Forging the Golden Ring: Tourist Development and Heritage Preservation in the Late Soviet Union

Abstract

The new tourist route created in the Soviet Union in the late 1960s under the name, ‘The Golden Ring’, was part of several interconnected, but not always mutually aligned, initiatives: the state's ambition to expand the tourism industry; the vocal campaign for the preservation of historic architecture; and efforts to regenerate provincial towns. A critical tension emerged between the promotion of a narrative of regeneration and progress towards socialist modernity and the drive to turn this new route into a sequence of ‘museum-towns’ (goroda-muzei), primarily functioning as a metaphor of (Russian) national origins. The article explores the complexities involved in trying to reconcile these drives, which were vital to forging ‘The Golden Ring’.