The Divisive Modern Russian Tourist Abroad: Representations of Self and Other in the Early

Reform Era
Author(s): Susan Layton
Source: Slavic Review, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Winter, 2009), pp. 848-871
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_ARTICLES

The Divisive Modern Russian Tourist Abroad:

of Self and Other in the Early
Representations
Reform Era
Susan

Layton

on his

and
France,
lands, Switzerland,
trip through the German
a Russian Traveler
Letters
Karamzin's
Nikolai
1789-1790,
of
during
England
account of a native son's pursuit of
was Russian
literature's foundational
this self-styled "traveler" a "tourist"? Russian
leisure travel abroad. Was
has
answered
that
yes and no, in conformity with
question
scholarship
Based

cultures. Karamzin
treatments of the origins of tourism in other national
in the aristocratic
was Russia's most famous participant
of the
practice
to round off one's
to western Europe
Grand Tour, a voluntary journey
have proposed
defin
But Anne Gorsuch
and Diane Koenker
education.1
as "anyone who followed a leisure-travel
tourist
Russian
the
imperial
ing
In this optic,
of visual, cultural, and material
program
consumption."2
one might count as "business
tourism" the sightseeing of traveling Rus
of the sixteenth century or even earlier.3 More
sian merchants
common,
in
the
of
Russian
tourism's
is
the
experi
beginnings
perception
though,
ences of state servitors sent to western Europe
during the reign of Peter
in 1697-1698)
.4 In addi
his own first trip abroad
the Great
(who made
or
tion to commercial
voyages, diplomatic missions,
voluntary study trips,
afforded
also
for medical
travel undertaken
reasons, military campaigns

P.
and Diane
Andreas
D.
Derek
thank Mark
Schonle,
Offord,
Steinberg,
comments.
for their stimulating
new para
Tour as "a whole
of the Grand
institution
of the English
1. For an overview
in Peter
see
and After
Tour
"The Grand
(1660-1840),"
James Buzard,
digm for traveling,"
toTravel Writing
and Tim Youngs,
Hulme
eds., The Cambridge Companion
(Cambridge,
Eng.,
from English
of Italy was a huge deviation
omission
Karamzin's
37-47.
2002),
practice.
and
in Anne
E. Gorsuch
P. Koenker,
and Diane
E. Gorsuch
2. Anne
"Introduction,"
I wish

to

Koenker

P. Koenker,

Diane

eds.,

Turizm:

Socialism (Ithaca, 2006), 2.

3. G.

1988), 9.

P. Dolzhenko,

turizma

and East European

v dorevoliutsionnoi

Tourist

Rossii

under Capitalism

i SSSR

and

(Rostov-on-Don,

Travel
in Classical Russian
to a Graveyard: Perceptions
ofEurope
Journeys
Travel
and
National
Ground:
Sara
Dickinson,
25-47;
2005),
Breaking
(Dordrecht,
and Max J.
in Russia from Peter I to theEra of Pushkin
27-36;
2006),
(Amsterdam,
and the
in A. G. Cross,
of Petr Tolstoi,"
"The Cultural
Transformation
ed., Russia

4. Derek

Writing
Culture

Istoriia

The Russian

O&ord,

Okenfus,
West in theEighteenth Century (Newtonville,
Mass.,
1983), 231-33.
see also Wladimir
the reign of Elizabeth,
with
Berelowitch,
ning
russes au cours de la seconde
moitie
du XVIIIe
tour' des nobles
nos. 1-2 (1993):
193-210.
russeetsovietiqueM,
Slavic Review

68, no.

(Winter

For developments
dans
"La France
siecle,"

Cahiers

2009)

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begin
le 'grand
du Monde

The Divisive Modern

Russian

Tourist Abroad

849

to
this tendency
touristic opportunities.5
Russians
Illustrating
recent studies
"tourist" and "tourism" very broadly are excellent
of Russian
travel literature from Peter I's era into the 1840s (Sara Dickin
son's book) and the 1880s (Derek Offord's).6
these parameters,
Within
however, Russian
scholarship has differenti
from
traveler
the
ated the Karamzinian
modern,
capitalist-style
gentleman
In Russia as
tourism arose with industrialization.
Russian
tourist. Modern
imperial
construe

steam transport and

tourism developed
modern
along with
of
the
of
the creation
the
commerce,
railroads,
cities,
growth
expansion
social classes.7
of new wealth, and the sharing of that wealth by the middle
of
Vital as well was the circulation of a "body of images and descriptions"
to
to
in
entice
readers
and
"induce
them
the
1880s
travel."8
places
Only
did all these forces come together to start creating a Russian
"consumer
for tourism.9 A major
landmark year was 1885 when a certain
market"
in Petersburg what was apparently Russia's
established
Lipson
Leopol'd
elsewhere,

first tourist agency imitating the business of Thomas

Cook.10
consumer market for leisure travel came
But decades before a Russian
of the early reform era constituted
into being, public discourse
"mod
ern" tourism as a worrying new aspect of Russia's
national
culture. What
were the social, cultural, and moral
War
profiles of Russia's post-Crimean
tourists? What were their aims in going abroad? Could
leisure travel still
to foreign lands, as Karamzin
be a life-enhancing
had shown
exposure
it to be?11 Or was the modern
variant an idle, overly consumerist
prac
not resist this
of the "crowd?"12 If so, should Russians
tice characteristic
5. Dickinson,
and Susan Layton,
"Russian Military
Tourism:
143-64;
Breaking Ground,
Crisis of the Crimean
in Gorsuch
War Period,"
and Koenker,
eds., Turizm, 43-63.
6. For examples
of the terms, see Offord, Journeys
to a
13, 123, 178; and
Graveyard,
mistranslates
Dickinson,
15, 22, 24, 29. Dickinson
(travel
Breaking Ground,
puteshestvenniki

The

ers) as "tourists"
in Paris in 1814.

(143)

in

discussing

a letter

the officer

poet

Konstantin

Batiushkov

wrote

7. Andreas
(Cambridge,
ery: Volga
ter 2003):
cialization
On

in theRussian
1790-1840
Schonle,
Authenticity and Fiction
Literary Journey,
"The Origins
of Russian
Scen
Mass.,
203-4,
207-8;
2000),
Christopher
Ely,
River Tourism
and Russian
Slavic Review 62, no. 4 (Win
Aesthetics,"
Landscape
Louse McReynolds,
674-75;
in the Nineteenth
Century,"

Tourist:
Russian
Commer
Prerevolutionary
in Gorsuch
and Koenker,
24-25.
eds., Turizm,
see
the empire,
Russian
McReynolds,
"Prerevolutionary
Istoriia
turizma, 30-63.

developments
mainly within
and Dolzhenko,
Tourist,"
27-42;
see
8. On
the general
point,
John

"The

F. Sears,

the
NineteenthCentury (NewYork, 1989), 3.

Sacred Places:

9. Ely, "Origins
of Russian
675.
Scenery,"
10.
Pervoe v Rossii
Leopol'd
Lipson,
predpriiatie
and McReynolds,
1885);
strany sveta (St. Petersburg,
26-27.

dlia

American

Tourist Attractions

obshchestvennykh

"Prerevolutionary

in

vo vse
puteshestvii
Russian
Tourist,"

For a contemporary
view of tourism as a
of producing
serious
practice
"incapable
see
in theLate Twentieth
James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation
Century
on tourism's
65. But for insistence
see
Mass.,
1997),
(Cambridge,
life-enriching
potential,
Donald
The Great Museum:
The Re-Presentation
Home,
248-52;
(London,
1984),
ofHistory
11.

knowledge,"

and Home,

The IntelligentTourist (Smithfield, 1989).

to the "crowd" was a

12. Hostility
the poetry of
staple of Romantic
writing,
including
Aleksandr
Pushkin
and Mikhail
Lermontov.
On
this topos in Vasilii
account
Zhukovskii's
of
the Sistine Madonna
in Dresden
in 1821, see Schonle,
and
contemplating
Authenticity

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

850

Slavic Review

in the matrix of these worries, early

of modernity? Modeled
manifestation
as divisive
reform Russia's
turisty emerged
figures, intertwined with the
and political
era's larger questions
of social change, national
ideologies,
and moral values.
Prior to that time, a wariness

of tourism construed as an idle, even for

In 1831, in the
in the Russian
had
been
embedded
language.
eign pursuit
that
initial public act of defining the word, Literaturnaia gazeta explained
"turist" was what the "English call their compatriots who roam around Eu
rope out of idleness or to dispel their spleen."13 This imagined otherness
as a pro
of the "tourist" bespoke Karamzin's
persisting authority in Russia
moter of the Enlightenment
ideal of travel as "pleasurable
instruction."14
Pushkin's
"Kavkazskii plennik"
Aleksandr
(The prisoner of the Caucasus,
a
in
Russian
hero seeking stimulation
had
1822)
Byronic
represented
to the rise of
This poem contributed
southern borderland.
the empire's
fontan"
"Bakhchisaraiskii
and Pushkin's
tourism in the Caucasus,
(The
same
But
for
the
do
the
would
Crimea.15
fountain of Bakhchisarai,
1824)
Rus
stories designating
time never had any Russian
readers of Pushkin's
to a Russian
sians as "tourists." According
glossary of 1837, the "tourist"
the world."16 Five years later,
about
"an Englishman
remained
traveling
a now forgotten Russian
novelist was still trying to hold the line: "Tour
in the
"are bred solely in the British isles, principally
ists," she asserted,
to
the "tourists" flock even to Russia
An
obnoxious
counties."
lot,
English
as
to
market
for
material
"our
beautiful
homeland"
poor
writings
exploit
in western Europe.17
"us" and the English had
between
By the late 1830s such dichotomies
Fiction,
visitors.

98-101.

Zhukovskii,

however,

did

not

specify

the nationality

of the other

gallery

v Rossii,"
i angliiskie
in M.
P. Alekseev,
"Pushkin
13. Quoted
puteshestvenniki
See also P. Ia. Chernykh,
91 (1982):
nasledstvo
Literaturnoe
638^2.
Istoriko-etimologicheskii
au
2:272. As of 1816, French
slovar' sovremennogo russkogo iazyka, 2 vols.
(Moscow,
1993),
era tended
to identify le touriste as a ludicrous
thors of the Romantic
Stendhal,
Englishman.
1863 Larousse
The
the term to himself
touriste, 1838).
however,
(Memoires d'un
applied
its 1875 edition
declared
and
leisure
of
the
neutral
"touriste"
traveler,
Jean
gave
meaning
The
latter stressed Rousseau's
Rousseau
the world's
premier touriste (first tourist).
Jacques
du tourisme du XVIe au XXIe siecle (Paris,
see Marc
in the
walks
Boyer, Histoire generate
Alps:

2005), 5-6, 53-54, 77, 182, 185.

see Charles
Instruction: Form and
L. Batten Jr., Pleasurable
the latter paradigm,
Russian
In practice,
Travel Literature
in Eighteenth-Century
1978).
(Berkeley,
ran wild abroad.
For
as their
often
as much
travelers,
eighteenth
counterparts,
English
see A. G. Cross,
such behavior,
observers
"By the Banks
of the
century Russian
deploring
Bere
Britain
in Eighteenth-Century
Thames'': Russians
231-32;
Mass.,
1980),
(Newtonville,
and
and Schonle,
le
dans
"La France
tour,'" 203, 208-9n66;
lowitch,
Authenticity
'grand
79-80.
Fiction,
Slavic Studies 2 (1963):
of Crimea,"
Beads
"The Amber
15. Simon Karlinsky,
California
to
the
Caucasus
and
Literature
Russian
Susan
108-9;
from Pushkin
of
Empire: Conquest
Layton,
Rus
and McReynolds,
54-70;
24-27,
1994),
"Prerevolutionary
Eng.
Tolstoy (Cambridge,
14. On

Convention

sian Tourist,"
21-22.
in Alekseev,
16. Quoted
17. E. N. Kologrivova,
"Pushkin

angliiskie

"Pushkin
Golos

za

puteshestvenniki,"

i
puteshestvenniki,"
angliiskie
rodnoe (St. Petersburg,
1842),
579.

