266 Chapter 7
shops; it arranged services like hairdressers, cinemas, banks, and post offi ces;
it organized itineraries on trains, boats, and planes; it carried out planning,
construction, supply, and ideological work.^13 With the 1969 decision to inject
state funds into the expansion of tourism facilities, tourism offi cials began
increasingly to speak in the language of “industry.”^14
Industry required expert organization. Advocates of market-based princi-
ples for the tourism industry began in the 1970s to emphasize the importance
of keeping down costs and reducing waste, a staple of the “cost-accounting”
element of the planned economy. Using tourist trains as hotels, for example,
diverted rolling stock that was better suited to moving passengers, said a
transport offi cial in 1969.^15 Proposals to adopt variable pricing also emerged,
such as charging differential prices for summer and winter holidays to bal-
ance demand and allow for more rational use of facilities. One offi cial also
urged the adoption of the “Western practice” of charging higher rates for
rooms with ocean views. A cooperative society, Rest, arose as early as 1964
to build vacation housing on a time-share basis: share holders could vacation
in any of the cooperative’s properties, from the Black Sea to the Baltic.^16 Such
proposals refl ected the goals of the economic reformers who accompanied
Brezhnev into power after 1964; they also tacitly acknowledged the ability
of Soviet consumers to choose how to spend their vacation rubles, and they
were embedded in the usual discussions about the social and ideological
purpose of travel. It would have been unthinkable to suggest that tinkering
with price mechanisms might create a class system in vacationing. The goal
remained to ensure the right to rest to every citizen but to use pricing as a
way to encourage rational utilization of public services.
A modern tourism industry required expert planning and professional
training. Here the center lagged behind local initiative. The Abkhaziia tourism
authority opened the fi rst scientifi c institute for tourism planning in 1964,
with a staff that included historians, art specialists, ethnographers, agrono-
mists, and physicians. In addition to research and publication on economic
problems of tourism, the institute designed new itineraries in its region, de-
veloped original souvenirs based on local themes, and planned for the con-
struction of new tourist complexes. In the mid-1960s journalists began to
call for the professionalization of tour guides and excursion leaders. By the- GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 1910 (tourism offi cials’ conference, December 1974), ll. 55,
63; V. Krivosheev, “Ekonomika turizma,” Voprosy ekonomiki, no. 4 (1965): 136–141. - Trud, 21 May 1970; Azar, Otdykh and Ekonomiki; Georgii Bal'dysh, “Priglashenie
k puteshestviiu,” LG, 20 February 1965, 1–2; Vladimir Gavrilenko, “A esli vsem v meste?”
LG, 28 April 1966: 2; Viznor Pachula, “Muza stranstvii,” LG, 10 September 1966, 1; “Vozvra-
shchaias' k napechatnomu. Eshche raz o turizme,” LG, 3 December 1966, 2; 8 February 1967, - As late as 1981, V. M. Krivosheev, a longtime advocate of making tourism an industry,
continued his campaign. “Turizm: stanovlenie otrasli,” Trud, 5 September 1981. - GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 1272, ll. 21, 41, 234.
- GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 2077 (central tourism council meeting, April 1975), ll. 57–58;
Azar, Ekonomika, 139–140. Krivosheev had proposed charging lower prices for hotels on
urban outskirts back in 1965. “Ekonomika turizma,” 139; GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 631, l. 204.