224 Chapter 6
the greater the number of itineraries that tourism councils could offer, the
more revenue they could generate, and throughout the 1950s and 1960s, both
the central and local tourism agencies worked to develop new routes, new
destinations, and eventually new modes of tourism, as we shall see below.
Other than the well-known tours in the Caucasus and Crimea, many of the
new itineraries in the 1950s were constructed almost by accident: an unused
monastery could be adapted as a tourist base, and a trip could be developed
around it, with little thought about whether such a trip would be interesting or
attractive for tourists. Gradually, the development of new routes became more
systematized: tourist offi cials provided an itinerary passport to central com-
missions, which specifi ed the type of trip (walking, bicycle, automobile), start-
ing and end points, the length, the category of diffi culty, sights to visit along
the way, and recommended spots for overnight camps.^43 In 1958 the annual
guide to tourist itineraries listed 122 package tours offered by the central TEU.
They ranged in duration from fi ve to twenty days and in price from 280 rubles
for a ten-day stay at the Borodino tourist base near Moscow to 1,700 rubles
for a twenty-day cruise from Moscow to Astrakhan and back in a “deluxe”
cabin.^44 (The average monthly wage in 1954 was about 700 rubles.) By 1968,
tourists could choose from among 192 national (all-union) itineraries and 721
locally sponsored tours. Ten days in Borodino now cost 28 rubles (after the de-
valuation of 1961, the average wage was around 113 rubles), and twenty days
on the Volga in a fi rst-class cabin carried a price tag of 165 rubles.^45
The impressive variety represented in the itinerary guides did not cor-
respond to tourist demand. “It’s no secret that people buy a tourist putevka
for full price only for the Black Sea coast or for Leningrad,” asserted E. K.
Shishkin, the chairman of the Bashkir tourism council in 1964. “But to our
regret, they don’t willingly pay full price for putevki on local itineraries.”^46
Moreover, although many trips could be taken at any time of the year, and
some were specially designated cross-country skiing itineraries, demand for
tourism putevki, like that for vouchers to health spas, was seasonal.
As with kurort vacations, the method of distribution further complicated
the mismatch between supply and demand. At the beginning of each tourist
year, local TEUs (and later councils) could order a given assortment of pute-
vki, both national and local. Trade union organizations could then buy these
from their TEU for resale to their members or to give as prizes for exemplary
work performance. The allocation of tourist travel, then, resided squarely- GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 318, ll. 11, 16, 20; TsAGM, f. 28, op. 1, d. 6, ll. 208–234ob.
- Turistskie marshruty po SSSR (1958). This edition, edited by the venerable tourism
activist Arkhangel'skaia, featured lengthy descriptions and photographs of some of the most
popular routes; fi fty thousand copies were printed. - Turistskie marshruty na 1968 god , comp. P. Rakhmanov (Moscow, 1968), published
in an edition of fi fty thousand. (The 1967 edition came out with seventy-fi ve thousand cop-
ies.) Wage data from Chapman, Real Wages in Soviet Russia , 109, and Narodnoe khoziaistvo
SSSR v 1973 , 586. - GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 632, l. 85. See also d. 632, l. 56; d. 381, ll. 32, 118; d. 631, l. 151.