638n2.
quoted

in Alekseev,

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Russian

The Divisive Modern

Tourist Abroad

851

in fact collapsed
in Russian public discourse. An article of 1838, for exam
leisure travel abroad and
the stimulus tomost Russian
called
idleness
ple,
to document
souvenir
recommended
pictures
purchasing
"your"
cozily
new extension
to cover Russians
further attested to
of
"turist"
The
trip.18
a shift toward a vacation
In 1841 Pavel Annenkov
featured
mentality.19
and a "profane" traveler in
himself as a "turist" along the canals of Venice
Berlin, favoring beer halls over highbrow pursuits.20 But most telling was
a Russian
himself as a "mere
named Gersevanov
who in 1848 described
to a "cultivated trav
tourist" (or 'just a tourist," prostoi turist) as opposed
to
latter concept
eler" (obrazovannyi puteshestvennik). The
clearly alluded
of
and
scenic
cultural
Karamzin
and his emulators. Gersevanov's
pursuit
in common
and northern
tourism in Switzerland
Italy actually had much
a
art
in
Letters
and
Russian
of
Traveler.21
with depictions
viewing scenery
of
in
tourist's
with
the main,
the self-described
Karamzin
But
discontinuity
was more
was an
First, Gersevanov
hedonist,
uncomplicated
pronounced.
was in a
hurry, and he knew
seeking "pleasure every step of the way." He
his gaze was superficial.
"Just passing through" wherever he went, he was
a vacationer who had to get back towork.22 Given his time con
apparently
of trains over the coach
the advantage
straints, he recognized
(Karamzin's
our
two
mode
of transport). Nonetheless,
turist had
about
complaints
all forms of modern
treated the
transport: number one, the personnel
as a
and second,
the crowds and hectic
passenger
"moving commodity,"
an ordeal at rest stops. To top
pace made meals
things off, the Alps, too,
were crowded?Gersevanov
found them crawling with English hikers.23
18.

Ivan Golovin,
"Puteshestvennik
vremeni,"
pt.
nashego
Syn otechestva 5 (1838):
see V. P. Botkin,
conventional
of Italy's pleasures,
representation
"Otryvki
zametok
in his Pis'ma
oh Ispanii,
ed. B. F. Egorov
and
(1839),
po Italii"
On
the general
tension between
and
202-15.
1976),
purpose
(Leningrad,

1:71, 75. For

iz
dorozhnykh
A. Zvigil'skii

see Diane
pleasure,
and Leisure,"
Travel,

to Work,
to
"Travel
P. Koenker,
Travel
Play: On
Slavic Review
62, no. 4 (Winter
2003):
657-59;
6-8.
"Introduction,"

Koenker,
as a value
19. Both
rare in Russian
remained

50-55.
Tourism,"
Military
"Zametki
peterburgskogo
67), 8:111-17.
20. P. V. Annenkov,
Eighteenth-century
traveler, as remarked

and
judgment
public discourse
On

the

turista"

Tourism,
Gorsuch
and

as a neutral

"turist"

(1855),

Russian

and

"turist"
traveler,
synonym for leisure
in
the 1850s, as suggested
"Russian
Layton,
as flaneur
see A. V. Druzhinin,
in Petersburg,

until

Sobranie

sochinenii,

8 vols.

(St. Petersburg,

1865

ed. I. N. Konobeevskaia
10, 19.
(Moscow,
1983),
Parizhskiepis'ma,
Russian
literature
had
fashioned
the middle-brow
popular
already
in Gitta
review of Schonle,
and Fiction,
in
Hammarberg's
Authenticity

SlavicReview 60, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 676.

21. As

used
on the arts and "built
"cultural
tourism"
focuses
my article,
throughout
In a broader,
and so forth).
monuments,
(museums,
architecture,
ethnographic
tourism"
takes as its object a whole
cus
sense, "cultural
"way of life," including
gastronomy,
see M. Bauer,
For both definitions,
"Cultural Tourism
toms, and "sex tourism attractions."
in France,"
in Greg Richards,
in Europe
147-48.
ed., Cultural Tourism
1996),
(Wallingford,
22. These
criteria
follow Dean
The Tourist: A New
MacCannell,
Theory of the Leisure
re
Places
Class, rev. ed.
42-43,
51; and John Urry, Consuming
(New York,
1999),
(1995;
culture"

print,

London,
1997),
23. Gersevanov,

vennyezapiski57

141-42.

"Iz

(March

turista: Pereezd
putevykh
vpechatlenii
5, 9-11.
1848):
pt. 8:2-3,

cherez

Simplon,"

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Otechest

852
Karamzin,
by contrast, had cultivated his pathbreaker
other
visitors at sites he visited.24
turing

SlavicReview

image by rarely fea

Gersevanov's
his ambivalence
about trains, and above all
hedonism,
his representation
of crowds of leisure travelers abroad made
him a her
ald of the "modern"
turizm that provoked
in
anxieties
early reform
public
to
assess
effort
War Rus
Russia.25 A particularly
revelatory
post-Crimean
sian leisure travel was Nikolai Mel'gunov's
i
osobenno
"Turisty voobshche,
in
russkie"
and
the
Russians
in
(Tourists
1859), an
general
particular,
article that began with the declaration:
"Tourists are a phenomenon
of
was
one
modern
of
times."26 However, Mel'gunov's
survey
many pub
only
a rupture with
that both reflected and constituted
lications of the period
the aristocratic
tradition of the educational
Grand Tour. Finding expres
of a radically "new
sion in these varied writings were Russians'
perceptions
travel scene" in their national
culture.27
so
to
To bring this development
light, my article will investigate the
tourist abroad
in selected works
of the Russian
cially divisive fashioning
in Russia
of mainstream
literature and journalism
published
imaginative

of this problem
and the literary
1856 and 1863. The formulation
I use to investigate
itmainly draw their inspiration from James
cues from Buzard's
book The Beaten Track}* Taking
analysis of
on the Continent
tourists
their
construction"
of
authors'
"cultural
English
will focus on the post-Crimean
1800 and 1918, my discussion
between
or less numerous
abroad?more
of
the
crowd
War Russian
compa
topos
self. How did Russian
triot tourists alien to the Russian
storytellers seek to
between
method
Buzard's

tourist norm? How did

their superiority to a putative new Russian
structure social distinctions?29 And what role did the
tourist narratives
the limitations of an article, my
in that process? Given
word turist assume
assert

trave
encounters
with English
169. But for Karamzin's
24. Dickinson,
Breaking Ground,
see Offord,
to a Graveyard,
91.
at a hotel
in
France,
lers, including
fourneys
guests
rowdy
see
The Icon and theAxe: An
train travel and modernity,
25. On
James H. Billington,
Schivel
and Wolfgang
Culture
382-85;
1966),
(New York,
of Russian
Interpretive History
in theNineteenth
The Railway Journey: The Industrialization
busch,
Century
of Time and Space

(Berkeley, 1986).

i osobenno
russkie.
(Pis'mo
[N. A. Mel'gunov],
"Turisty voobshche,
iz-za granitsy),"
1859):
pt. 6:1. For identi
Otechestvennye
zapiski 123 (March
i
see I. F. Masanov,
russkikh pisatelei,
Slovar' psevdonimov
of the author,
fication
uchenykh
in
cultural figure
2:121. A prominent
1956-60),
obshchestvennykh deiatelei, 4 vols. (Moscow,
a music
was a financially
his time, Nikolai
author,
(1804-1867)
independent
Mel'gunov
of moderate
and a publicist
and art critic, a literary salon host in Moscow,
per
political
See Russkie
in the late 1830s.
He
for extended
suasion.
lived abroad
beginning
periods
and Philip
1800-1917:
3:572-76;
1989-99),
slovar', 4 vols.
(Moscow,
Biograficheskii
pisateli,
on the Reformation
and
the Work
"Nikolai Alexandrovich
Ethic,"
Shaskho,
Mel'gunov
26. N.
v redaktsiiu

Livenskii

ComparativeStudies inSocietyandHistory 9, no. 3 (April 1967): 256-58.

the Napoleonic
of England
is taken from a discussion
27. The quote
right after
in Shelley Baranowski
in Shelley Baranowski
and Ellen Furlough,
"Introduction,"
len Furlough,
Tourism, Consumer Culture, and Identity inModern
eds., Being Elsewhere:
2.
and North America
2001),
(Ann Arbor,
and theWays
The Beaten Track: European
28. James Buzard,
Tourism, Literature,

"
ture, 1800-1918
29. On

(1993; reprint,Oxford, 2001).

the need

for research

on

this issue,

see Koenker,

"Travel

toWork,"

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

wars,
El

and

Europe
to ''Cul

664.

The Divisive Modern

Russian

853

Tourist Abroad

must be brief. But my principle

aim here is to delineate
literary analyses
a
of Russian
social
divisiveness
tourism first
how
the
big picture, showing
a
became
issue.
public
to in
the scholarly tendency
The prism of divisiveness
complicates
as
a
travel
Russian
terpret imperial
writing
enterprise
nation-building
from the eighteenth
of travel
century onward. With
respect to accounts
a
structure
that
of
has
abroad,
scholarship
persuasively
privileged
body
"them"?Russians
the foreign,
of thought that pits "us" against
against
the bourgeois
west.30 A complementary
body of work has
particularly
shown that, especially beginning with the Romantic
era, travel accounts
the
Russian
heartland
and guidebooks
concerning
(including provincial
based con
the Volga, and Moscow)
countryside,
promoted
geographically
in
of
the
Russian
national
century,
eighteenth
ceptions
identity.31 Starting

various kinds of Russian

"travelers" (including
also pro
ethnographers)
to
into the empire's borderlands,
duced accounts of journeys
participate
as well in the quest for Russianness.32
In both the foreign and domestic
But we need to
lens has proved indispensible.33
cases, the nation-building
think more about the specificity of tourism as a form of travel that contrib
of divisions within the nation?divisions
uted to Russian
consciousness
of
30. Hans
National
Consciousness
in Eighteenth-Century
Russia
Rogger,
(Cambridge,
on
"'Them':
Russians
in Simon
Mass.,
5-6,
Cross,
77-84;
1960),
Anthony
Foreigners,"
Franklin
and Emma Widdis,
Culture: An Introduction
eds., National
(Cam
Identity inRussian
to a
Offord, Journeys
83-92;
7-13, 21-23,
249-53;
bridge, Eng., 2004),
Graveyard, xv-xxvi,
and Dickinson,
164-75.
16-20,
45-53,
Breaking Ground,
31.

