You can minimize your losses in ways that Intourist does not tell you. You can combine coupons as you wish - a "lunch" and a "breakfast" to pay for dinner, for example. The possible combinations in rubles are 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 35, 36, 38, and all higher numbers - but the hitch is that too many of them take more than one "tea" coupon. So figure out the best way to work each combination and write it on the back of your coupon book; this will help you to decide whether to overpay for food already horribly overpriced, or to pay the difference in cash. Skill in the coupon game can save you many, many dollars.
There is nothing fair in the coupon system but it isn't meant to be; it is the prime fashion in which the Soviet government squeezes more dollars out of American tourists than they want or need to spend.
There are other ways to reduce your losses. You can swap coupons for liquor, candy, canned caviar, cigarettes, and bottled water. Tap water in Moscow and Leningrad is said to be safe but elsewhere it is wise to buy mineral water - get enough bottles at a time to come out even in coupons. Their cigarettes are corrosive but a brand called "Trud" is smokable. Candy is extremely expensive but a welcome change in a tedious diet (I lost twelve pounds); caviar is cheap and is the best buy to use up leftover coupons on your last day. Don't expect to find whiskey nor any imported liquor, but local "kawnyahk" and "chahmpahnskoyeh" are good. The vodka like ours is "vawt - kah stelleechnayuh" - the other sorts are very highly spiced. Their wines are good.
My favorite relief from a hard day with Intourist was a Bloody Mary - "Staw grahmvawt - kee, p'jalst, ee tawmahtnee sawk." This is "nyeh kuhltoornee" as the proper way to drink vodka is with beer (peevaw), or with black bread, sweet butter, and caviar.
In Moscow and Leningrad very few Russian waiters speak English and almost none elsewhere, but you will usually be handed a huge four - language menu on which you can pick out what you want in English and point to it in Russian. But only the few items with prices written in are offered and maybe half of those will be available - when the waiter says "Nyeh - taw" he means it's all gone. Allow at least two hours for dinner; I've never heard of any way to speed up the service. But, once you are served, the waiter may try to rush you out, claiming that the table is reserved ten minutes hence for a delegation or such. He may simply want to sell food to someone else - he gets a commission. Ignore him - you've waited a long time, paid a high price in advance, and are entitled to eat in peace.
Pick a table as far from the orchestra as possible. Some orchestras are good but most are very loud and sound like a fully automated boiler factory.
Tipping is never necessary but waiters, chambermaids, and porters are paid very little. Tips can be coupons or cash.
The dining room is often locked - for a political delegation from Asia or Africa, for a traveling theatrical troupe, or anything. Any service may be chopped off without warning in any Intourist hotel. Complain... but be prepared to fall back on the buffet (pronounced "boof - yet"). There are usually three or four on the upper floors of large hotels, open from seven a.m. to eleven at night and serving omelets, snacks, beer, wine, juice, coffee, tea, cakes, etc. The guides and clerks in Intourist often do not know about them because they have never been upstairs, so watch for the sign (BVDET) or wander the corridors saying inquiringly to maids and floor clerks: "Boof - yet?"
Buffets are cozy, friendly, little places run by cheerful, helpful, dreadfully overworked women. They won't know English and the menu will be in Russian - here a memorandum in English & Russian of your favorite foods is most useful. But even the buffet doesn't serve breakfast before seven and Russian transportation often leaves at such an hour that you must leave the hotel before then. Russian hotels have room service but not at such hours. If you have your own thermos bottle, room service can fetch you hot coffee and a cold breakfast the night before. (They've heard of thermos bottles - the word is the same - but the hotel won't have one.)
Keep iron rations in your room and carry food and drink on long flights and train trips. Both trains and planes often stop for meals but you can't count on it and usually can't find out in advance.
Minor Ways to Improve Your Score: Go for walks without your guide; you will usually be picked up by someone who knows English - but you will never be picked up while a guide is with you. This is your chance to get acquainted and to get answers which are not the official answers. Don't talk politics - but these venturesome souls may ask you political questions and you can learn almost as much by the questions they ask as by raising such issues yourself.
Your guide may not be a hard-shell Communist; he, or she, may open up once he thinks he can trust you. If so, be careful not to mention anything even faintly political when others are in earshot, especially the driver. The driver may be a political chaperone who knows English but pretends not to. More than one guide has told me this and all guides talk more freely when no one can overhear.
In this country children are brought to Moscow and decorated for having informed on their parents. Never forget this.
When you are shown a party headquarters, a palace of culture, a stadium, an auditorium, or such, ask when it was built. We discovered that, in the areas not occupied by Nazis, many of the biggest and fanciest were built right at the time Americans were dying to keep the Murmansk lend - lease route open.
There is new brick construction all over the Soviet Union. We asked repeatedly to be shown a brick yard, were never quite refused, but the request was never granted. We have since heard a rumor that this is prison labor and that is why a tourist can't see something as unsecret as a brick yard. So try it yourself - you may merely prove to yourself that Intourist exists to keep tourists from seeing what they want to see, rather than vice versa.
Offer your passport to casual acquaintances; they will usually offer theirs in return - internal passports. Intourist people have been coached to deny that such a thing exists but everybody in the USSR carries one and the owner must get a visa to go from one Russian city to another. It is a brown book with "HAC11OPT" (passport) on the cover. Try it when your guide is not around.
The USSR is the only country in which we were never able to get into a private home. Other tourists report the same but one couple from Los Angeles almost cracked this; they said to their guide, "Why can't we see the inside of one of those apartment houses? Are you people ashamed of them?" The next day they were shown through a not - yet - occupied one.
This could be varied endlessly, as it works on that Russian basic, their inferiority complex. The key word is "ashamed" - simply asking "Why?" gets you nowhere. I think it could be used to get into farms, schools, courts, factories, anything not a military secret. It tops my list of things I wish I had thought of first.
In meeting anyone, including guides, try to use "democracies" as an antonym for "Communist countries" as soon as possible - drag it in by the heels, i.e., "I think all of us from the democracies earnestly hope for peace with the Communist countries," etc. The much abused word "democratic" means "Communist" in Russia and it always introduces a propaganda pitch. If you deny him his definition by preempting the word, you leave him with his mouth hanging open, unable to proceed.