78 Chapter 2
The supply of food for tourists on the move posed particular problems in a
system in which all provisions were allocated on the basis of ration books and
citizens received most of their nutrition through closed cafeterias at work.^59
Early proletarian tourists found that their Moscow ration books could not be
exchanged for food on the road. So they stocked up in Moscow on rations that
would last for two weeks or a month; one group sent a supplemental shipment
of dried rusks to a Caucasus post offi ce address so that they could resupply
themselves en route. For the package tourists, the OPTE arranged with the
Commissariat of Supply to allocate rations to be assigned to tourist bases. In-
dependent tourists, theoretically included in this arrangement, usually had to
fend for themselves, carrying most of their supplies with them: rusks, sugar,
groats, potatoes, garlic, and tea. Sometimes they could supplement their mea-
ger diets with locally caught fi sh or meat purchased from local farmers. Other
mechanisms for obtaining food scarcely existed. One independent traveler
could not even purchase a meal in the Dneprstroi tourist base canteen, and in
order to eat he had to spend his entire stay foraging in private markets.^60
The famine conditions that swept the Soviet countryside in the wake of
collectivization received no direct mention in the tourist press, but in condi-
tions of extreme scarcity, the value of the twenty-three thousand ration books
allocated to OPTE in 1932 made them very conducive to illegal disposition.
A Communist Party Central Committee investigation of OPTE discovered
that 63 percent of the tourist ration books could not be accounted for in 1932;
offi cials in the central offi ce had taken food allocated for tourists to Moscow
and fed hundreds of staff members instead. The end of nationwide rationing
in 1934 refl ected a modest improvement in the food supply, but tourists, like
health spa vacationers, complained openly about the quality of the meals
they received at the bases. Corruption within the OPTE organization contin-
ued to deny tourists access to provisions for the road.^61
Offi cials hoped that the transfer of tourism affairs to the more administra-
tively experienced trade union organization would improve these conditions.
The TEU received signifi cant funds to expand the network of tourist bases,
including the conversion of rest homes: by 1939 its budget had grown to 40
million rubles, compared with 6 million available to the old OPTE. Tourism
agencies now shared with health resorts and rest homes the trade unions’ so-
cial insurance fund. In 1932, the OPTE had managed to obtain 2 million rubles
from this fund for the maintenance of tourist bases but nothing thereafter. Start-
ing in 1936, these funds increased signifi cantly, from 14 million in 1936 to 46.7
million in 1939. Insurance money for the construction of new facilities grew
from 4 million in 1936 to 16.5 million in 1938. The TEU had inherited eighty-
one tourist bases from OPTE in 1936; by 1938, it had added fi fty-three more.^62- Osokina, Za fasadom “Stalinskogo izobiliia .”
- Proletarskii turizm , 93; NSNM , no. 7 (1933): 10.
- NSNM , no. 6 (1933): 16; no. 10 (1935): 4; no. 20 (1934): 13; no. 15 (1935): 4.
- Trud , 11 April 1937; 9 April 1940; GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 179a (reports on TEU,
1936–1951), l. 28; d. 39 (reports from TEU, 1946), l. 52.