Christopher

Ely, This Meager

Nature:

Landscape

and National

Identity

in Imperial Rus

sia (DeKalb, 2002), 72-78, 140-45, 223-29; Ely, "Origins of Russian Scenery," 666-82;
Dickinson,
Identities,"
Stephanie
47-84.
As
a "Russian

Breaking Ground, 84-95,131-42,199-226;

in Franklin
and Widdis,
eds., National
Sandler,
Commemorating Pushkin: Russia's
late as

"Monuments
and
Lindsey Hughes,
in
Russian
and
179-84;
Culture,
Identity
a
Poet (Stanford,
2004),
Myth of National
was
for Tourism
still struggling
against

Russia's
1916, however,
Society
toward the native
re
to have
terrain," and western
appears
Europe
mained
Russian
tourist goal: Ely, Meager Nature,
4. See also Dolzhenko,
Is
toriia turizma, 19. But on late
chauvinistic
of spa tourism
in
nineteenth-century
promotion
see
the Russian
Russian
38-42.
Tourist,"
empire,
McReynolds,
"Prerevolutionary
ismade
in Offord,
32. The
essential
to a Graveyard,
Stories
xxi, 17-20.
point
Journeys
on the move
about
also participated
in the search for national
imaginary Russians
identity
or Nikolai
in the Caucasus
for example).
But con
(Pushkin's
Chichikov,
prisoner
Gogol"s
fusion ensues
if one allows all sorts of "travel" to blend
into "tourism."
in
This happens,
in Eric J. Leed,
The Mind
toGlobal Tourism
my opinion,
(New
of the Traveler: From Gilgamesh
antipathy
the dominant

York, 1991).

33. Additional

treatments
of tourism and nation
include
Sears,
suggestive
building
Michael
"Tourism
and Nationalism,"
Annals
Pretes,
esp. 4-11;
of Tourism
Research
and Catherine
"An
of
30, no. 1 (January
125-42;
2003):
Palmer,
Ethnography
Annals
32, no. 1
Englishness:
Experiencing
Identity through Tourism,"
of Tourism Research
7-27. But for failed official efforts to create a sense of national
2005):
(January
solidarity
see the
"'One
Breath
for
The
tourism,
through
following: Aldis Purs,
Every Two Strides':
to Construct
State's
Tourism
in Interwar Latvia,"
and Identity
Scott Mo
97-115;
Attempt
"East German
Nature
1945-1961:
In Search
of a Common
randa,
Tourism,
Destination,"
Diane
P. Koenker,
"The Proletarian
Tourist
in the 1930s: Between
Mass
Excur
266-80;
Sacred

Places,

sion and Mass

"Time

Eastern

eds.,

and Anne
E. Gorsuch,
119-40;
Escape,"
in
all
Gorsuch
and
205-26,
Koenker,
Europe,"

Travelers:

Soviet

Tourists

Turizm.

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to

854

social

educational

estate, gender,

level, cultural

Slavic Review

and moral

competence,

values.

The

Collapse

of Grand

Tourist

Norms

in Russian
studies, the socially Assuring im
Although
relatively neglected
in
of
tourism
pact
foreign lands has received much
nineteenth-century
in the case of England.
attention
Buzard most notably set up his pioneer
as a
to Dean MacCannell's
view of tourism as
ing investigation
challenge
a builder of "social cohesion
in an otherwise
fragmented modernity."34
toMacCannell's
Buzard exposed
the social antago
Contrary
proposition,
of Grand Tourist
nisms in English writings concerning
the breakdown
norms. The
English fashion for going abroad
growing post-Napoleonic
as
The
struck upper-class
observers
English
alarming democratization.
tour
landed gentry (and mainly men) who had previously monopolized
ism now balked at sharing the Continent with "hordes" of "cockneys, old
maids,
("all castes and sects") of ill
motley social assortment
squires"?a
men and women
"to
gape at things in foreign
English
rushing
prepared
to be after
set in, as everybody appeared
lands." A sense of competition
or
the
the same cultural capital
(material trophies
simply
prestige value
as
of travel). Such worries emerged
in English
literature
early
imaginative
as 1819. As Buzard put it, snobs were fretting about tourism
"long before
tourist industry was in place."35 By the 1840s, tourism for the
any coherent
a
a reality in
masses was becoming
development
accompanied
England,
an
in literature and journalism.
of
rhetoric
anti-tourist
by
outpouring
Even in its firstmanifestations,
however, the elitist posture inscribed anxi
In taking to leisure travel (especially
eties about social change at home.
were
the
abroad),
forgetting their place. Tourism also allowed
"cockneys"
to venture beyond
their traditional confines. No surprise,
British women
more
then, that women became
generally
special targets of anti-tourism,
social classes.36
aimed at the middle
in the
tourism abroad
Russian
To judge by the Russian materials,
a similar, socially Assuring
before
had
reform
impact, long
early
period
a Russian
tourist industry existed. Social cohesion
anything resembling
the
was sorely lacking in post-Crimean
War Russia. The years between
were a
of
social
war and the
fluidity. By
exceptional
period
Emancipation
both
II produced
clear his intention to free the serfs, Alexander
making
and
"The
Russians.
educated
and apprehension
excitement
young
among
more
and
older
the
while
and
reform-minded
confident,
grew jubilant
the Emanci
and dismay."37 With
drew back in uncertainty
conservative
34.

Buzard,

Beaten

Track,

35.

Buzard,

Beaten

Track,

36.

Buzard,

tours,
45-65.

beginning

Beaten
on

Track,
domestic

9; and MacCannell,
32.
82-85,
6-7,
80-89,
routes

Tourist,

1-9,

176-77,

Thomas
On
142-43.
107-30,
97-103,
in 1855,
in 1841 and on the Continent

Radicalism
The Genesis ofRussian
Gleason,
Young Russia:
see also Wayne
the "fluid era of the early 1860s,"
1980), 83. On
94-95.
Soil Conservatism
and Native
1982),
(Toronto,
Grigor'ev,
37. Abbott

York,

203.
Cook's
see

ibid.,

in the 1860s

(New

Dowler,

Dostoevsky,

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The Divisive Modern

Russian

Tourist Abroad

855

of diminished
economic
looming, the gentry faced the prospect
pation
and social status. Their power in the cultural sphere was contested as well
In addition, women's
by increasingly influential raznochintsy journalists.38
re
was arousing controversy.39 Rebelling
against traditional
emancipation
women
were
and
The
universities
abroad.40
strictions,
traveling
entering
but what lay ahead?41
old social and moral order was disintegrating,

Russians
felt modern
tourism had
In this context of social upheaval,
arose from the real
come their way. This
changes
taking place
perception
state was grow
following the Crimean War. By the early 1840s the Russian
I
to grant citizens passports
for foreign travel.42 Nicholas
ing reluctant
to
in
western
in
down
response
revolutionary uprisings
clamped
especially
in 1848 and then prohibited Russian pleasure
trips abroad during
Europe
in the spring of 1856, Alexan
the Crimean War. But after the war ended
tourism towestern Europe
der II eased the travel restrictions, and Russian
resumed after a long hiatus. As early as the summer of 1856 veteran lei
sure travelers such as Ivan Turgenev
hastened
back abroad.43 On doctors'
summer.
went
Nikolai
Nekrasov
also
abroad
that
orders,
By 1858 many
now
in
members
of the younger generation,
the history of
prominent
had participated
in tourism
Russian
literature or the socialist movement,
in the west. They included Lev Tolstoi, Aleksandr
Afanasii
Druzhinin,
Fet,
a trois Nikolai
and the menage
his wife Liudmila,
and the poet
Shelgunov,
in 1861 for advocating
Mikhail Mikhailov
(arrested and sent to Siberia
The radical critic Nikolai Dobroliubov
also pursued
for his health
in 1860-1861.
In 1862 Fedor Dos
tourism while abroad
his first trip to western Europe.
toevskii made
of Russia's
The expansion
transport system facilitated travel in this period. Significant growth in Rus
sian steamship services, for example, began
in 1857.44 Post-Crimean
War
in Russia
industrialization
also expanded
the railroad network. Russia's
in industrialization
boom
and railroad building would not start until the
1880s. But by 1860, the increasing use of trains, ifonly within the
empire,
a
had become
literary topic.45
The resumption
of foreign travel after the Crimean War gave Russian
revolution

the term raznochintsy

of various
ranks)
century,
(people
see Elise
intellectuals
of humble
mainly
socially progressive
origins:
Kimerling
Social
in Imperial Russia
Wirtschafter,
(DeKalb,
1997), 64.
Identity
39. Richard
in Russia:
and
Stites, The Women's Liberation Movement
Feminism, Nihilism,
1860-1930
29-63.
Bolshevism,
(Princeton,
1978),
see L. P.
40. For
travel diaries,
Iz
in N. V.
pertinent
Shelgunova,
dalekogo proshlogo,
L. P. Shelgunova,
and M. L. Mikhailov,
2 vols.
(Moscow,
Shelgunov,
1967),
Vospominaniia,
and Polina
in Fyodor Dostoevsky,
The Gambler,
xvithPolina
2:66-72,114-22;
Suslova, Diary,
trans. Victor Terras,
ed. Edward Wasiolek
201-302.
1972),
SuslovasDiary,
(Chicago,
a
41. Fedor Tiutchev
soon after
in Russia
"thaw"
perceived
bewildering
beginning
see Gleason,
Fs death:
Nicholas
80.
Young Russia,
42. Dickinson,
232.
Breaking Ground,
38.

In

in Russia).

the mid-nineteenth
to

referred

43.

1841. On

a student
first traveled
in
at Berlin
while
Turgenev
Europe
his extensive
see Leonard
travels abroad
1856-1861,
during

His Life and Times (Oxford, 1978), 124.

44. McReynolds,
For examples

45.

sochinenii,

6 vols.

