138 Chapter 4
courteously assigned them to their rooms. Linen tablecloths and napkins
graced the dining room tables. Outdoors, fences and benches received new
coats of paint, and hundreds of thousands of fl owers and shrubs were planted
in the course of the review. Doctors did their part by spending more time
with patients, attentively writing down their medical histories so that the
proper treatment regime could be prescribed.^27 As in 1945, when trade union
health authorities had briefl y encouraged individual and local initiative, un-
der the 1950 review the best initiators were harnessed to the improvement
of service on an all-union scale. This had been the purpose of Stakhanovism
and socialist competition in 1930s. What was new in 1950 was the applica-
tion of incentives to the service sector in mobilization campaigns where the
goal was pleasure, not production.- GARF, f. 9493, op. 3, d. 1783, l. 88; TsGAMO, f. 7223, op. 1, d. 576; GARF, f. 9493, op.
3, d. 2012 (central review commission conferences, 24 March 1950; 20 April 1950); d. 1761
(Krasnodar review commission materials, 1950); d. 1748 (Moscow region review commis-
sion materials, 1950); d. 1738 (Crimean review commission materials, 1950). Many of these
reports came illustrated with photographs.
Exterior view of the entrance to the rest home for miners of the Moscow coal basin, Bobrik-
Gora, Moscow oblast, 1950. Photograph by Chenrunov. Note the fl owers and fenced path-
ways, part of the 1950 campaign to beautify rest home facilities. RGAKFD g. Krasnogorsk,
no. 0171015. Used with permission of the archive.