More than 25 years on from the end of the Cold War, the portion of the world that is still under the control of self-proclaimed communists is little more than a rump of what it once was. By the mid-20th century, a third of the planet abided by the rules of the hammer and sickle – now, while China’s leaders may still officially adhere to Marxism-Leninism and pay homage to its ideological founders, its guiding ideology seems to reflect a more nationalist development agenda, with a rule that is legitimated on the idea of returning China to its supposedly rightful place as a great political and economic power.
To China’s east, the Democratic Republic of Korea seems to have become thoroughly dynastic, relying upon a slew of outlandish threats and military skirmishes with its neighbour in order to secure its international repute. Further south, Laos and Vietnam have also gone the way of China, dropping most of their ideological baggage and opting instead for a mix of free markets and state intervention in order to provide economic development. Both countries now retain their red flags simply as a matter of decorum. Cuba, meanwhile, still maintains many of the communist ‘planned economy’ ideals that it adopted in the 1960s, but has gradually liberalised over time – a process that looks set to accelerate, given its recent rapprochement with the US.
Communism’s deterioration as an ideological force has extracted it from the sphere of politics and repositioned it in the sphere
of tourism
What was once a global movement and a significant threat to the capitalist West has been reduced to a scant few regimes run by political parties whose names now seem little more than a 20th century quirk. Furthermore, the death of the communist era has unexpectedly opened up a new trend in tourism: from those wishing to see Cuba before it turns into another capitalist island of inclusive beach resorts, to Westerners who simply have a curiosity for yet another lost civilisation, communism’s deterioration as an ideological force has extracted it from the sphere of politics and repositioned it in the sphere of tourism. No longer a challenge or a fear, it now forms a key part of that market, where its remnants and relics can be observed free from political influence – as is part of the appeal of any other ruined civilisation.
The new society
Inbound tourism to communist states was once a sort of subversive and politically charged act. In the 1930s, as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was embarking upon its crash industrialisation schemes, many Westerners visited the new, strange country, often returning with a rather rose-tinted image. As Owen Hatherley noted in Landscapes of Communism, “There is a large and mostly disreputable history of those from Western Europe going east to see what they want to see, and finding it. In the 1920s, and especially the 1930s, sundry now-ridiculed communists, Fabians, pacifists and the merely curious visited the USSR, most of them returning from their heavily choreographed prepared trips with a skewed vision of the USSR as a model of a future society”.
Sidney and Beatrice Webb, co-founders of the London School of Economics and early Labour Party members, centred their 1935 book Soviet Communism: a New Civilisation? on their experiences of touring the country. The American journalist Lincoln Steffens, meanwhile, famously proclaimed after his trip to the USSR, “I have seen the future, and it works”. However, by the 1960s, the thrill of the Soviet Union had mostly dissipated: for a new generation of political radicals looking for societal inspiration beyond their own shores, it had come to be seen as a rather drab, bureaucratic society. No longer a blueprint for the future, it failed to excite the New Left.
For many, however, the revolution in Cuba during the 1950s provided a new, exotic and exciting alternative for politically charged and so-called ‘revolutionary’ tourism. One such tourist was the British writer Christopher Hitchens, who recounted in his memoir, Hitch 22, his experience of travelling to Cuba in 1968. “The Cuban Government had announced that any young leftist who wanted to break the embargo and could get to the island would be a guest in a special camp for ‘internationalists’”, he recalled. For someone such as himself, this, “with its chance to mingle with revolutionaries from all over the globe, was an unmissable invitation”. Wide-eyed young leftists from all over the world made the journey to see the revolution in action – a brand of tourism designed to offer a look at the model of a new society. But according to Hitchens, “those who went in search of socialist fatherlands” were ridiculed and dubbed as “Tourists of the Revolution”.