Russian
Tourist,"
"Prerevolutionary
Chukovskii,
pro and con, see Kornei
4:373-433.
(Moscow,
1965-69),

University

in 1838

Schapiro,

Turgenev:

26.
"Zheleznaia

doroga,"

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Sobranie

856

Slavic Review

was
the impression
that a tidal wave of their compatriots
west.
In
the
Dobroliubov
claimed
that
"thou
untold
1858,
inundating
were
sands" of Russians
to
students eager
traveling abroad,
including
learn science and
an
num
exact
article
gave
engineering.46 Mel'gunov's
ber of tourists, without citing a source. He declared
that in 1858, 43,000
Russians
had obtained
to
western
for
leisure
(with
passports
trips
Europe
fewer than 3,000 related tomedical
.47The Slavophile
Ivan Aksakov
needs)
struck the same note in 1863 when he asserted that Russian
leisure travel
ers "had rushed to
and
flooded
it"
after
the
Crimean
War.48
right
Europe
are nearly nonexistent
Statistics concerning
travel
Russian
(as is
imperial
the case for all countries prior toWorld War I) .49But the very trope of a
of the increasing impor
conveyed Russian perceptions
deluge eloquently
tance of travel in their national
culture.
observers

The

Gentlemen's

Club

The

to
first work of Russian
literature produced
after the Crimean War
draw a boundary between
the cultivated self and a repellent Russian
crowd
abroad was Turgenev's
novella Asia (Asya) written in Rome
in 1857 and
was
a notewor
in
Sovremennik
the
This
published
following year.50
journal
in
In
of
values
had
travel
it
thy venue,
light
concerning
lately expressed.
tsar
in Vienna.
1856 Sovremennik ran an article on Peter the Great
The
Russian
there as the epitome of the discriminating
sightseer in
emerged
come
was
to
of
of
useful
Another
the radi
quest
things
sign
knowledge.51
review
of
Vasilii
Botkin's
ob
cal publicist Nikolai
Pis'ma
Chernyshevskii's
on
at
Botkin
for
lavishing
Spain, 1857). Implicitly faulting
Ispanii (Letters
and the allure of that region's
tention on scenery, street life inAndalusia,
his own analysis of Spanish politics.
women, Chernyshevskii
foregrounded
to
He also took the occasion
that
"man by nature finds pleasure
preach
ifhe
in boredom
inworking, has an innate need for work, and languishes
stimulat
does not work, ifhis idleness is not merely rest after work?rest
46.
Sobranie
47.
48.
March

N. A. Dobroliubov,
sochinenii, 9 vols.

"Russkaia

tsivilizatsiia,

(Moscow-Leningrad,
"Turisty," 6.

[Mel'gunov],
Kas'ianov
[Ivan Aksakov],
3. For identification
1863):

"Iz Parizha

of the author,

sochinennaia

1961-64),

3:257.

g. Zherebtsovym"

(1858),

no.
v Redaktsiiu),"
12 (24
Den',
(Pis'mo
see
Ivan Aksakov,
Lukashevich,
Stephen

1823-1886: A Study inRussian Thoughtand Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 83.

to Tourism
His
49. On
the general
lack of statistics, see John Towner,
"Approaches
49. From
1763 into the 1780s, Russian
15, no. 1 (1988):
of Tourism Research
tory," Annals
those for foreigners
600 passports
authorities
issued around
leaving
annually,
including
194.
le
dans
"La France
Russia.
See Berelowitch,
'grand tour,'"
"Iz zapisok
Lev Tolstoi's
the Russian
"crowd"
excludes
with
50. My preoccupation
D. Nekhliudov.
of Prince
the notes
Liutsern"
kniazia
D. Nekhliudova.
Lucerne,
(From

a lone, aristocratic
Russian
an
traveler,
spontaneous
1857),
story that pits
antibourgeois
the Swiss town.
tourists overrunning
and generous,
stuffy, stingy English
bourgeois
against
see
"The Semi
D. Culler,
tourists of different nationalities,
tensions between
On
Jonathan
158.
the Sign: Criticism and Its Institutions
of Tourism,"
1988),
(Oxford,
Framing
v 1698
v Vene
56 (February
Sovremennik
N. Ustrialov,
"Petr Velikii
1856):
godu,"
pt 2:140-41.
otics

51.

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The Divisive Modern

Russian

Tourist Abroad

857

forces."52 Latent in this review

ing him to return to work with replenished
was contempt
an attitude consistent with the radical
for pleasure
trips,
credo of "ascetic self-limitation
and stoic self-control."53
intelligentsia's
would
that
the
into
open.
Asya
contempt
bring
a snob
In its treatment of tourism, Turgenev's
story exemplifies
shared
other
of
the
bery
by
westernizing
gentlemen
period,
including
To their minds, Russia's
vis-a-vis the west was
provincialism
Mel'gunov.
of turizm accordingly meant
self-evident.54 The modernity
the floodgates
had opened,
to
Russian
and
rush
abroad.55 The
allowing
yokels
vulgarians
narrator of Asya is a bachelor
a
unnamed
he
made
recollecting
trip
along
the Rhine
as a
His
words
mark
him
twenty years ago.
opening
wealthy
individualist. Free of worries about money, he was
traveling for pleasure,
"without a plan." He could not bear the sight of a guide (lon-lakei) and dis
dained
the recommended
"unusual mountains,
monuments,
crags, water
met
falls."56 In a small German
he
his
town,
compatriots Gagin and Asya,
half-sister
born
of
their
liaison
father's
with a serf. After several
Gagin's
weeks of meetings
between
these three, Asya, under the spell of the hide
bound narrator's wary attraction to her, boldly summoned
him to a tryst.
The storyteller listened to her confession of love and then sternly rebuffed
her. Looking back so many years later, he still regrets
having let social pro
prieties repress his feelings for this unsettling
illegitimate maiden.
certain Turgenev
love stories set in Russia, Asya
Although
resembling
the
occasion
for
the
author's
elitist satire of the putative new
provides
wave of
narrator of Asya first encoun
The
abroad.57
gauche
compatriots
ters Gagin and the heroine while
students singing and
watching German
a festival.
drinking during
Upon
spectator in the crowd
hearing another
the storyteller turns to look at him, feels an immediate
speaking Russian,
52.

N.

G.

Chernyshevskii,

4:230.
53. Quote
Nekrasov

Nikolai

from
as

Konstantine
a Model

2007): 56.
54.

On

Polnoe

for

sobranie

16

"Between
Klioutchkine,
the
Slavic
Intelligentsia,"

detached
treatment
Turgenev's
The Clement Vision: Poetic Realism

E. Peterson,

sochinenii,

But for anxious

1975),
esp. 5, 35, 64-68.
the Provinces!'
Provincialism,
Authenticity,
view 64, no. 2
and
259-80;
(April 2005):

vols.
Sacrifice
Review

(Moscow
and
66,

no.

1939-53),
Indulgence:
1
(Spring

as a

of Russia

see Dale
culture,"
"provincial
and fames
N.Y.,
(Port Washington,
see Anne
Is Not
"'No, This
Lounsbery,

in Turgenev

visions,
and Russianness

in Gogol's
Re
Day," Russian
"Dostoevskii's
Centers,
Lounsbery,
Geography:
and Networks
in Demons,''
Slavic Review
211-29.
66, no. 2 (Summer
Peripheries,
2007):
More
from the field of
see Russkaia
studies,"
generally,
"provincial
provintsiia: Mif-tekts
and T. V Tsiv'ian
real'nost', ed. A. F. Belousov
(Moscow,
2000).
55. On
the yokel as a contemporary
the
cluster of articles
in
issue, consult
special
Slavic Review
"Our Borats, Our Selves: Yokels
67, no. 1 (Spring 2008),
esp. Eliot Borenstein,
on the Global
and Cosmopolitans
1-7.
Stage,"
56.

I. S.

Turgenev,

Polnoe

1960-68; hereafterPSS), 7:71.

sobranie

sochinenii

pisem,

28

vols.

(Moscow-Leningrad,

57. On
thematic
similarities
between
stories, see Eva Ka
Asya and other Turgenev
Hamlet
and Don Quixote:
Vision
gan-Kans,
(The Hague,
Turgenev's Ambivalent
1975), 41-51;
and Frank
Friedeberg
Seeley, Turgenev: A Reading
ofHis Fiction
1991),
(Cambridge,
Eng.,
153-55.

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858

Slavic Review

a conversation.
But in an aside to the reader,
affinity, and initiates
was
to
that
his
usual
avoid
Russian
tourists:
plains
practice

he ex

To tell the truth, Iwas reluctant to strike up acquaintances with Russians

abroad. Even from a distance I would recognize them by their walk, the
cut of their clothes, and mainly by the look on their faces. An
expression
of self-satisfaction and contempt, even imperiousness would suddenly
to caution

change

and

timidity.

In a flash,

the person

was

on

guard,

anx

iously looking around. "Good gracious! Have I done something wrong?

Are people laughing at me?" that fleeting expression seemed to say.An
instant later, the majestic physiognomy would be restored, alternating
now and then with blank
perplexity. Yes, I avoided Russians. But I had
liked Gagin right away.58
On

the basis of Gagin's face, clothes, and demeanor,

the narrator has sized
him up and decided
he isworth speaking to. A few moments
of conversa
tion confirm that Gagin
is indeed the storyteller's kind of person?an
other young Russian gentleman
and enthralled with
traveling for pleasure
so
the bucolic
the tale. Gagin
scenery
beautifully represented
throughout
also shares the storyteller's passion for the arts (and even dabbles
in paint
.From their first encounter,
as
a
leisure
travel
ing)
shapes up
gentlemen's
club.
her the sub
and her problematic
social status make
Asya's gender
her illegitimacy
ordinate member
of the tourist threesome.59 Convinced
a
in Russia despite her consider
her making
precludes
good marriage
her
able education,
foresees
living abroad. A cultural initiation is
Gagin
a response
to the foreign land. She
articulates
underway. Yet, Asya rarely
even becomes
in
of
the
the
narrator's
eyes when the trio visits
scenery
part
men spot her
ruins.
the
the tall
after
Asya,
picturesque
Arriving
mounting
on ancient
ruins (a symbolic image of the reckless "bounder
ledges").60
never
Asya merges with the tourist attraction that the narrative technique
allows her to focus on through her own eyes. Consistently denied a subject
narrator of Rapha
position, Asya at another point in the tale reminds the
in the Villa Farnesina
in Rome. The comparison
el's Galatea
advertises his
of
while
and
aesthetic
art,
preserving Asya's usual
sensitivity
knowledge
status as an object of the male gaze.
so
of Turgenev's
of the snobbishness
storyteller, he feels
Regardless
secure in his social identity that he does not have to pretend
tourism is
runs a stand
him. Near
the ruins, a German woman
something beneath
to tourists."61 As Asya perches
water
seltzer
and
"beer,
selling
gingerbread,
on the ruins, the narrator and Gagin drink steins of beer. By including
the central protagonist
conveys his
among the beer consumers, Turgenev
awareness
world, all leisure travel
that, in an increasingly commercialized
58.

PSS,
Turgenev,
For a feminist

7:75.

see
in Ivan Turgenev,
"Introduction,"
Asya,
Joe Andrew,
On
the resonance
F.
G.
15-22.
1992),
(London,
vocabulary
by
Gregory
woman
in Asya, see also Victor Ripp, Turgenev sRus
Russian
of the contemporary
question
toFathers
sia: From Notes
of a Hunter
and Sons
162-72,
(Ithaca,
1980),
esp. 169-70.
from Peterson,
60. Quote
Clement Vision, 66.
59.

ed. with

61.

notes

and

Turgenev,

PSS,

reading,

7:81.

