The Modernization of Soviet Tourism 269organized by the Sochi tourist base in 1965, dozens of comments from “we
tourists” praised the attentive and caring service, good food, and friendli-
ness of the staff. They also pointed out cases in which comfort was absent.
Vacationers with health resort or rest home putevki expressed identical senti-
ments. Every year, said one offi cial in 1963, tourist demands increased: they
wanted their tourist base rooms to be neat and cozy, offering mirrors, cur-
tains, and hot water in their rooms, and they expected to fi nd hairdressers
and other services on the premises. Tourists expected comfort, repeated a
Sochi offi cial: why should someone pay sixty rubles for a bed in a tent while
for the same sixty rubles, another tourist received a “modern room” in the
Sokol tourist base?^26
Tourist cruises most closely combined the features of rest and tourism,
and they were highly prized by travelers of a certain age, who no longer
sought the romance of the open road. “Setting off for a vacation with a tour-
ist putevka on the Rossiia , I had two goals,” wrote a village schoolteacher in
View of the tourist base complex Horizon, in Alushta, Crimea, 1973. Photograph by Denisov.
RGAKFD g. Krasnogorsk, no. 0341214. Used with permission of the archive.
- “Modern room,” GAGS, f. 261, op. 1, d. 1 (tourist train comment books, 1964), l. 81;
GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 525 (central tourism council plenum, April 1963), ll. 38–39; d. 784
(regional tourism council meetings, 1965), l. 144.