Relics of old regimes
With communism now dead and little belief in it being revived, the nature of tourism to countries that have at some point resided under its faded colours has changed: within Europe, those countries that once fell on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain have become a renewed object of interest. According to Hatherley, “Most recently… tourism has been directed towards the relics of the USSR and its satellites, to half-ironically admire the edifices left by a civilisation which it is hard to imagine died as recently as 25 years ago”.
Certain relics and remains of the communist era have become thoroughly trivialised, being reduced to little more than interesting historical quirks for Westerners to explore. In her book Poor But Sexy: Culture Clashes in Europe East and West, Polish writer Agata Pyzik lists several examples of this: the CIA spy base of Teufelsburg in West Berlin “is lauded as an exciting tourist attraction even in Ryanair’s in-flight magazine, confirming that any historical artefact can become banal in contemporary Berlin”, she wrote, just as the Mauermuseum at the site of the old Checkpoint Charlie crossing is full of souvenirs regarding the now defunct German Democratic Republic. In a separate article, Pyzik notes that Berlin, once the most potent symbol of the division of Europe, “has in recent years become a playground for creative types (from the former West, especially) who consume the remnants of the radical chic of Karl-Marx-Allee, Checkpoint Charlie souvenirs or play a little more ‘dangerous’ tourism, like going to derelict embassies or to the ex-CIA site”.
At the same time, many statues and monuments from communist regimes across Eastern Europe have been relocated to public parks, which are particularly popular among tourists: for instance, Grutas Park in Lithuania and Memorial Park in Budapest. “The past history has become a theme park for us”, according to Pyzik, who also recounts an encounter in Ukraine: while visiting an art gallery, she was asked whether she planned on visiting Chernobyl, with the question-asker evidently planning to do so themselves. “They obviously were [intending to go]: you could tell that with the same enthusiasm they’ll put on the famous silvery protective uniforms, as when they penetrated the galleries in New York or any other ‘hot’ place on the art map”, she wrote. “It didn’t occur to me that by then, in 2010, the sightseeing of the ruined ex-Soviet Union had become somewhat an industry, a kind of still-a-little-bit frightening type of tourism.”
According to Pyzik, such tourists are “scavenging some of the USSR’s darkest places, and Pripyat – the city in northern Ukraine, then USSR, [and] the nearest town to Chernobyl, where the reactor in a nuclear power plant erupted in 1986 – is their holy grail”. In many ways, due to being blamed upon bureaucratic mismanagement and by transpiring during the Soviet Union’s twilight years, the ruins of Chernobyl are the archetype of the remnants of the lost world of communism: according to the Soviet Union historian Sheila Fitzpatrick in London Review of Books, Chernobyl in particular has now become “a tourist destination for those with a ‘ruin chic’ sensibility”.
Before it’s too late
This sentiment can also be seen in relation to Cuba. Tourism on the island has gradually grown since the 1990s, due in part to liberalisations that were driven by a desperate need to secure a source of hard currency. For years, European holidaymakers have been strolling down the streets of Havana, marvelling at the old cars lining its streets – and they may soon be joined by American tourists, as the US’ ban on its citizens travelling to the country has now been lifted. While many Americans openly defied this ban for years, the laws nonetheless succeeded in reducing American tourism to the island to a mere trickle.
The recent ban lift has raised a lot of questions about whether now is the time to visit Cuba. One article in The Daily Telegraph extolled readers to “see Cuba now – before the tourism revolution takes hold”, referring to the potential for the island to begin to lean towards capitalism once the American tourists turn up. The article continued, “You have to wonder how long… Cuba will survive [as an area with] no advertisements. No high-rises. No malls, no ‘donut’ joints, no flagship stores, no chain coffee shops”. Similarly, The Independent offered its readers the following advice: “Don’t wait – enjoy this beautifully peculiar time capsule before it changes forever”.
