Proletarian Tourism 77coped with bedbugs and lice, soiled mattresses or none at all, no bed linens
for cots, no utensils in the dining room, no hot water for washing.^57 Given the
prevailing housing shortage, some base managers rented space to permanent
residents, forcing tourists to sleep on fl oors or on the tops of tables. Finding a
tent in a tourist base is like playing the lottery, wrote Trud in 1936: only the
luckiest tourists found one with wooden fl oors and no holes in the canvas.
Many bases were hidden away in unmarked neighborhoods, far from local
tourist attractions and often impossible to fi nd. The Sochi base drew repeated
criticism for crowding men and women together in the same tents, for wet
mattresses, high prices, and rude personnel. Tourists faced long lines at every
turn: an hour or more to register their documents, two hours for a place in the
canteen, and long waits to use the sinks and toilets.^58
- NSNM , no. 21 (1930): 16–18; no. 10 (1931): 2; no. 4 (1932): 15; no. 17 (1933): 13;
no. 17 (1934): 16. German tourists in the 1930s encountered similar conditions. Heeke, Reisen
zu den Sowjets, 366–368. - NSNM , no. 26 (1931): 8–9; Trud , 24 June 1936; NSNM , no. 4 (1932): 15; Turist-aktivist ,
nos. 8–9 (1932): 21; NSNM , no. 9 (1932): 15; nos. 19–20 (1932): 7; nos. 28–30 (1932): 31;
no. 1 (1937): 27; no. 12 (1934): 16; nos. 17–18 (1930), inside back cover; Turist-aktivist ,
no. 1 (1933): 28.
Interior view of the Tifl is tourist base, 1937–39. RGAKFD g. Krasnogorsk, no. 420097. Used
with permission of the archive.