76 Chapter 2
Tourism activists envisioned that the tourist base ( turbaza ) in the So-
viet Union would provide the optimal setting for the practice of proletar-
ian, purposeful tourism, far more suitable for the proletarian tourist than
a bourgeois hotel. A hotel provided bed and board in exchange for cold
cash, but a tourist base would offer the comfort, amenities, and social pur-
pose of a rest home, with proper furnishings and resources for learning,
rest, and recreation. Like the trade union rest homes and resorts, the tour-
ist base should be clean, cozy, and attractive, landscaped with palm trees
and fl ower beds. The tourist should feel welcome, like a comrade, not a
paying guest. Above all, the tourist base would become the center for cul-
tured touring and excursions, catering to the tourists’ political and cultural
needs, providing lectures and fi lms on the social questions of the day and
advice about where to go and what to see. Under socialism, the comrade
came fi rst: “A base should be considered a good one only if the tourist
would wish to return.”^56
Judging by reports that fi lled the tourist press, tourists seldom encountered
such bases. Filth and overcrowding topped the list of complaints. Tourists- Turist-aktivist , no. 2 (1931): 25; nos. 10–11 (1931): 50–51 (quote, 50); no. 10 (1932);
NSNM , no. 10 (1931): 2; no. 21 (1931): 8; no. 18 (1931): 14; no. 4 (1932): 15; no. 9 (1932): 15;
nos. 19–20 (1932): 7; no. 14 (1933): 3; no. 2 (1934): 4; no. 12 (1934): 16; no. 17 (1934): 16.
View of the Sochi tourist base, 1937–40. The structure in the rear housed dining facilities;
large sleeping tents are in the foreground. RGAKFD g. Krasnogorsk, no. 420060. Used with
permission of the archive.