ИСТИНА

ABSTRACT Nowadays, tourism is the most common and popular way to explore a territory: every year millions of people set off on journeys to different countries and regions. Within the boundaries of leisure practices (certainly tourism is a special form of leisure practice), travellers get various facts about the places they visit. This information is of very peculiar parameters determined by the tourists’ demands, features of the territory they explore and the setting of the places of interest they visit. But regardless of the place the tourists visit, how verified and unique their itinerary is, it is obvious that they travel around a certain social and cultural space: a tourist space that possesses a number of common characteristics. The article is devoted to the identification and study of these characteristics in relation to Russian regions in the second half of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century when the tourist space was just beginning to form in Russia. The investigation is based on the first Russian regional guidebooks. The text analysis of a substantial amount of the books of this genre allows us to highlight the following parameters of their characteristics: they are packed with stereotypes, manipulate the notion “unique” and ignore the notion “ordinary”, enhance the function of visual components. This space has its own configuration and system of priorities, it is harmonious and coherent, friendly and undemanding towards a person; the techniques of its perception are dynamic and superficial. Key words: guidebook, tourist space, regions, province, tourism, mass culture.