One of the silliest products of the cold war has been the extensive travel restrictions imposed on U.S. and Russian tourists visiting each other's countries. The Soviet Union put vast portions of its territory off limits to aliens before World War II; tourists who did visit the U.S.S.R. were assigned Intourist guides to keep them from straying. In 1955 the State Department finally retaliated by banning Soviet visitors from some 27% of the U.S. on a tit-for-tat basis (e.g., Pittsburgh was closed because the Russians forbade U.S. tourists to visit the Soviet steel center of Magnitogorsk).
Last week, in the...