Аn essay explores how 20th-century socialism brought tourism to the masses in Eastern and Central Europe.
Leisure tourism began as a bourgeois pastime. But over the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was reclaimed by socialists and trade unions as a form of cultural education, solidarity and what today might be called “self-care”.
A fascinating essay by Przemysław Kmieciak in the leftist online journal Krytyka Polityczna is both a short cultural history and a manifesto: it presents workers’ tourism as a respite from the “stifling city” and as an instrument for shaping working-class identity.
Kmieciak locates the movement’s origins in the mass associations of Central Europe: in 1895, Viennese socialists founded the Naturfreunde (Friends of Nature), an early prototype for worker-led outdoor life. Similar organisations soon spread to Poland (at that time divided between empires ruled from Vienna, Moscow and Berlin).
By 1912, Polish socialists were organising workers’ outings into the Tatras Mountains and beyond; pamphlets proudly announced that “the times when culture was alien to the worker” had passed. The aim was overtly political: seeing the country, breathing mountain air, visiting museums and factories were not mere pleasures but part of “building consciousness” among labourers.
The movement’s rhetoric – and its practices – differed considerably from middle-class tourism. A workers’ outing was not about visiting vogueish sites; it was meant to be a social, educational experience. Publications of the period urged modest, sober travel (“no dancing, no gramophone”), argued for temperance, and celebrated shared labour on the road. Joint meal preparation was framed as emancipation for working-class housewives.
Kmieciak describes one such tour of a dozen Polish cyclists to Belgium and France in 1929. The small group was met with astonishing hospitality – in the city of Lens, a crowd of 3,000 people cheered them on, and local socialist officials toasted them with champagne. Moments like these showed how worker-to-worker solidarity across borders could turn a humble trip into an occasion of public recognition.
Another workers’ journey mentioned in the text is a 1930 river voyage to Chernivtsi, in what is now Ukraine. Travellers slept on straw, drank milk offered by villagers, and were hosted, when they arrived, by fellow socialists. This is travel as a series of communal encounters rather than tourist separateness.
Kmieciak’s brief history looks backwards. But it contains lessons for today as it explores the idea that rest, relaxation and discovery should not be privileges limited to a few, but an essential part of everyone’s life and development.
Original article (“Z dusznego miasta na słoneczne szlaki. Rzecz o turystyce robotniczej”) by Przemysław Kmieciak was first published in Polish on 7 June 2025.
It’s available here.
Krytyka Polityczna is a Polish leftist publication and activist network focusing on progressive politics and culture.
Summary by TM
