It is widely believed that Stalin’s Soviet Union was a country almost completely closed to foreigners. However, advertising for “Intourist” (the organization responsible for foreign tourism in the USSR), founded in the 1930s, offers a somewhat different assessment.

The country desperately needed foreign currency for industrialization, so every means possible was used to attract wealthy foreign tourists to the USSR. And this wasn’t limited to the major cities of Moscow and Leningrad.

Welcome to the USSR

Tags: Moscow city · posters · propaganda · Saint Petersburg city · Soviet past