Vacationing in Dictatorships - (Histories and Cultures of Tourism) by Adelina Stefan (Paperback)

About the Book

"Vacationing in Dictatorships: International Tourism in Socialist Romania and Franco's Spain examines international tourism in socialist Romania and Franco's Spain with an eye on the ways in which tourism built networks that went against the Cold War divide and transformed the two dictatorships from below"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Vacationing in Dictatorships examines the political effects of international tourism in socialist Romania and Francoist Spain in the postwar era. Despite sharp economic and political differences between the two dictatorial regimes at the start of the Cold War, significant similarities existed as both states took advantage of international tourism to improve their image abroad and pursued processes of economic modernization to acquire hard currencies. By the end of the 1970s though, the two countries achieved rather different results in terms of tourism development, despite the fact that both shared many features in the 1940s and 1950s.

By comparing the rise and evolution of international tourism on different sides of the Iron Curtain, Adelina Stefan provides a different assessment of the geopolitics of postwar Europe that further refines the Cold War's geographies separating Eastern and Western Europe. As a result, Vacationing in Dictatorships reveals a new perspective on the Cold War that reveals not only the developmental similarities between Eastern and Southern Europe but also the ideological struggle that pitted socialist East against capitalist West.

Review Quotes

Adelina Stefan adeptly examines how foreign tourists unintentionally forced both the Franco dictatorship and socialist Romanian regime to take new approaches to consumption. Superbly written and enlightening.

-- "Choice"

About the Author

Adelina Stefan is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History at University of Luxembourg and Cultural Historian of the Cold War with a focus on tourism and consumption in socialist Romania.