Sputnik Bureau of International Youth Tourism

(Sputnik), a Soviet youth tourist organization founded in 1958. It organizes group tours in the USSR for foreign youth and tours for Soviet youth abroad and in the Soviet Union. Sputnik is a member of the International Bureau for Tourism and Youth Exchanges of the World Federation of Democratic Youth and a member of the International Conference on Student Tourism.

In 1975, Sputnik was collaborating with more than 400 youth, student, tourist, educational, and cultural organizations in 70 countries. Between 1958 and 1974, Sputnik organized the travel of 950,000 foreign tourists in the USSR. It also organized tours for some 3 million Soviet youths within the USSR and for more than 700,000 traveling abroad. During this period, Sputnik arranged vacations for more than 550,000 persons at its own international youth camps, of which the largest are on the Black Sea coast, in the Caucasus, and on the Volga.

Sputnik’s trips offer opportunities to become familiar with the history, traditions, culture, economic development, and natural features of the USSR and other countries. Sputnik conducts general and educational trips and specialized trips for members of various professions. It welcomes and makes arrangements for tourist groups participating in arts festivals and other major national and international cultural and sports events. Sputnik also organizes Russian-language courses in the USSR for foreign youth.