Business Insider quoted one Israeli tourist who, when visiting Cuba’s Revolution Square, said, “I wanted to see it before… the modern, Western world comes here”. This is a sentiment that has boosted bookings to the country of late, with the first half of 2015 seeing tourist numbers rising by 17 percent. Cuba, then, is arguably seen as the last remains of the ‘other’ kind of communism: while the grey concrete regimes of Eastern Europe have long since dissolved, Cuba’s own brand of socialism remains unwavering, and so acts as the last chance for people to glimpse into the world of the hammer and sickle.
Curiously, however, this view of Cuba being the last place to see communism’s ideologies in practice is also prevalent among younger people in the former Soviet Union. Natalie Labina, who was born in Ukraine in the year that the USSR’s rule collapsed, was too young to remember the communism of her homeland. With the experience of communism being a memory that only the older generation can recall, many young Ukrainians have taken a new interest in it. She told Business Destinations, “[They want] to see how it all was, as they cannot believe what actually happened – such as when you go to the shop, and you [could] buy only one type of something”. As a result of this curiosity about life in the Soviet Union, “Lots of young people are trying to get [to Cuba] now while Castro is still in power – to see how it was – including myself”. Even in the areas where the ruins of communism remain, there is a wish to see the last living scraps of the failed social system.
Countryside to city
Although it is still ruled by the Communist Party, China has capitalised on the sentimental wish of its citizens to experience the ‘good old days’ that existed before capitalism, special economic zones and skyscrapers moved in. Internally, the Chinese Government has been developing so-called ‘red tourism’, which has involved setting up a National Coordination Group for Red Tourism and convening a red tourism conference.
This unique brand of sightseeing involves tours around parts of rural China where some of the more significant events from the communist revolution under Chairman Mao Zedong took place. As a Der Spiegel article explained, these tours allow people to “feast on braised pork, Mao’s favourite dish, in the leader’s birthplace of Shoashan”, as well as to drink from a well in Ruijin that Mao himself is alleged to have dug.
The military guerrilla aspect of the Communist Party’s history in China is also featured. At the Cultural Park of the Eighth Route Army, a theme park located in Shanxi province, visitors are presented with fake rifles and costumes that allow them to re-enact the war against Japan. It is, as Der Spiegel noted, “the great amusement park of communism”. As China’s communist regime has not yet collapsed, the park offers less of a chance to see the ruins of an expired regime, as one might find in Eastern Europe, but more a chance to see the remains of the former humble, rural and peasant-based communism that has since been traded for modernity, markets and urbanisation.
Yet the Chinese are also partial to viewing the actual remains of collapsed communist societies. In May 2015, tourism chiefs from Russia and China signed an agreement to develop red tourism in both countries: 2014 saw nearly half a million Chinese visit Russia; more than any other nation. One of the most popular destinations for the Chinese is the Gorky Estate, a site just outside Moscow, where the Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin, died in 1924. “We have quite a lot of Chinese tourists coming to Gorky”, Igor Konyshev, Director of the Gorky Museum, told eTurboNews. “The interest is growing – last year we had 10,000 tourists from China.”
A failed experiment
While each type of tourism to former communist sites has its own unique dynamic, all are related to an attempt to experience the ruins of this lost civilisation for oneself. This society, which rapidly conquered a third of the world, ground to a halt and disintegrated almost completely within a few decades. Communism was unique to the 20th century – or to modernity, at least – in that it was an attempt to completely and consciously uproot the past and replace it with a new civilisation altogether.
Within a single generation, the undertaking had been totally discredited and given up on by its leaders. It is for this reason that it can be classified as a civilisation, albeit one that scarcely existed for much more than a human lifespan. Communism’s attempt to completely pave over the past and resurrect a new society on top of the old is part of the reason why its once-heated politics faded, being replaced by mere curiosity. Whether it be from the imposing concrete buildings of the Eastern Bloc or the frozen-in-time feeling of Havana, the exhilaration that comes with witnessing the final breaths of a system that has outlived its time is something that extends across human history: just as 19th-century travellers marvelled at the structures that were erected by the Romans, tourists today wonder – albeit in a less reverential fashion – at the ruins left behind by communism’s failed attempts at creating a new world.