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The Divisive Modern

Russian

Tourist Abroad

859

ers are tourists. The

to travel in a sophisticated,
cultivated man
point is
a beer fit this pat
ner. Two
quietly consuming
gentlemen
cosmopolitan
tern, whereas Asya is flouting all standards of decorum. At no other time
so
does the narrator find the capricious
provincial heroine
irritating.
a virtual declaration
of war
From Chernyshevskii,
Asya provoked
na rendez
Titled
"Russkii
tourist.
chelovek
the
Russian
gentry
against
at a rendez-vous,
famous cri
vous"
1858), Chernyshevskii's
(A Russian
as the story of a Romeo
betraying his Juliet.
Asya
tique misinterpreted
But as usual for the socialist journalists, Chernyshevskii's
aim was not to
the literary particulars
but rather to use the work as a spring
elucidate
on
to
authorial
board
persona,
Turgenev's
agitation. Pouncing
political
to
wrote
that
used
consider
such
"we"
refined, privileged
Chernyshevskii
men Russia's
narrator had demonstrated
But Turgenev's
"best people."
man of leisure
he actually exemplifies
the worst?the
"petty, spiritless"
of
the
but
breaks
heart
the
naive semi-serf
who enjoys Germany's
scenery
a
in
In
audience,
Asya.
envisioning
Chernyshevskii
politically progressive
realized we should now be working
sinuated that "we," unlike Turgenev,
in order to "render our society some service."62
rather than vacationing,
As though rising to Chernyshevskii's
political
challenge, Mergunov
as a
sought to defend cultural tourism
self-improving pursuit that could
to Russia's national welfare. His meandering
contribute
essay "Tourists in
in Particular" begins nostalgically with a broad
General
and the Russians
of turizm. In olden days, observes
the author, traveling
characterization
of "seeing the world" was a "feat" of solitary adventurers
for the pleasure
such as "Montaigne,
Old-time
travel rested on
Sterne, and Karamzin."
at a slow pace and entailed
solid preparation;
itwas pursued
hardships
and inconveniences.
tourists, on the other hand, are multitudi
Today's
nous,
ill-educated,
superficial, and lack the heroic
spirit of adventure.
crave
They
steady komfort (another "word from English,"
"virtually synony
mous with turizm").
a real boon
Turisty also demand
rapid transportation,
for the person on a short leave from his job. Such travelers are content to
view of foreign lands.63
get a quick, panoramic
Tourists nonetheless
exhibit national peculiarities.
Showing his famil
with
asserts
William
that
the
iarity
Thackeray, Mel'gunov
English manage
to establish
little corners of England
wherever
finds ev
they go.64 One
a
British
for
dishes
lunch
and
Hotel,
erywhere
English breakfast, English
dinner, English churches, English consumers of English newspapers,
Eng
lish pharmacies,
and the omnipresent
sign "English spoken." Why, asks
not transport Russia abroad?
no kasha, cab
do Russians
Mergunov,
Why
62.
ed. and

Nikolai
at the Rendez-vous,"
"The Russian
Chernyshevskii,
Selected Criticism
trans., Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, andDobroliubov:

1976), 108-13, 122-26.

63.

64.

[Mel'gunov],
source
The

"Turisty," 1-2,
isM. A. Titmarsh

in Ralph

E. Matlaw,

(Bloomington,

Ind.,

6.

on
The Kickleburys
[William Makepeace
Thackeray],
theRhine, 3d ed. (London,
34 (see also Buzard,
Beaten Track, 90). For a translation
1851),
that omits the original's
to Russian
satirical references
see
tu
abroad,
gamblers
"Angliiskie
trans. A. Butakov,
no. 6 (1851):
Vill'iama
Tekkereia,"
risty. Ocherk
zapiski 5,
Otechestvennye
pt. 8:106-44.

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860

Slavic Review

soup, or koulebiak on the menus? Why no "Russian

spoken" signs?
loss of the Crimean War, the British empire's wealth and
Despite Russia's
he imagines "we"
because
power do not answer that riddle for Mel'gunov
are as rich as the
even
he
stand out as big
maintains,
English. Russians,
the
Russians
abroad.65
Still,
(and gamblers)
spenders
just do not match
tour
Continental
the clout of the English, the undisputed
of
the
top dogs
ist circuit.
a
political
concerning
Mel'gunov's
English power displays
perplexity
in his effort to harness
tourism to the reform
naivete further manifested
two
delineates
of Russia. Having
characterized
the English, Mel'gunov
a
of
the
and
civic
Russian
turisty:
categories
modern-day
yokel majority
as a trait
minded
elite cohort. He defines provincialism
cutting across this
in the west,
he writes, tend to act like "provincials"
divide. "We Russians,"
amazed at everything we see. But this "we" is disingenuous.
What gradually
on tour, alien
is a construct of the hard-core Russian provincial
emerges
to the author
cultural competence,
in terms of travel agenda,
gender,
in Asya,
the motif of telltale clothing
and personal
savoir faire. Echoing
some recent Russian
visitors
has
made
asserts
that
the
of
Mel'gunov
garb
west Europeans
But the most alienating
take them for Samoyeds.
thing
tourists is that they are "parasites" with no serious
about common Russian
interests. They "travel not with the aim of learning something beneficial
or Pe
but rather for the same reason that country people
go toMoscow
no
to keep them at home. Such is the
have
when
they
occupation
tersburg
the contingent of tourists
Russians who comprise
majority of vagabonding
in the strict sense of the word."66 As for the flightiest of the parasites,
they
as
women:
are
chatter
types them
people
Mel'gunov
apparently Russian
as
Sistine Madonna.
they stand in front of Raphael's
ing about their dresses
consumers Mel'gunov
are
has in
Russian
the
main
Such women
probably
land for tourists," a "pandemonium
mind when he calls Paris a "promised
of earthly, shopper's delights."67
that
nonetheless
concludes
While writing off most turisty,Mel'gunov
Russian
citizens. The precondition
to the west can produce
better
trips
and receptive
is that the travelers be properly prepared
(qualifications
to
need
Such people
the author seems to grant exclusively
gentlemen).
It suffices for them to "absorb" western
not pursue formal studies abroad.
in Italy with its vivifying
of civilization," particularly
"atmosphere
Europe's
culture and poetic
climate and wealth of art. Enriched
by lofty European
to the
to
contribute
return
and
home
tourists
these
eager
scenery,
ready
tasks of reform. But exactly how is such a travel regime to translate into
remains a mystery. Mel'gunov
effective work?68 This question
clearly felt
a need
tourism abroad, but in the end he merely
to legitimize Russian
the hope that itmight be nationally beneficial.
articulated
bage

65.
66.
67.
68.
about

[Mel'gunov],
Ibid., 5-6,
Ibid., 6, 8.

"Turisty,"
10, 11.

Ibid., 11. For Mel'gunov's

work ethic,
the Protestant

Reformation,"

2-3,

7-10.

subsequent
see Shaskho,

reflections,
anticipating
"Nikolai Alexandrovich

Max

ideas

Weber's

Mel'gunov

258-65.

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on

the

The Divisive Modern

Russian

Tourist Abroad

861

on Tour

Raznochintsy

to shore up a collapsing
their social caste
travel culture where
a
united front, to
liberals
Russia's
gentry
presented
reigned supreme,
travel
with
the
snobbish
discontent
scene.69
express
postwar
By contrast,
a varied
commoners
of the westernizing
picture.
intelligentsia presented
never
in leisure
Chernyshevskii
indulged
Practicing what he preached,
luminaries did, however, and in so doing con
travel.70 Other raznochintsy
on the gentry writers' dim view of the Russian
tourist crowd. While
verged
summer
to his wife that
at a German
wrote
of
in
the
1858,
spa
Shelgunov
our so-called
within
educated
middle
class
the "educational
disparities
are most evident abroad. That's
the reason, no doubt,
that respectable
over here do not like to socialize with strangers from home."
Russians
on
at the spa identified Russians
Like the narrator of Asya, Shelgunov
run into a lot of Russians
to
avoided
them:
"I've
I
and
here;
sight
talking
In seeking

had

think they're Russians because

gen
only Austrian aristocrats and Russian
so
erals and their ladies could behave
similarly
stupidly."71 Dobroliubov
in Dresden
in June 1860. He felt
recoiled from Russian
tourists en masse
their numbers
there had reached
the point of "indecency."
Surrounded
at
to
inane
Russian
loudmouths
the
he
hide
his national
opera,
by
sought
man seated next to him a
he
asked
the
German,
identity. Using
question,
was a Russian
only to discover that this stranger, too,
holding himself aloof
from the tourist crowd.72
of tourism assumed
varied public postures,
pursuers
Raznochintsy
a strict
to
from
tour
of
observation
ranging
regime
political
relishing
to
ism as an "emancipatory
and democratizing"
chance
opportunity?a
in
latter
The
aestheticism."73
self-enhancing
participate
"cosmopolitan
in "Parizhskie pis'ma
finds strong expression
(Letters from Paris, 1858)
on
and "Londonskie
zametki"
London,
(Observations
1859) by Mikhail
a poet from the wilds of Siberia who had arrived in
Mikhailov,
Petersburg
in 1846 and made his mark as a translator of Heinrich Heine.74
Displaying
69.

See

the Russian
narrator
between
and vulgar Russian
oppositions
gentleman
in the feuilletons
abroad
of Druzhinin,
i uveselitel'nye
"Zametki
ocherki
za
za
turista: Nashi
and
"Russkie
(1857)
(1860),
granitseiu"
petersburgskogo
granitseiu"
Sobranie sochinenii, 8:518-30,
546-74.
70. In the summer of 1859 Chernyshevskii
to London
took a short
to discuss
po
trip

men

also

and women

litical differences
with Herzen.
A lost letter Chernyshevskii
wrote his father from Lubeck
western
His
father answered:
"If
is really
abroad
apparently
castigated
Europe.
being
not
our
then
what
it
is
that
attracts
the
over
of
entertaining,
throngs
compatriots
going
there?" See N. M. Chernyshevskaia,
i deiatel'nosti N. G.
(Mos
Letopis'zhizni
Chernyshevskogo
cow, 1953),
172.

71. N. V Shelgunov,
letters from 21 and 27 June
Mikhailov,
2:89, 91.
Vospominaniia,
letter to M.
72. Dobroliubov,
I. Shemanovskii,
9:422.
73. Urry, Consuming
Places,
toWork,"
"Travel
663.

Koenker,
74.
a

Kirghiz
member

167;

and

commentary

1858,

in Shelgunov,

11/23

June

concerning

1860,

Shelgunova,
Sobranie

Soviet

and

sochinenii,

experience

Born

in

in Orenburg
in Uletskaia
and raised
was
Mikhailov
the son of
Zashchita,
a Russian
servant
and
civil
in the
a
princess
mining
industry. A serf owned
by
of the Aksakov
was beaten
to death
for
family, Mikhailov's
paternal
grandfather

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862 SlavicReview
commoner with little formal edu
the attainments of a knowledge-hungry
are
to English, French,
allusions
larded
with
these
travel
cation,
pieces
or
as
as
in all those
well
words
Russian
and
German,
literature,
phrases
to Latin.75 While having different thematic
in
addition
foreign languages,
nar
a cost-conscious
travelogue cycles both model
emphases, Mikhailov's
a
with
rator seeking to combine progressive
reportage
personal
political
quest for cultural capital. The political voice is assertive but falters.76
a social
to ex
exude
Mikhailov's
eagerness
underdog's
travelogues
himself
features
The
author
his
horizons.
cultural
lightheartedly
pand
as an "inveterate tourist,"
to find a tower closed in a gothic
disappointed
not a "pedant"
in
While
he visits in Normandy.
insisting he is
building
new
a
these matters, he finds useful his John Murray guidebook,
relatively
the cultural
To indicate his standing among
for Russians.
vade mecum
but
not name this pocket-sized
does
he
merely calls it
guide
cognoscenti,
it
in
coined
had
his "little red book"?the
pronouncing
phrase Thackeray
an "infallible" traveler's aid.77 Mikhailov
in depicting
sounds most modern
his attainment of gentry-style travel comforts on a low budget. Recounted
in the opening pages of "Letters from Paris," his big coup in this regard is
a charming but
"not
to have found the Hotel Moliere,
place
inexpensive
des Ital
in Reichard's
famous guide." On a side street near the Boulevard
little pies," "tasty ice cream," and
iens and close to a bakery with "excellent
one can sit
a
a "svelte" blonde
has
hotel
the
saleswoman,
courtyard where
after dinner to enjoy a cup of coffee and smoke a cigar.78 A current symbol
the raznochi
in Russia,
the cigar alone proclaims
of "gentry hedonism"
to leisure travel.79
nets tourist has stormed old social barricades
travel cycles, a political purpose
In both of Mikhailov's
agenda jostles
scenario
the
self-enhancement
(the quest for cultural capital). Po
against
the author
between
litical perspicuity notably serves to draw a boundary
of Ver
on tour. Visiting
the art gallery at the palace
and other Russians
French
of
a Russian
bedazzled
sailles, he encounters
by paintings
family
Our
the assault on Sevastopol').
royalty and military triumphs (including
the French Revolu
of images concerning
narrator deplores
the absence
re
tion, but the family does not get the point. He alone sees the "sword of
protesting

against

his master's

broken

"Mikhail Illarionovich Mikhailov

1950),l:v-ix.
75. Mikhailov's

promise

(1830-65),"

to

give

him

his

freedom.

