70 Chapter 2
By 1935 the trade union leadership had begun to take notice of a growing
popular interest in tourism, and it criticized OPTE’s inability to respond.
“Tourism—is above all about health, ” editorialized the trade union’s cen-
tral newspaper, Trud ( Labor ). Surveys of factory workers in different cities
produced the “surprising” result that shock workers wanted to spend their
vacations to see as much of their country as possible, to travel on the Volga,
to see where Lermontov had lived, to show their families their native Urals.
And they expected their OPTE cells to make this possible. “This summer I’ve
decided to put pressure on OPTE to organize a trip to the Caucasus,” said one
fi tter at Moscow’s Dinamo plant. “I want to look at the sea not in paintings,
but in real life.” Failing to respond, by the end of 1935 the voluntary society
had become hopelessly compromised by its fi nancial irregularities and inat-
tention to its basic task of promoting tourism. In pursuit of profi t, which had
now become an end in itself, OPTE seaside tourist bases had been turned into
pansions for “tourists” who spent their entire vacations in one place on the
Black Sea shore, while real tourists wishing to travel from base to base were
turned away.^42
By early 1936, the Soviet Central Executive Committee had concluded
that the voluntary society had failed in its mission to provide low-cost and
healthful tourism to the Soviet masses. Given the prominence of the right
to rest in the new constitution to be unveiled in June, government offi cials
judged tourism too important to be left to an ill-supervised voluntary society.
On 17 April 1936, the executive committee formally liquidated the Society
for Proletarian Tourism and Excursions. The Central Trade Union Council
would take control of excursion work, mass tourism, and alpinism, including
responsibility for all national and local itineraries ( marshruty ). The council
would also acquire all the property that belonged to the OPTE: tourist bases
and hotels, including the multistory House of Tourists then under construc-
tion on Moscow’s Arbat Street. But the council would share responsibility
for independent tourism and alpinism with the All-Union Council for Physi-
cal Culture, which was also assigned a leadership and supervisory role for
tourism.^43
Given the role of trade unions in administering the extensive system of
rest homes and sanatoria, transferring to them the responsibility for tourist
vacations made good sense. The prior existence in most enterprises of “vol-
untary sports societies” under the aegis of the committee on physical culture
also would enable OPTE cells to fi nd a new administrative home and local
protector. This new decision preserved the notion of tourism as a movement,
not a business. Tourism as the best vacation remained in the realm of ideol-
ogy, welfare, benefi ts, and—as we shall see—perquisites, rather than as its
own sphere of economic activity.- “Tourism,” Trud , 26 March 1935 (emphasis in original); “This summer,” 12 March
1935; 8 October 1935; NSNM , no. 8 (1934): 10. KP , 11 May 1934, reported that the reorgani-
zation of OPTE was being considered by “very authoritative organizations.” - NSNM , no. 5 (1936): 4; Trud , 18 April 1936; Pravda , 18 April 1936.