268 Chapter 7
in distribution in 1972, with just over two hundred thousand copies printed;
by 1984 this number had fallen to eighty-one thousand.^22 On the other hand,
prospective Soviet tourists could tap into many other sources of information
about vacation planning, from word of mouth to the tourist clubs to regular
features in all the daily newspapers and periodicals. For example, Literatur-
naia gazeta , the mouthpiece of the urban intelligentsia, published numerous
travelogues, editorials, and survey research on tourism and vacations in the
1960s and beyond.Convergence: Consuming the Soviet Vacation
Soviet tourism by the 1970s had assumed multiple forms: domestic and in-
ternational, soft and hard. Millions of weekend tourists continued to stream
out of the cities, carrying their rucksacks and seeking respite in nature. But
increasingly, they expected a vacation experience that would combine a high
level of comfort with the stimulation of excursions, activities, and sightsee-
ing. At the same time, as we have seen in chapter 5, the medical regimen of
the spa vacation had yielded to more varied practices of amusement, rec-
reation, sea air and sun, good food, and new impressions. Tourists now
expected the same level of comfort and ease for their tourist ruble as had previ-
ously been provided to sojourners in health resorts, and the state budget now
refl ected tourism’s appeal. Spending on tourism services rose from 260 mil-
lion rubles in 1970 to 1 billion rubles in 1975; the number of tourists served
on package tours more than tripled in those fi ve years.^23 In 1975, for the fi rst
time, the trade union newspaper Trud devoted more coverage to tourism than
to kurort vacations.^24 Photographs of new tourist hotels in far-fl ung places as
well as popular vacation areas now appeared alongside images of compara-
bly modern multistory sanatoria buildings. Tourism offi cials spoke in terms
of “tourist complexes,” which offered lodging, excursions, recreation, and
cultural offerings. “The concepts of rest and tourism have of late increasingly
blended together,” said a construction offi cial in 1975.^25
Testimony from tourists and discussions by offi cials now emphasized the
expectation that a tourist vacation would offer the same level of amenities as
a stay in a spa or a rest home, minus the medicine. Refl ecting on their trips- GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 921 (central tourism council plenum, March 1966), ll. 36–37;
d. 1061, ll. 161–69. On Land and On Sea printed seventy-fi ve thousand copies an issue at its
peak in 1931; its last issue in June 1941 came out in an edition of forty-fi ve thousand. - Abukov, Turizm na novom etape, 27; Trud, 14 September 1975.
- As shown by a count of articles from 1957 to 1982. For example, in 1960 there were
forty-two articles on health places and twenty-two on tourism; in 1974, seventeen and fi f-
teen, respectively; and in 1975, sixteen articles on spas and rest homes and sixty-two on
tourism. “Tourism” now had its own weekly column. - Trud, 6 October 1965; 29 November 1969; 6 January 1970; 21 February 1970; 22 Janu-
ary 1976; cf. a new sanatorium in Crimea, Trud, 9 July 1975; “Dvorets ili palatka?” Turist,
no. 10 (1975): 13–14.