The Carpathians: Discovering the Highlands of Poland and Ukraine by Patrice M. Dabrowski

Author:Patrice M. Dabrowski
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
Tags: Ukraine, Non-Fiction, Travel, Europe, Environment, History, Poland, Geography
ISBN: 9781501759680
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2021-09-30T22:00:00+00:00

Demarcating Socialist—and National—Space

A more welcome type of tourism for People’s Poland was what might be termed mass tourism with a socialist face. The state strove to put its own stamp on the region and the way it was perceived. For example, the provincial authorities in Rzeszów requested that the presidia of the local national councils take care of places that recalled “the martyrdom and heroic battle of the Polish people for national and social liberation.”48 This approach to the history of the region suggests an important way in which the socialist state used the Bieszczady mountain region to buttress and justify alike the role played by the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) in postwar Poland.

The socialist authorities preferred qualified tourism, which had more social and educative value than did “unqualified tourism” (turystyka niekwalifikowana, or tourism for the uninitiated masses). The former was seen as raising the intellectual and cultural level of society while breaking down social barriers and increasing patriotism. The Subcommittee on Tourism concluded, “In all its disciplines, qualified tourism demands solidarity, fortitude and endurance… . becoming an ideal method for the physical and moral education of youth. Camping, marches, and rajdy … are perfect forms of the indirect preparation of youth for the defense of the country.”49 It should come as no surprise that the state should try to avail itself of such useful opportunities to uplift its young people physically, morally, and ideologically while providing them with a taste of the outdoors. One of the ways it did so was through organizing group tourist excursions called rajdy in Polish—clearly related to the English homonym “ride,” although these were group hiking excursions.50 Organized by the Warsaw student guides’ club, branches of the PTTK, even labor unions, such excursions could have as many as a thousand or more participants.51 The rules and regulations for participants could be extensive, with literally every detail provided regarding preparation and behavior.52 Such rajdy could also be considered an ideologically inflected subset of qualified tourism that not only influenced the tourists’ health and self-discipline but also taught them more about the region in which they were hiking or about the event being commemorated.53

An early example was the Friendship Rajd.54 It took place for the first time in 1954, on the tenth anniversary of the “independence of People’s Poland.”55 The slogan for that week-long excursion was “We Are Deepening Friendship with the Nations of the USSR.”56 Teams composed of three to six persons were equipped with tents, sleeping bags, backpacks, and food for a minimum of three days, thus making it a serious hiking trip. Each team was also instructed to pack a hatchet or axe, as hikers would have to cut their way through various parts of the terrain. They would also need personal documents, for they were to travel in the border zone.

That first year the Friendship Rajd boasted a total of 345 participants, including 97 women, 76 manual laborers, and 43 members of the communist-sponsored Union of Polish Youth. A full 160 participants were in the mountains for the first time.

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