According to the author, a number of archive documents recently made available for general scientific study give a new insight into the «cold war» period, namely, individual countries as well as whole regions being included into the two Super Powers' scope of interest through tourism relations established, developed and maintained. The article at hand studies the initial period ofVAO Intourist's outbound tourism activity in the USSR. The author analyses VAO Intourist's documentation —public documents, meeting records, employees' and chaperones' reports and memoranda — and reconstructs the geography, the capacity and the peculiarities of outbound tourism as well as the criteria for short-listing the potential outbound tourists. The author also assesses the culture shock which Soviet tourists suffered when faced with completely different Western lifestyle patterns.