118 Chapter 3
service” at this time might have led Soviet tourists to expect good manners,
on vacation as well as at home, but service personnel reportedly paid more
attention to themselves than to the tourists.
Central tourist facilities performed somewhat better than the Volga steam-
ship cruises. Tourists from Vladivostok visiting Leningrad praised the atten-
tive service at the OPTE base on Moika Street and the food in the canteen, but
they asked for a dining room closer to the base and a barber on the premises.
By 1932, bases in Moscow, Leningrad, and the North Caucasus were receiv-
ing generally good marks for their service and food. Farther from the center,
though, food supply problems, bedbugs, and problems of overcrowding con-
tinued to spoil the experiences of the Soviet package tourists. At Zelenyi
Mys on the Black Sea, tourists were so unhappy with the food that they went
home early, throwing away their paid putevki. Tourists condemned the Ba-
tumi base as a “bedbug factory.”^75
The fact that tourists reported and the OPTE’s journal publicized these
complaints indicated that Soviet tourists possessed certain expectations
about the quality of their experience. Moreover, tourist organizations took
note of their expectations and attempted to address them, if not necessar-
ily with great success. The politics of the complaint book would become
more refi ned in the 1950s and 1960s, but even in the 1930s, this process
provided some measure of consumer demand and preferences, some idea
of how Soviet tourists imagined their good life. Reviewing its fi rst season
of operation in 1936, the trade union tourist authority examined the writ-
ten comments ( otzyvy ) left by tourists at their bases. Since only a minor-
ity of the responses expressed dissatisfaction, the TEU decided that “most
tourists” were happy with their experience. Of 83,680 package tourists in
1936, 950 recorded comments about the quality of excursions, of which 78
(8.3 percent) were “negative,” complaining primarily about transportation
diffi culties to and from their destinations. Cultural activities drew less en-
thusiastic reviews. One-quarter of tourists who left comments about activi-
ties (759 in all) expressed unhappiness with cultural offerings, especially in
Moscow because of the high cost of theater tickets. One-quarter of comments
about lodging (621 in all) registered discontent, especially in the Black Sea
coastal areas where tourists slept in tents. Food drew the most remarks of all
(1,188), of which 17 percent complained about food preparation and service.
Such complaints, especially about bad transportation experiences, persisted
into 1937, but by then service at some tourist bases had begun to improve.
Tourists still grumbled about the boring menu selections and poor quality of
the food in many locations, but Volga tourists now expressed satisfaction.
Offi cials reported that the package tours generally drew favorable reviews,- TsGA SPb, f. 4410, op. 1, d. 19, ll. 46–46ob; d. 398, l. 4ob.; Turist-aktivist , nos. 8–9
(1932): 29; NSNM , no. 10 (1931): 2; no. 17 (1934): 16; no. 20 (1934): 13; no. 21 (1930): 16;
NSNM , no. 10 (1931): 2; no. 4 (1932): 15; no. 26 (1931): 8; no. 9 (1932): 15; nos. 28–30 (1932):
24; Turist-aktivist, nos. 11–12 (1932): 44.