See

P. Fateev,

inMikhailov, Sochineniia, 2 vols. (Chita,

Sovremennik
in six
installments,
appeared
pis'ma"
zametki"
"Londonskie
and
ap
1859);
1858)
(January-February
(September-December
Sovremennik
in four installments,
1859).
(June-September
peared
affairs." See Jennifer
"to touch lightly on political
had advised Mikhailov
76. Nekrasov
1847-1865"
Ideas about Women,
Radical
and Russian
"M.
L.
Mikhailov
(PhD
Lonergan,
166.
of Bristol,
1995),
diss., University
Sovremennik
"Parizhskie
77. Mikhailov,
1858): pt. 1:199, 212, 215.
(November
pis'ma,"
see
and Baedeker
and the rise of the Murray
For the Thackeray
empires,
guidebook
quote
75.
Beaten
Buzard,
Track, 65-79,
esp.
Sovremennik
"Parizhskie
78. Mikhailov,
1858):
pt. 1:269-71.
(September
pis'ma,"
recom
Dostoevskii
Reichard
user of the
of Heinrich
Another
(1751-1828),
guidebook
26 June/8 July 1862, Polnoe sobranie sochine
mended
it, in a letter to N. N. Strakhov,
buying
28, bk. 2:26 and bk. 5:362.
1972-90),
nii, 30 vols.
(Leningrad,
48.
and Indulgence,"
"Between
Sacrifice
from Klioutchkine,
79. Quote
"Parizhskie

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Russian

The Divisive Modern

Tourist Abroad

863

action" hanging over France?a

political motif running through "Letters
from Paris." Alienation
from the bourgeoisie
in
finds further expression
cure in Trouville. A Russian
account of his sea-bathing
Mikhailov's
path
breaker
all French),
there, he avoids the other vacationers
(apparently
to befriend
instead several children from local working-class
families.80
concern
Mikhailov's
also
much
the
of
with
condition
express
travelogues
women
in France and England.81
But all the same (and pace Soviet commentary),
his authorial persona
to face poverty. After
at the scenery and a series
is reluctant
marveling
in Normandy,
of gothic cathedrals
and churches
the Russian
traveler,
en route to
comes upon a row of hovels and asks his coach
Jumieges,
man
to stop. Finding
the door of a hut ajar, the author enters and walks
around
the empty place. Wretchedness
is evident
("pitiful bedding made
of pauper's
for
the
but
naturalistic
details are left to
rags,"
example),
for
for
themselves.
As
the
back
in
his
traveler,
coach, he is pleased
speak
to announce
that "the new, clean houses of Duclair
finally shielded me
from those walls" of sooty hovels that had lined the road.82 Mikhailov
also
erects an aesthetic barrier between himself and the London
proletariat.
In the opening
installment of his London
cycle, the tourist author visits
the Tower. But in the main, he gazes upon built culture that attests to
Britain's technological
industrial might, and status as the hub
expertise,
of global commerce
(bridges, docks, factories, and a tunnel under con
struction beneath

the Thames).
The evidence of the British
"un
empire's
so
is
it
that
makes
the
precedented
thrilling
"you forget
equally
toilers. The tourist knows the poor
unprecedented
poverty" of London's
are there. Not because
he sees them, however, but because
he has read
about them in Thomas Hood's
The
Hood
the last
poetry.
travelogue gives
an
word
unfortunate
"O
God!
That
bread
should
be so
(with
misprint):
so
And
and
flesh
as a
blood
here
dear, /
[sic]!"83 Poetry operates
cheep
mechanism
real
the
author
A
from
similar
distancing
shielding
poverty.
evocation
of the poor occurs in the second installment, with further allu
sions to Hood.
The third installment
then leaves the proletariat
behind,
to take the reader on a tour of "monumental
with long stops at
London,"
St. Paul's and Westminster
in the Poets' Corner of the
Abbey.84 Lingering
to
reflect
the
or commemorated
British
authors
buried
upon
there,
Abbey
the Russian
traveler accentuates
his own identity as a creative writer rather
than a political reporter.
Mikhailov's
scenario of tourism as personal
left it to
emancipation
a
to
a
more
Russian
travel
progressive
promote
purely political
agenda.
wealth"

80. Mikhailov,
(November
81. On

"Parizhskie

1858): pt.
Mikhailov

1:182,
as a

pis'ma,"
191-93.

Sovremennik

(October

1858):

pt.

1:468-69

and

of women's
see
in Russia,
proponent
leading
emancipation
and the
of the Woman
Stites, "M. L. Mikhailov
Canadian
Emergence
Question,"
Slavic Studies 3, no. 2 (Summer
and
"M. L. Mikhailov,"
188-93.
178-99;
1979):
Lonergan,
82. Mikhailov,
"Parizhskie
Sovremennik
(November
1858):
pis'ma,"
pt. 1:221.
83. Mikhailov,
"Londonskie
Sovremennik
zametki,"
225-38.
(June 1859): pt. 3:219,
84. Mikhailov,
"Londonskie
Sovremennik
zametki,"
1859),
(July and August
reprinted
in his Sochineniia,
3 vols.
342-55.
3:340-41,
(Moscow,
1958),

Richard

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864

SlavicReview

a
Dobroliubov's
(From Turin, 1861) would
essay "Iz Turina"
supply such
concerns
in March
of that year, Dobroliubov's
narrative. Written
report
new
but bristles with innuendos
about
the need
for
Italy's
parliament
cover his
to
in
Russia.
Dobroliubov
declines
action
revolutionary
"trip
so as to stick to the
was
toMilan
and Venice,"
politics,
point.85 The point
as espoused
in Sovremennik under Chernyshevskii.
Dobroliubov's
letters,
an
him
show
travel
had
afforded
liberation.
however,
astounding
personal
to an Italian woman
He even proposed
and thought of living
marriage
a
in Paris, he told a
from
abroad
homey pension
indefinitely.86 Writing
a
was
to
friend he
resemble
human being," a person with
Russian
"coming
on call to exercise my
not
to
live and enjoy life, and
the "right
exclusively
sees me as the acidic
Here
talents for the benefit of mankind.
nobody
me
an
In western
of venom."87
critic, nobody
expects from
outpouring
as the
from
his
Russian
found
release
Dobroliubov
identity
public
Europe,
cause
to
the radical
"acidic critic." But his devotion
evidently prompted
return
of self through tourism. Upon
that expansion
him not to publicize
as
his
in August
death
1861, he resumed his role
gadfly until
ing home
that November.

Tourism

as Betrayal

of National

Identity

the liberation of the serfs, there was a growing sense among edu
to have put
that the time had come to work. This appears
cated Russians
leisure travelers on the defensive.88 More
however,
charged,
politically
were perceptions
of tourists' similarity to emigrants now leaving Russia
In 1860 Svistok (Whistle, the satirical supple
to avoid economic
ruination.
new need to
to Sovremennik) had run a piece
ment
indicating the
specify
or
on
a
one
was
whether
leaving for good. Co
trip
leaving Russia
pleasure
za
"Ot"ezzhaiushchim
and Nekrasov,
authored
grantsu"
by Dobroliubov
tour
the
between
distinction
blurred
those
abroad,
1860)
(To
departing
fatherland
the
ism and the outflow of "respectable
abandoning
people
of their
consolation"
and therefore requiring
(that is, the maintenance
mo
different
with
to
in
Sovremennik
foreign lands). Groups
subscriptions
an
current: "Everything
in
here
tives appeared
overpowering
swept along
are made
two months
in ad
abroad now; coach reservations
ismoving
were
are
those
But
of
how
mobbed."89
the
vance;
many
people
steamships
After

85.

Dobroliubov,

86.

Dobroliubov,

Sobranie
"Iz Turina,"
sochinenii, 7:23.
letters toM. A. Markovich,
28 May/9
June
473-75.
1861, Sobranie sochinenii, 9:471-72,

shevskii, 12/24 June

health.
of Dobroliubov's
because
the marriage
bade
precarious
letter to A. F. Ravelina,
87. Dobroliubov,
14/26 November

1861
The

and

to N. G.
Cherny
for
parents

woman's

1860,

Sobranie

sochinenii,

9:454.
1860-1865
The Stir ofLiberation,
88. Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky:
1986), 62. See
(London,
there her sister Nadezhda's
Polina
evokes
6 September
1863, 215-16:
Suslova, Diary,
studies at the time,
to
medical
of traveling, particularly
ascetic disapproval
Italy. Pursuing
first woman
doctor.
Russia's
become
Suslova would
Nadezhda
For
7:469.
za
Sobranie
in Dobroliubov,
"Ot"ezzhaiushchim
89.
sochinenii,
granitsu,"
see A. Maksimovich,
"Nekrasov?uchastnik
exact
'Svistka,'" Literaturnoe
data,
publication
also

nasledstvo49-50

(1946): 319.

