ABSTRACT
The construction of the Viru Hotel in the centre of Tallinn, at that time capital of the Estonian SSR, was closely related to the opening of the Soviet Union to the West in the period of the Khruschev Thaw and to the city's geographical closeness to Finland, the country's longest-term trade partner on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Built for In tourist, one of the two all-Soviet joint-stock companies, the hotel was intended for foreign tourists. It was developed as part of an industry that, from the early 1960s onwards, was recognized as a way to earn hard currency. In 1964, a decree from the Soviet Council of Ministers planned the construction of fifty-four new hotels all over the country. In the same year, after an unofficial visit of the Finnish president Urho Kaleva Kekkonen to Estonia, and an official one to Moscow, it was agreed to establish a passenger-boat connection between Tallinn and Helsinki. A year later, the first boat arrived in Tallinn, after a three hour trip across the Baltic Sea, bringing with it 200 Finnish tourists, the first of a total of 10,000 that year, a number that quickly doubled in the next year.
