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THE SOVIET UNION ON $24,000 A DAY
(FORTUNE Magazine) – Looking for an exotic place to spend your next vacation? You can rent the country home of former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who died in 1982. The 14-room, four-story house is in Kislovodsk, a scenic retreat in the Caucasus mountains. The spread comes equipped with such egalitarian basics as a winter garden, a helicopter, a sports complex with tennis courts, gym, and swimming pool, Asian- and Finnish-style bathhouses, a billiard room, and a movie theater. The Soviets, who left the place empty for most of the past decade, have formed a joint venture with AMA, a British tourism company, to rent it and raise much needed hard currency. Rate: $24,000 a day, food and drink included. More interested in paying less expensive respects to other Soviet leaders? Lenin's dacha in Gorky is a museum open to tourists, but visits to Stalin's Moscow home are by reservation only. And forget about trying to find the house where Khrushchev, who died in disgrace in 1971, spent his final years. To help erase his memory, the Soviets tore the place down. But you can always visit his grave in Moscow's Novodevichy cemetery. |
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