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The Divisive Modern

Russian

Tourist Abroad

865

and Nekrasov
Dobroliubov
tourists, how many were emigrants? While
a censor
a
to
make
this
the
indeterminacy
joke,
belatedly deplored
sought
"our fatherland's
abnormal
satire for having exposed
situation."90 People
worried about the national
economy were not laughing either. According
to an article of 1862, the official number of Russians
abroad had reached

275,582 in 1860 (as opposed to 23,704 in 1830), and all those people were

not
draining wealth away from home.91 In
breaking down this figure, the
author left open the possibility that at least some of the offending spend
tourists. That
"awful number!"
of 275,582 would
thrifts were
resurface
as an undifferentiated

of tourists and emigrants

collective
in Aksakov's
"Iz
.92
article
Parizha"
(From Paris, April 1863)
treatment of the Russian
tour
Before taking a closer look at Aksakov's
a
as
us
ist
let
the similar orientation
consider
of
betrayer of Russianness,
Dostoevskii's
renowned Zimnie zametki o letnikh vpechatleniiakh (Winter notes
on summer
based on his trip of 1862 and first serialized
in
impressions),
and
Vremia (February
March
native
1863). In conformity to Dostoevskii's
soil conservatism, which staked Russia's
future on the folk, he perceived
as a manifestation
travel
of
the
Russian
elite's traditional,
"servile
foreign
a mentor
in the eighteenth-century
worship" of western Europe.93 Finding
Denis Fonvizin,
the author of Winter Notes urges his compatri
Gallophobe
a leash to
ots to throw off the west's
"leading strings,"
help toddlers walk.94
west ismoribund,
Since the bourgeois
and ruthlessly indi
materialistic,
Russians
in the spirit of
should cease going abroad
vidualistic, educated
to
connect
colonized
at
need
instead
with
the
peasants
pilgrims.95 They
In their vil
home, those "50 million" who "have remained here" in Russia.
are
those "simple Russians"
the Russian Chris
lage communes,
guarding
tian principle of brotherhood
that may regenerate
Since
dying Europe.96
90. Quoted

1981-85), 2:362.
91.

in N. A. Nekrasov,

"Zametki

U.,

Polnoe

o khoziaistvennom

1862): 239-41.

sobranie
polozhenii

sochinenii
Rossii,"

i pisem,
Russkii

15 vols.

(Leningrad,

vestnik 41

(September

"Iz Parizha,"
4. Aksakov
a mis
92.
misdates
the source
[Aksakov],
(cited just above),
take repeated
in Dostoevskii,
Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5:399.
93. F. M. Dostoevskii,
Zimnie zametki o letnikh
Polnoe
sobranie sochinenii,
vpechatleniiakh,
see
5:61. For an English
Winter Notes on Summer
trans.
translation,
Dostoevsky,
Impressions,
Patterson
David
from this translation
(1988; reprint, Evanston,
1997).
quotes
Subsequent
are sometimes
amended.
For an analysis of Dostoevskii's
as a
narrative
War
post-Crimean
effort to reestablish
"national
consult Offord, Journeys
to a Graveyard,
(199),
self-respect"
197-220.
94. Dostoevskii,
Zimnie zametki, 5:55. On
i literatura
"Dostoevskii
Russian
puteshestvii,"

see II'ia Pomerantsev,

Fonvizin,
paraphrasing
Literature 47', no. 1
98-107;
2000):
(January
of Earthly
on
Fonvizin
and Dostoevskii
Delights':

and Derek

"'Beware
the Garden
Offord,
in France,"
and East
Slavonic
Review
625-42.
78, no. 4 (October
2000):
European
see
95. On
the colonial
at the Border:
Travel, No
import,
Ingrid Kleespies,
"Caught
and Russian
in Karamzin's
National
Letters of a Russian
Travelerand
Dosto
madism,
Identity
Slavic and East
no. 2 (2006):
evsky's Winter Notes on Summer Impressions,"
European Journal50,
Life

and Offord,
to a
on the
252. More
of
Journeys
Graveyard,
generally
"dynamics
... at the level of narrative
and imagination,"
consult Kristi Siegel,
"Introduc
tion: Travel Writing
and Travel Theory,"
in Kristi Siegel,
ed., Issues in Travel Writing: Empire,
3-4.
(New York, 2002),
Spectacle, and Displacement
241-42,
248;
colonization

96.

Dostoevskii,

Zimnie

zametki, 5:51.

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866

Slavic Review

the traveling narrator of Winter Notes is the sole consciousness

this
behind
he thereby stakes his claim tomoral
over
Rus
the
realization,
superiority
sian tourist crowd.97
The enduring
and incon
tendentious
literary interest of Dostoevskii's
sistent travel account
lies in the strident, ironic
of
the
authorial
dialogism
voice. Engaging various imagined listeners and
conducting mini-dialogues
inside his own head, the storyteller of Winter Notes is a direct antecedent
of Dostoevskii's
a liver
man,"
"underground
complete with
complaint.98
The bilious narrator of a
to
a
west
as
the
enters
con
trip
parody of elitist
structs of the common Russian
tourist as a surface-skimming
provincial.
an envisioned
audience
of sophisticates
Addressing
("my friends," "you"),
he confesses he went abroad
to see
"everything, absolutely
everything"
in two and a half months. Moreover,
he reports, he did in fact see "virtu
ally everything," the sole omissions being Rome and St. Paul's.99 But after
pitting the self's absurdly frantic agenda
against "your" style of "proper"
as
abroad. He
travel, the narrator casts all of "us" Russians
provincials
so
to
with
the
Russians
enslaved
that
begins
stupidest?the
guidebooks
if the latter tells them they are
at
The
Three
Graces
Peter
Paul
looking
by
Rubens,
it, even though what actually hangs before them is
they believe
a
a "side of beef."
as the Russian
painting of
quest for culture
Desperate
men and
it
differs
from
the
"mechanical
of
be,
may
curiosity"
"English
women
in guidebooks
that they hardly glance at the
tourists," so absorbed
"our curiosity is savage, nervous,
the narrator,
sights.100 "No," proclaims
we are
or travelers, "this alone can be said
ravenous." Whether
emigrants
about the whole bunch of us: we no sooner pass Eydtkuhnen
than we bear
a
run
to
resemblance
those
little
who
about after
striking
unhappy
dogs
not fit the
This
lost
their
does
master."101
confusing generalization
having
as
narrator
travelers
the
Nor
evoked
his
audience.
cosmopolitan
initially
does the dog image suit an emigre such as Aleksandr Herzen, whom Dos
toevskii had met in London.102
Adrift somewhere between
the cosmopolitans
and the "dogs," the au
thorial persona of Winter Notes comes across as a sassy innocent abroad, by
turns aggressive and humiliated.
This "underground"
type of personality
97.

over Dostoevskii's
literature
has glossed
anxious
scholarly
self-description
see his letter
too rushed
to write
tourist"
about Paris:
(prostoi turist),
properly
sobranie sochinenii, 28, bk. 2:27. Soviet com
26 June/8
Strakhov,
July 1862, Polnoe
on this letter deleted
turist," in ibid., 5:357.
"prostoi
i literatura
and Pomerantsev,
"Dostoevskii
Frank, Dostoevsky,
247-48;
233-38,

The

as a "mere
to N. N.
mentary
98.

94.
puteshestvii,"
99. Dostoevskii,
100.
Ibid., 5:63.
Dostoevskii's
mistranslated

Zimnie

49-50.
zametki, 5:46-47,
alone
zametki calls the English
turistki).
"turisty" (and feminine
a "modest
himself
traveler"
designates
(skromnyi puteshestvennik),

Zimnie

persona
as "modest

Winter Notes, 46.

101. Dostoevskii,
102. Having
a Russian
become
Nikolai

tourist."

Zimnie

an

interview

tourist

Zimnie

Dostoevskii,

zametki, 5:63.
with Herzen

was

an honor.

herself
Describing
of Russians"
"a multitude

attraction.

showed
wife
Ogarev's
and garden
of Herzen's
proshlogo, 98. See also Gleason,
room,

See

London

mansion

Young Russia,

96-97.

over

as

zametki,

But
the

5:76,

and

Dostoevsky,

by the late 1850s, he had

of a museum,"
"custodian

the study, dining

the years. Shelgunova,

room,
living
Iz dalekogo

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The Divisive Modern

Russian

Tourist Abroad

867

one of Dostoevskii's
claims to fame as a novelist, but in
would become
connection.103 As we saw
this early instance there seems to be a Turgenev
as a badly dressed, anx
Russian
tourist
the
fashioned
earlier, Asya
typical
in the grips of an inferiority/superiority
ious person manifestly
complex
vis-a-vis the west. Winter Notes fleshes out such a traveler and gives him a
a
voice. Like the silent tourists of Asya, Dostoevskii's
storyteller radiates
flea-bitten image, and he arrives in the west with a sneer on his face, due
in part to his horrible train ride into Germany. The first object of his scorn
In his view, the touted cathedral
resembles a gi
cathedral.
is the Cologne
a "haberdasher's
inadver
knickknack."104
Perhaps
gantic "paperweight,"
he
he
is
about
souvenirs
this
already thinking
tently,
image suggests
might
eau de
immediately follows his firstpurchase:
Cologne
buy abroad. There
a relentless hawker who simply forced the money out of him.
bought from
A more galling encounter
lies just ahead. Although
the narrator has not
to the German
toll collector
uttered a word, he feels sure he looks Russian
see
our
at a new bridge. The German's
declare:
"You
eyes
bridge, miser
able Russian; well you are a worm before our bridge and before every
German
because
the traveler
you do not have such a bridge."105 Naturally,
overrated.
the
bridge
proclaims
on the
Further humiliation
shopping front awaits the "underground"
French parents with their
tourist in Paris. The sight of contented-looking
children by a fountain in the Palais Royal garden
strikes him as a nause
He
then characterizes
Parisians
complacency.
ating picture of bourgeois
as
ever ready to fleece
transac
in
commercial
money-grubbers
people
but they make
tions. The French are contemptible,
loathe
you
yourself
as a
"Enter a store to buy something, and the lowest salesclerk
shopper.
will crush you, simply crush you with his ineffable nobility." Given
"your
and the "disgusting ten francs" you had meant
unenviable
appearance"
to spend, "you begin to despise yourself to the utmost," as the clerk pro
items. Filled with remorse, you toss out the
poses a series of expensive

entire hundred
francs you have in your pocket,
for
"your eyes begging
seems
This
incident
headed
ironic
toward
the
conclusion
that
giveness."
as a
a
a
the narrator's
is
of
virtue,
insecurity
shopper
actually
badge
sign
of the Russian
soul uncorrupted
But confusion on
by French materialism.
asserts that Russian
this point arises when the crushed persona
shoppers,
both at home and abroad,
"have a burning desire to show they have im
mense
sums of
we may recall, matches
the claim about
money."106 This,
that
and
made
about Rus
conspicuous
consumption
gambling
Mel'gunov
sian turisty in western Europe.
The
theme of consumerism
to national
in relation
identity takes a
103.

Dostoevskii
from
received
advice
before
abroad:
Frank, Dosto
Turgenev
going
179.
Favorable
discussion
of
Fathers
and
Sons
in
Zimnie
5:59-60.
Note
zametki,
evsky,
figures
also the similar descriptions
of Russian
tourists' faces:
(blank perplexity,
tupoe nedoumen'e
in Asya) and tupoe ozhidanie
(blank expectation,
and Dostoevskii,
Zimnie zametki, 5:63.
104. Dostoevskii,
Zimnie zametki, 5:48.
105.

Ibid.,

5:48-49.

106.

Ibid.,

5:76-77.

in Zimnie

zametki).

