hotels were extremely overcrowded, individual rooms were turned into solid bunks ^[15].

In order to improve the situation in Gorky, three hotels were built in the 1930s: Volna on Lenin Avenue, Intourist on Teatralnaya Square and the Rossiya Hotel on Verkhnevolzhskaya Embankment. This partially solved the problem of accommodating tourists arriving in the city, but it did not radically correct the situation. It should be noted that Gorky was no exception, other cities of the Soviet Union experienced similar problems, since from the second half of the 1930s the country began to reduce hotel construction and even the closure of existing hotels, both in regional cities and in district ones. Compared to the early 1930s, the country's hotel fund was reduced by half. The hotel fund of district centers has decreased especially strongly (by about three-quarters) ^[30].

Realizing the complexity of the problem, the Tourist and Excursion Department of the All-Russian Central Committee in Moscow in 1941 adopted a Regulation on the construction of tourist hotels throughout the country. According to this Provision, tourist hotels were organized to provide cultural and healthy recreation for tourists and tourists, to fully familiarize them with nature, economy, socialist construction, as well as to promote tourism and organize tourist and excursion work among the local population. It was assumed that in addition to overnight accommodation and meals, the hotel would provide sightseeing services and conduct hiking trips, as well as sell tour packages for union and local routes and excursions ^[31]. Unfortunately, the implementation of this project did not take place, since the Great Patriotic War began on June 22, 1941.

Let's now consider the features of tourist and excursion activities in the Nizhny Novgorod Region related to the reception of foreign tourists. Since 1925, foreign delegations of German, British, and Czechoslovak workers have been coming to Nizhny Novgorod. Their interest was aroused, first of all, by the active restoration of the destroyed industry of the USSR that began during this period. Thus, the German delegation visited the Volga Shipping Company, the Krasnoe Sormovo plant and the Balakhninsky Elektrostroy ^{[32, p.11]}. Representatives of the working people of England were interested in the Nizhny Novgorod Fair and new buildings in the Kanavino area ^{[32, p.19]}. But the Czechoslovak delegation of workers, in addition to visiting the Engine of the Revolution factory and inspecting the workers' apartments, also visited the political isolation ward No. 1. In the newspaper Nizhny Novgorod Commune dated October 30, 1925, No. 249, an appeal by the Czechoslovak delegation was published with a high assessment of the quality of life and working conditions of Nizhny Novgorod workers: "Your Prisoners' houses are more like a school than a prison, in which every guilty person has the opportunity to return to a better life. The work settlement is actually exemplary. The living conditions of workers in the factories that we examined are not only equal to those of other states, but in many cases better" ^{[32, p.24]}.

Similar assessments of Soviet reality can be found among representatives of the Western intelligentsia who visited our city at that time. Here we should mention the French writer Henri Barbusse, who visited the USSR in 1928 and wrote the book Nizhny Novgorod and its Fair, where the city is shown as one of the largest industrial centers of the country, dynamically developing and with excellent prospects ^{[33, pp. 420-428]}.

The Danish communist writer Martin Andersen-Nexe, who visited Gorky in 1933, in his book "Two Worlds. Thoughts and impressions from a trip to the USSR"creates a positive image of a city where everything now belongs to the working class, and not to "rich merchants" ^{[33, pp.418-420]}.

The Czech communist writer Julius Fuchik, in the essay "Guide to Nizhny Novgorod", published after a trip to the USSR in 1935, writes that over the past seventeen years of Soviet rule, Gorky has changed beyond recognition, that there are no urban suburbs, there are no more fights and riots in the city, and that people no longer walk the streets merchants and breeders are Bashkirovs and Rukavishnikovs, and ordinary working people drive their cars ^{[33, p.420]}.

The American writer Theodore Dreiser, who visited our city in 1927, spoke more critically about Nizhny Novgorod. The writer was accommodated in the best hotel in the city – "Russia", provided with a car with a personal driver. December 10, 1927 Theodore Dreiser, together with Nizhny Novgorod writers P. Shtatnov and G. Fedorov, went to the village of Near Borisovo, where he was given the opportunity to get acquainted with the life and everyday life of ordinary peasants. The result of this trip was the book "Dreiser looks at Russia" published in the USA ^[34]. In it, the writer analyzes Soviet society and points out the existing shortcomings.

In general, it should be noted that representatives of the creative intelligentsia and ordinary workers went to Soviet Russia to compare their ideas about a socially just society with the reality of the greatest socialist experiment. And sometimes they saw only what they wanted to see.

Unfortunately, the attractive image of Soviet Russia they created often misled ordinary tourists. When they came to the USSR, they were faced with a reality that destroyed their dreams. Most foreign tourists left the USSR, remaining dissatisfied with the services provided. The foreign press is even starting to publish articles describing the "misadventures of tourists in the USSR." Among the complaints, the main place was occupied by: poor conditions of transfer, accommodation and food; incompetence of hotel and restaurant employees; unsanitary conditions that prevailed everywhere ^[35]. In the reporting materials of Intourist, it was regularly noted that "... foreigners spent the night in bathrooms, in corridors, or were forced to spend the night at train stations", "in most cases, the premises are dirty, with stale linen ... there are no baths, the restrooms are so polluted that they cannot be used" ^[36].

The situation in Gorky was typical. Thus, an excursion trip for foreign specialists on the Gorky – Astrakhan route and back (21 days) on the steamer Kashgar of the Volga River Transport Department (WURT) conducted by the Foreign Bureau of the All-Union Council of Trade Unions (Inoburo) in August 1933 received many negative reviews, since the vehicle was unsuitable for the trip, and the training of guides and interpreters did not correspond to the declared level ^[37].

To solve the problem of accommodating foreign guests in the 1930s, three high-class hotels were built in Gorky together with Intourist: Volna on Lenin Avenue, Intourist on Teatralnaya Square and Rossiya Hotel on Verkhnevolzhskaya Embankment. These were typical buildings of the Stalin era, with single and double rooms, suites and apartments. They allowed, albeit not completely, to alleviate the severity of the problem with the accommodation of foreign guests in Gorky by the end of the 1930s.

In order to improve the level of training of guides and translators, according to the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR No. 953 "On the training of teachers of foreign languages for junior secondary and secondary schools" dated September 13, 1937, the Gorky Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages (GPIII) is being created on the basis of the "Provincial Higher Courses of Foreign Languages and Literatures at GUBONO" with a three-year term training ^[38]. This made it possible by 1941 to prepare the necessary number of guides and interpreters to work with foreign tourists, but, unfortunately, at that time foreign tourism stopped - the Great Patriotic War began.

Summing up, we note that tourist and excursion work in the first decades of Soviet power had a number of problems. Firstly, there is an acute shortage of hotel stock, since some pre-revolutionary hotels were destroyed during the revolution and the civil war, others were transferred to administrative institutions and communal apartments, and others fell into complete disrepair due to dilapidation. It was urgently necessary to invest large financial resources in the renovation of old and construction of new hotels. Secondly, there was a shortage of trained personnel. Some of the pre-revolutionary guides and interpreters emigrated abroad, others died or died during the civil war, and others turned out to be ideologically unsuitable for the Soviet government. Therefore, it was necessary to train new personnel with good knowledge of foreign languages and the right ideological position. Third, the shortcomings of organizational work associated with the frequent reorganization of institutions and the change of leadership.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that tourist and excursion activities in our country gradually developed, old hotels were repaired and new ones were built, personnel were trained in the right amount, the management gained experience in managing this field of activity. But the progressive development was forcibly interrupted with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.