1936 On the Continent

In the last few years there have been shops called “Torgsin Stores” in all of the larger cities and in most of the smaller ones, where the traveller could buy his incidental requirements—tobacco, cigarettes, drinks of various sorts, soap and so forth—paying
in
his English money (or francs or marks or dollars) and getting a very full and fair exchange for them. Most things, such as cigarettes and drinks, were definitely cheap.
Rate of Exchange
    Since the beginning of the present year a change has taken place in the currency regulations in Russia. Foreign money is no longer accepted unless it is exchanged into roubles; the Torgsin stores have been closed down; and the exchange value of the rouble has been fixed arbitrarily, if temporarily, at about 25 to the £1.
    It would take too long here to go into elaborate considerations of Government financial policy. The decisions are taken in the interest of a nation of about 180 million people, who are continually every year getting more goods and cheaper goods—and it would be slightly unreasonable to expect the policy of a whole country to be changed in orderto allow a few hundred tourists to get cheap cigarettes. Nevertheless the matter
is
highly important to the individual tourist himself.
    It should be stated again, so that the intending visitor is in no doubt about it, that though “Intourist,” in exchange for his English money in England, will still provide him with all the essentials of his journey at a very cheap rate—his food, his fares, his hotels, his
visa
and his guides—he will find, for the present year at least, that the small “extras’ he may want to buy will come sometimes astonishingly expensive.
Expensive Extras
    An instance. As he gets 25 roubles for his pound, he will have to reckon a rouble as about equal to 10d. But a packet of cigarettes in Russia costs anything from 2 roubles 50 kopeks to 5 roubles—i.e., anything from 2s. to 4s. If he wants to go out on his own and have a meal at a restaurant, he may find that a comparatively simple meal will cost him 7s. or 8s. A bottle of beer (and Russian beer is not particularly attractive to an English taste) will cost him about 1s. 8d. He will no doubt be surprised to find that hundreds of Russians around him are buying the cigarettes at 5 roubles a packet, and drinking the bottles of beer at 2 roubles, and that all the restaurants are crowded; and he will further work it out to himself that a rouble,
for a Russian
, is not a particularly expensive coin, certainly not as dear as his own 10d.—and in this he will be perfectly right. The exchange rate of 25 roubles to the £1 is, in fact, arbitrary. It may even be changed later. But for the moment it is a fact that he will have to keep in his consciousness—and, not liking it, he will have to lump it.
    He can console himself with one or two reflections. The first is that there is obviously no desire on the part of the Soviet Government to diddle him, since the Soviet Government is providing him, at a remarkably cheap rate, with all the essentials of his tour, and is only being unkind to him in the minor frivolities such as drink and cigarettes. Apart from these two things he has no real need to buy anything at all, and should reconcile himself to changing and spending as little extra money as possible.
    In the second place, he is in some ways freer than hewas before the new regulations, when £1 had to be changed at the quite fantastic rate of only 8 or 9 roubles. With his £1 changed at the rate of 25 roubles, he will find certain things come reasonably cheap, telephones, cables, letters and city conveyances, and will be able to travel all over Moscow by motor-bus or the newly built Metro for the equivalent of a few pence. He will be able to eat in any restaurants that he likes—far away from guides and his fellow tourists—if he doesn’t mind paying a few shillings more than he would in England and is careful. (This last is really important. Up to this year, with the rouble at only eight to the £, the tourist was almost entirely confined for meals to the hotels where he was staying and where he got his meals from “Intourist” free. Now he can wander just as freely as his means permit.)
    Lastly, being well forewarned, he should take into the country as many cigarettes as he thinks he will need for his trip. Two hundred is the number officially allowed by the authorities, but it is probable that the Customs would wink at more than