120 Chapter 3
discounts.^79 Putevki given as rewards for exemplary work also favored pro-
duction workers, as with the highly publicized shock workers aboard the
Abkhaziia in 1930 and the Ukraina in 1931.
To inculcate tourism appreciation, the society designed tours for different
social strata. “In working out concrete plans for summer tourism,” ruled the
OPTE organization bureau in 1932, “it is necessary to differentiate our ap-
proach to different strata of laboring people. Youth, adult male and female
workers, married workers, peasants [ izbachi ], and teachers need different
forms of service, different itineraries, different modes of travel and excur-
sions. Beginning and experienced tourists each need their own approach.”
Organizers believed that production workers would be most attracted to
the industrial itineraries that emphasized the exchange of production ex-
perience, and they stipulated that 85 percent of participants on these tours
should be workers. Tours to the “capital of the socialist nation,” Moscow, tai-
lored specialized itineraries for specifi c groups. Textile workers would study
the problem of cotton in the fi ve-year plan at the Polytechnical Museum and
visit several textile factories along with general excursions to the Tret'iakov
Gallery and Darwin Museum. Metalists would visit machine-building plants
and the State Agency for Machine Imports in addition to the standard tours.
Women workers would see exhibits on the protection of mothers and infants
and tour day-care centers and a bread factory; at the Tret'iakov Gallery, they
would observe the portrayal of women in paintings.^80
By the end of the fi rst fi ve-year plan, however, the concern about the so-
cial composition of Soviet tourists had begun to wane. In 1932, in fact, the
OPTE decided that it could drop the three-class pricing system for its tours
since it expected that 90 to 95 percent of tourists on its summer routes would
consist of shock workers and their moral equivalents, technical personnel
and schoolteachers. It still proposed targets for its various types of tours: 85
percent of tourists on the industrial tours would be workers, as opposed to 70
percent for the standard sightseeing routes.^81
More troubling than the low demand by workers for Soviet tourism was
the prevalence of those from the wrong class, who gravitated toward the soft
and lazy radial tour by the sea. Women, allegedly mostly from this middle
class, constituted 52 percent of the tourists on package tours in 1930 but
represented only 5 percent of the members of the OPTE. While all Soviet
people might benefi t from sedentary vacations in a rest home or sanatorium,
real workers were said to yearn for more authentic tourist experiences. One
of these was the old metal fi tter Ivan Akinfi evich on a radial putevka in Gagry- TsGA SPb, f. 4410, op. 1, d. 398, l. 80. Groups of at least fi fteen and rural school-
teachers paid the lowest price, followed by individuals who were trade union members or
teachers; “other citizens” paid the highest rates. Sovetskii Turist, Marshruty ekskursii na
leto 1929 , 149. - TsGA SPb, f. 4410, op. 1, d. 398, ll. 59, 81. On content of the tours, see Marshruty
proizvodstvennykh ekskursii po SSSR ; Ekskursii v Moskvu (Moscow, 1930), 5–8. - TsGA SPb, f. 4410, op. 1, d. 398, l. 81.