“Depressing yet exciting”: When Brits were invited on Soviet road trips

The common perception of the Cold War period is of two isolated worlds, divided by an unmoving, impenetrable Iron Curtain. Yet in fact communist nations did accept tourism from their capitalist rivals – encouraged it, even.

And while the prospect would have scared many, Autocar found in 1957 that “a road journey through the USSR may be undertaken without apprehension”.