VOKS - Travel guides 1925-1929: from classic “Baedeker” to Bolshevik propaganda

• Authors: Olga Radchenko
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article traces travel guides for foreigners published in 1925, 1928 and 1929 by the All-Union Society for Cultural Ties Abroad (VOKS), using as a blueprint guides by the German publisher Baedeker. The aim of the article is to analyze the activities of the VOKS, as well other institutional players engaged in the preparation of the first travel guides for the Soviet Union in the 1920s, as elements of external propaganda of the USSR. Specifically, the article will analyze the structure and content of the Soviet travel guides and compare them with the German travel guide for Southern Russia of 1912. The article also concentrates on the planning, the wiring and printing of the texts, on relations with censorship offices, and on the distribution or even the destruction of all the printed copies. The preparation of the article was thanks to a research grant at the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt/ Oder, Program Erasmus Mundus, 2016.

Keywords

EN

Baedeker; Comintern; Soviet Union; travel guides; VOKS

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Institute of History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovanský přehled: historická revue pro dějiny střední, východní a jihovýchodní Evropy (Slavonic Review: Review for Central, Eastern and Southeastern European history)
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 107
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 315-340
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Olga Radchenko

• Slovanský přehled, redakce, Historický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i., Prosecká 76, 190 00 Praha 9, Czech Republic