272 Chapter 7
Bulgarian comrades had built, in a region that three years before had been
forest and desert, a fi rst-class European resort.”^30 Other tourists, evidently,
had been attracted only to the idea of the “fi rst-class European resort.” Some
members of a group that stayed in the coastal Bulgarian city of Varna had
given up their putevki to Soviet spas in order to vacation at the renowned
Golden Sands resort in Bulgaria, and they were upset when they received
accommodation in the city, not on the beach. Another guest at Golden Sands
refused to participate in any touristic activities: she had come to Bulgaria to- Martenovka, 21 July 1960 (quote); see also Skorokhodovskii rabochii, 16 July 1974,
on Bulgaria’s “twenty-fi rst-century” resorts. The Bulgarian Georgi Markov, on the other
hand, blamed the ruin of the pristine landscape on Khrushchev’s caprice in calling for tour-
ism development. The Truth That Killed, 92.
Tourist guide conducting a bus excursion. Turist, no. 10 (1972): 6.