SUMMARY:

The article analyzes the “wild tourism” in the post-1950s’ Soviet Union as a cultural, lifestyle, and economic phenomenon. It scrutinizes the social, economic, and psychological reasons for the spread of “wild” vacations at Soviet resorts. Individual accounts and official documents are analyzed together with popular Soviet films such as 3+2, Be My Husband, and Sportlotto-82. The author studies infrastructural policies in the Crimea that emerged in response to the growing tourist and vacation boom, on the one hand, and values, aspirations, and strategies of accommodation and communication of different groups of “wild” travelers to popular Soviet resorts, on the other. The article also deals with the official Soviet ideological discourse of care and control of the population, and offers information on different official strategies directed at decreasing the number of uncontrolled “wild tourists.” The metaphor of nomadism provides a general framework for discussing the multifaceted phenomenon of Soviet “wild tourism.”