This article is an interesting look at vacations and tourism within the USSR (first place in the world to require paid leave). But, the author can't help but describe everything as a sinister authoritarian conspiracy. I wonder what percent of American workers were going on paid multi day river cruises in the 1970s.

  • baguettePants [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    In socialist Yugoslavia I lived in, worker cooperatives (a thing our socialist were committed to, as opposed to a more state led Soviet model) built vacation houses, while more successful ones had even resorts their workers could use. Usually there would be summer holiday houses/resorts and winter holidays/resorts you could use. They would also organize shorter trips to other countries as well. It was very neat.

    After the "collapse" (i.e. intentional demolition) and during the "privatization" (i.e. brutal plunder), "investors" (i.e. criminals close to the new ruling elite) would grab those companies for nothing, destroy them, fire everyone and sell all this lucrative real estate, making them extremely rich, overnight. We were told that's fine, because these companies were "inefficient" and would have failed anyway on the "latest fad" called the "free market"...