See Turgenev,

PSS,

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7:75,

868

Slavic Review

somber turn in the London

sections of Winter Notes. The storyteller now
offers nightmare visions of urban squalor and the International
Exposition
in the Crystal Palace.
In the streets and taverns of the Haymarket
slums
at night, he plunges
into the local crowds?the
and
drunks,
prostitutes,
a gesture of Karamzin's,
to
he
children.
neglected
gives money
Repeating
a child. By
encounters
these
with
urban
Dostoevskii's
misery,
dramatizing
to
narrator
tourists who come
blinkered
Russian
implicitly reproaches
see
to
for
and
the
like.
As
London
museums,
monuments,
only
bridges,
it strikes the narrator as a scene from the
the crowd in the Crystal Palace,
out strolling for
Apocalypse?a
terrifying "herd" of "well-fed dilettantes
from "all over
their own pleasure." He estimates that "millions" of people
the face of the earth" have streamed to this palace of visual and material
out Russians, he knows some are there
not
singling
consumption.107 While
his fellow travelers on the train from home
included a couple of
because
to
man
and
left
their
"estate
owners"?a
wife
who
elderly
family behind
an abandoned
to
mention
of
the
the
go
Exposition.108 Though marginal,
to this narrative's anxious
theme of a dissolving Russian
family contributes
social and moral order.
In the "terrified" narrator's eyes, the spectacle of consumption
in the
an
to
national
Russian
imminent
Palace
identity.
represents
Crystal
danger
to be the power of consumerism.
The greatest source of his fear appears
a great deal of eternal
"You feel that itwould
require
spiritual resistance
... not to idolize Baal," the
western
and denial not to succumb
god of the
seems
do
that
if
of
it
Scariest
succumb,
all,
"you"
"you"
bourgeoisie.109
lack of ac
will be violating bedrock values of Russianness
(the purported
tenets of native
of brotherhood?major
and the principle
quisitiveness
to the narrator's depictions
of himself
In counterpoint
soil conservatism).
is
consumerism
that
intimates
the
vision
of
the
Exposition
buying things,
so mighty that itmay seduce
tourist into betraying the most
the Russian
or her national
is
culture. Gender
fundamental,
religious principles of his
a bit later, when the storyteller imagines how
if
only
definitely implicated,
of Paris.110
flock to the "huge haberdasheries"
ladies would
Russian
"From
Paris" also
Like Winter Notes, Aksakov's
reports
journalistic
in the Cafe
Featured
about tourism as a threat to Russianness.
worried
national
combines
persona
snobbery with Slavophile
Anglais, Aksakov's
He
characterizes
ism and Great Russian
Poland).
(vis-a-vis
imperialism
traveler abroad as a "vulgar" (poshlyi) wastrel and "le bourgeois
the Russian
amidst the gentry." Aksakov
of Moliere?a
petty bourgeois
gentilhomme
since the end of the
into Europe
claims such Russians have been pouring
flock
Russians
of post-Emancipation
Crimean War. But the provincialism
to the west, either as "emigrants" or "simple travelers," has purport
ing
in boundless
Russia has not sent
more
literal. "What place
edly become
all districts
over here? Urzhum,
its representatives
Sterlitamak,
Belebei,
5:69-70.

107.

Ibid.,

108.

Ibid.,

5:52.

109.

Ibid.,

5:69-70.

110.

Ibid.,

5:77.

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The Divisive Modern

Russian

Tourist Abroad

869

now extend
to Paris, to
and Viatka provinces
of the Orenburg,
Kazan,
come
to
But
from
and
whatever
their
Baden!"
wherever
Dresden,
they
all
the
Russians
abroad
deserve
the
aims, virtually
275,582
contempt
they
arouse
in the west, especially now when the empire's
of the
suppression
are con
them "unwelcome
Polish revolt has made
[guests]." The Russians
a
to hide their national origins?by
seek
because
temptible
they
keeping
low profile on the Polish question, by laboring to learn foreign languages
to pass as native speakers, and
by dressing
(especially French) well enough
manner
so as to blend
in with the cosmopolitan
in an ultra-fashionable
crowd. Even Russian
their vest
priests, claims Aksakov,
forego wearing
ments abroad, whereas
the clergymen of all other denominations
(includ
ing the Armenian Orthodox)
"freely stroll around Paris" in their churchly
are ashamed
snickers.
unafraid
of
of their
Only Russians
"provoking
garb,
their
their
This
themselves!"
customs,
clothing,
nationality,
purported
shame to be Russian makes
tourists all too similar to emigrants. Aksakov
an
as turncoats
imagines both groups
"economically,
exerting
morally,
on the homeland.111
and socially pernicious
impact"

the early reform era as a

My literary excursus has sought to establish
in the history of Russian
time when Rus
watershed
leisure travel?the
new aspect
sians first came to perceive
tourism abroad as a problematic
is
of their national
is
culture. What
turizm?
Who
exactly
doing it? Should
to
at home? What
in
of
the
be
work
all
done
be
anybody
doing it,
light
do
"our
tourists"
make
abroad?112
What
impressions
impact iswestern Eu
on
And
them'?
what
rope having
consequences
might creeping Russian
for
In
have
the
national
culture?
cosmopolitanism
raising such questions,
versus
Russians were engaging with new urgency the old issue of pleasure
as
in
now
an
leisure
travel.
tourism
of
purpose
They regarded
expression

associated
with faster forms of transport and growing num
modernity,
bers of travelers, but most of all with the breakdown
of old social norms:
the increasing accessibility of foreign journeys
to urbanites
and country
status
of
middle
socioeconomic
and
the
greater mobility of women
people
in particular.
On
the evidence
Russian
here, mid-nineteenth-century
presented
tourism abroad had a socially and nationally
divisive impact. As the so
cial diversity of the traveling population
increased, Russians
squared off
Russians
abroad.
of
Narratives
tourism
inscribed
iden
against
clashing
tities based on social estate, gender,
cultural
education,
interests, and
moral
values. Where
the traveling Russian
of a
gentry saw desecration
the commoner
Mikhailov
preserve,
formerly upper-class,
mainly male
a
in
his
extolled
trois)
menage
(traveling
publically
oppor
emancipatory
111.

"Iz Parizha,"
and Kas'ianov
"Iz Parizha
[Aksakov],
3-4;
[Ivan Aksakov],
(Pis'mo
no. 16 (10
1-3.
1863):
April
are described
as an
"Our tourists"
in Dresden
lot in Ivan Turgenev,
Fa
insipid
thers and Sons (1862),
trans. Constance
rev.
E. Matlaw
Garnett,
(New York,
1966),
Ralph
165. On
as sex tourists in Paris, see M. E.
former Russian
serf owners
Saltykov-Shchedrin,

11),"Den',
112.

"Nasha

1863),

obshchestvennaia

Sobranie

sochinenii,

zhizn':

20 vols.

russkikh
Podvigi
'guliashchikh
6:99-109.
(Moscow,
1965-77),

liudei'

za

granitsei"

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(May

870

Slavic Review

for their part, agonized

about tourism as
nationalists,
tunity. Conservative
a menace
to Russianness.
a
in
made
Dostoevskii,
fact,
staying home
signi
fier of uncorrupted
national
"50
million"
In
nontravelers).
identity (the
fault
lines
in
Russian
and
the
the
reform
nation,
dramatizing
society
early
era's public conversation
about tourism may well have deepened
them.
was
no
neat
there
between
Westernizers
and
Dos
Still,
split
Slavophiles.
most
con
in
toevskii,
notably, engaged
against Chernyshevskii
polemics
women's
art,
socialism, religion,
liberation,
science,
cerning
technology,
and the meaning
in particular. But in Dostoevskii's
of the Crystal Palace
as a well-fed dilettante,
there resonates an
image of the tourist-consumer

asceticism akin to Chernyshevskii's.

anti-bourgeois
has suggested
that the early reform Russian
My comparative
approach
termed
here
the
club"
elitist English
syndrome
"gentlemen's'
paralleled
to the upsurge of English pleasure
to
reactions
the
Continent
follow
trips
too
In
demise.
both
observers
believed
cases, perturbed
ing Napoleon's
to
uncouth
had
travel.
in
But
Russia,
many uncongenial,
begun
people
unlike England,
such perceptions
coexisted with widespread
convictions
that all Russian
travel to western Europe
should yield educational
and
to pursue formal studies
moral benefits. This outlook favored trips abroad
or to observe
and so forth. But even the
schools, hospitals,
parliaments,
to
cultural
art-loving gentleman Mel'gunov
sought
legitimate highbrow
tourism as a civic project. In short, nationally distinct anxieties about tour
a vacation)
as idle
or gross
ism construed
('just"
pleasure
consumption
surfaced along the entire political
of
spectrum
early reform Russia.
This era's constitution
of a new travel scene raises issues for further
to the official
research. The overall picture offers a striking antecedent
of "socialist" tourism as a learning project, as opposed
Soviet promotion
to the "decadent" pursuit of pleasure
attributed to tourists of the capitalist
the two ages
west.113 One might also draw more
specific parallels between
nervousness
about cos
Russian
about
telltale
abroad,
(concerns
clothing
stereo
and
cuisine
from
for
Russian
home,
away
yearnings
mopolitanism,
as
women
But
the
reform
did
of
Russian
addicts).114
types
early
shopping
worries about tourism bespeak a passing crisis arising from the feeling that
to the national
endeavor
should now be contributing
all capable Russians
of post-Crimean
War reconstruction?
Or, on the contrary, did negative
con
of "our tourists" abroad
value judgments
(and maybe even at home)
tinue to loom large inmainstream
Russian writings? Did anti-tourism not
of imperial Russian
evolve as a constituent component
tourism, as Buzard
end
of
the
the
showed was the case for England?
By
imperial era, many
as
an
of
to
tourism
have
Russians
appear
enticing manifestation
regarded
a
nationalism
driven
and
multicultural
by
capitalist
"progress, modernity,

see
of tourism,
and practice
the meanings
"'There's
No Place Like Home':
E. Gorsuch,
760-66.
Slavic Review 62, no. 4 (Winter 2003):
see Michael
"Stalinist Westernizer?
114. On
such Soviet preoccupations,
David-Fox,
Slavic Review
of Europe,"
Arosev's
and Political
Aleksandr
62, no. 4
Depictions
Literary
"Time Travelers,"
and Gorsuch,
217-25.
733-59;
(Winter 2003):
113.

On

official

Soviet

efforts

toWork,"
"Travel
658-59;
Koenker,
in Late Stalinism,"
Soviet Tourism

to control

and Anne

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Divisive Modern

Russian

Tourist Abroad

871

the farcical Russian

engine."115 That story line could easily accommodate
of
the 1890s.116 What
in
Nikolai
Leikin's
novels
merchant
abroad
yokels
we
to
constructs
of
tourists
have
considered
the
here,
edgier
happened
not
the idle rich, the
insecure
is
clear:
the
however,
resentful,
provincial,
the acquisitive woman,
and the
vulgar spendthrift, the flighty parasite,
tell
further
work
will
whether
such
divisive
pernicious
cosmopolitan.
Only
a continuous
of
Russian
leisure
travelers
had
representations
history into
the Soviet period, when
the state sought with limited success to restrict
it oc
and tomake
its citizens' tourism, wherever
purely personal
agendas
a
of
nation
force
cohesive
socialist
curred,
building.
115. McReynolds,
Russian
42.
Tourist,"
"Prerevolutionary
see
116. On Leikin,
Russian
Tourist,"
17; and Steve
McReynolds,
"Prerevolutionary
Smith and Catriona
with
material
Louise
additional
"Commercial
Kelly,
by
McReynolds,
in Catriona
Culture
and Consumerism,"
eds., Constructing Rus
Kelly and David
Shepherd,

sian Culture in theAge ofRevolution: 1881-1940 (Oxford, 1998), 121-23.

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