Intourist Thomas Cook is the company formerly known as Intourist. The history of the company dates back to April 12, 1929, when VAO Intourist, the National Joint-Stock Company for the Acceptance of Foreign Tourists, was founded. In Soviet times, Intourist was the main tourist operator which received foreigners to the Soviet Union. Because of this, during the 1920’s and 30’s the USSR was visited through Intourist by famous public figures, writers, artists and politicians such as Theodore Dreiser, Bernard Shaw, Romain Rolland, Rabindranath Tagore and others. Today Intourist is considered to be one of the largest and most reliable tourism companies.