Restoring Vacations after the War 149Women participated in organized tourist travel in numbers disproportionate
to their share of the population: teachers, who were predominantly female,
accounted for a large part of summertime tourist trips, but we fi nd no discus-
sion of the implications of this phenomenon.^51 Perhaps the predominance of
women tourists was one factor in tourism’s low overall status when it came
to allocating state funds for vacation travel.
All-union sanatoria and tourist bases emphasized the nationwide char-
acter of the vacation experience, and vacationers noted in their comments
their appreciation at being among people “from all corners” of the great na-
tion. The Hammer and Sickle factory’s N. Stepanov, the shift boss in the roll-
ing mill, noted in stilted offi cial language the friendship he developed with
his sanatorium roommate, the chairman of an Uzbek cotton collective farm:
“Only in the Soviet Union does every person have the right to rest, regardless
of his nationality and race [ rasovaia prinadlezhnost' ].”^52 Moscow was over-
represented among spa vacationers, with its offi cials and intellectuals who
knew how to manipulate the system. Among tourists there was a defi nite
Moscow-Leningrad bias in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Moscow’s TEU ac-
counted for much of this imbalance as one of the fi rst and strongest to revive
after the war, but it also catered to a knowledgeable and economically privi-
leged clientele eager to take advantage of tourism opportunities. The head of
the Kiev tourist authority acknowledged in 1953 the low demand for tourist
putevki to Transcarpathia by residents of his republic, whereas these putevki
would sell out “in an instant” in Leningrad.^53
Moscow itself rather than Crimea or the Caucasus served as the primary
mecca and melting pot for visitors from elsewhere. Despite primitive lodging
conditions, hundreds of groups wrote paeans to the organizers in the com-
ment book of the Moscow tourist base from 1949 to 1952. A student group
from Tallinn thrilled in 1949 to see for the fi rst time “beautiful Moscow—the
capital of our socialist homeland”; in July 1950 teachers from Arkhangel'sk
“saw everything that we had dreamed about for many years”; students from
L'vov State University enumerated in 1951 the “unforgettable impressions”
produced by the wonderful historical city. They particularly singled out the
- Women comprised 63 percent of the tourists on itinerary number 42 (North Ossetia)
in 1951 while making up 56 percent of the population. GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 193; Narod-
noe khoziaistvo v 1973 godu , 8. In 1954 women were 57 percent of the visitors to Moscow
tourist bases and 65 percent of participants on a Moscow oblast hike. TsAGM, f. 28, op. 2, d.
98 (social composition of tourists, 1953); d. 117; in the same years, men accounted for over
50 percent of patients at the Leningrad Northern Riviera sanatorium. GARF, f. 9493, op. 3, d.
1961 (rest home and sanatorium reports, 1955). - Martenovka , 18 July 1946 (quote); 28 August 1952; GAGS, f. 195, op. 1, d. 52 (Kras-
naia Poliana tourist base comments, 1951), l. 28; TsAGM, f. 28, op. 2, d. 34 (Moscow tour-
ist base comments, 1949–1952), l. 29. But there was no notice of ethnic difference among
sampled comments of vacationers at the textile workers’ sanatorium in Sochi. GAGS, f. 178,
op. 1, d. 9. - GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 262 (regional TEU reports, 1953), ll. 116–117.