Cruising communist style

[Doc Vernon]

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The Stockholm was sold off by the Swedes three years after collision with the Andrea Doria. In December 1959, she made passenger ship history -- she joined Communist East Germany's growing merchant fleet and became the world's first "Communist trade union cruise ship". She was renamed Volkerfreundschaft (the "People's Friendship").

Carrying 600 "perfect Party workers," she cruised from Rostock to the Baltic, the Soviet Black Sea, Egypt and occasionally across the Atlantic to Castro's Cuba. Worker/party member passengers were selected for passages but had to pass no fewer than 8 security check points before actually receiving Government permission to sail. Daily propaganda lectures were part of the shipboard entertainment.