chapter four
Restoring Vacations after the War
I
n 1940, as war engulfed Western Europe, the Soviet press lauded
the new comforts available to Soviet tourists and vacationers. While
Europe burned, Soviet citizens could select a cruise on the Adzhariia along
the Black Sea coast or take a seat in an open touring car for a breathtaking
ride through the Caucasus Mountains. The network of sanatoria, rest homes,
and tourist bases continued to expand, and opportunities for vacations away
from home became available to more citizens than ever before. The geography
of Soviet tourism also expanded signifi cantly, as the forcible annexation of
western territories brought new destinations into the Soviet fold. Reminding
its readers of Lenin’s fondness for the Carpathian Mountains, On Land and On
Sea included features on western Ukraine and Belorussia just months after the
Nazi-Soviet Pact allowed the Red Army to extend Soviet borders westward.
One month after the annexation of the three Baltic republics in August 1940,
the magazine featured the tourist possibilities of this new addition to the So-
viet land, featuring smiling Latvian youth in national costume on its cover.^1
The German invasion of 22 June 1941 put an end to Soviet leisure travel,
of course, and over the next four years, the war would reduce many Soviet
vacation facilities in Crimea and the Caucasus Mineral Waters to rubble. The
much-vaunted annual paid vacation was annulled for the duration of the
war. Vacation facilities away from the fronts were converted to hospitals for
military and civilian casualties. Leisure travel came to a halt as all means of
transport were mobilized for moving troops, refugees, evacuees, and later
prisoners across the “unbounded space” of the Soviet land.
Victory came with the surrender of the last German armies on 8 May 1945.
Troops, refugees, evacuees, returnees, and prisoners of war would con-
tinue to monopolize the means of transportation across borders and within
the Soviet Union, but on 1 July 1945, to great fanfare, the Supreme Soviet
announced that the annual paid vacation had been reinstated.^2 The trade
- Trud , 17 January, 29 January, 12 March, 20 March, 28 March, 30 March, 10 April, 18
May, 14 August, 24 August, 10 September, 3 December, and 19 December, all in 1940; 27
April 1941; NSNM , no. 11 (1939): 6–7; no. 12 (1939): 10–11; no. 3 (1940): 12–13; no. 4 (1940):
3; no. 8 (1940): 10–11; no. 9 (1940): “Sovetskaia pribaltika,” 3–8, 9–17. - Trud , 17 July 1945.