Being a Las Vegas native, I have long nurtured a morbid fascination with tourist attractions with political messages. Regimes with strong authoritarian tendencies sometimes initiate truly massive showpiece architecture projects, often in an unconvincing attempt to show the outside world that everything is alright. For example, North Korea’s 105-story Ryugyong Hotel is currently the world’s tallest unoccupied building. Construction began in 1987 and has cost 1% of the country’s GDP, but it is still largely unfinished on the inside and has never hosted guests. In a more recent example, more hotels are still going up in Turkmenistan’s massive five-star tourist complex at Awaza on the Caspian Sea, but the resort’s existing hotels are largely empty even at peak season. The bottom line: tourism is often just as much about geopolitical image as it is about drawing in people who want to spend money.
So, when Moscow launched a campaign emphasizing its tourist-friendly credentials, eyebrows were raised. While Moscow has always maintained a steady stream of tourists its many historic sites, from the treasures of the czars to the Red Square and crenellated St. Basil’s, for much of the Cold War era and beyond, Russia’s global narratives leaned heavily on its energy clout and status as the political center of an important energy-rich state. That is changing. The new message is that Moscow is doing fine without the West and has friends in China, India, Iran and other places.
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