Soviet Tourist Mecca

Soviet Caucasus was home to many health resorts. A region with natural, ethnic and culinary diversity, it lured vacationers and tourists from all across the country. At the same time, freedom-loving highlanders and commercially minded traders exploiting gaps in the planned economy often created headaches for Kremlin leaders.

Intourist travel booklet, 1931

Circus hippopotamus trainer Stepan Isakyan with his hippo at the Black Sea, 1967

Train number 3/4 "Caucasus" Kislovodsk - Moscow,1977

Dzhigits galloping through the mountains. Photo by Yuri Abramochkin, Dagestan, 1968

"We will defend the Caucasus!" WWII poster, 1943

"Micromotor" Tbilisi plant. The best assemblers in the factory shop with product samples and the USSR quality mark" Photo by Givi Kikvadze and Felix Krymsky, Georgian SSR, 1976

"Batumi under construction" painting by Khasan Inaishvili, Georgian SSR,1980

Soviet army in the streets of Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, 1990

Intourist travel booklet, 1931

Young couple in Tuapse (a town in Krasnodar Krai situated on the northeast shore of the Black Sea, south of Gelendzhik and north of Sochi), 1987

"Greetings from Grozny!" postcard, 1960

Residential buildings in Yerevan. Photo by Dean Conger, Armenian SSR, 1974

"USSR Ministry of Culture sanatorium, Sochi" postcard, 1955

Holidaymakers in Dombay. Photo by Boris Ushmaykin,1970

Barbershop, Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, 1978

A scene in cabaret. Painting by Lado Gudiashvili, 1920s

"Adygea" hotel, Maykop, 1970s

"Travel the Caucasus Mountains" poster, 1947

Black sea beach. Photo by Carl De Keyzer, Sochi,1988

"To the peoples of Caucasus" Soviet propaganda poster, 1920

Panorama of the city of Baku, Azerbaijan SSR. Photo by Yevgeny Khaldey, 1962