Restoring Vacations after the War 155The reality for many vacationers was neither too much uplifting leisure
nor too much fun but too little of either. Most sanatoria were still dominated
by tedium, wrote Trud in August 1950. The vacationer Khrulev complained
to the Sochi newspaper in 1951 about the absence of interesting lectures on
“atomic energy and the morality of the Soviet person”: “Many vacationers
engage in activities such as hooliganizing and drinking, which have become
normal occurrences, all because there has been no educational work con-
ducted in the sanatoria for an entire two months.”^67
And who was to blame for this boredom and resulting misbehavior? The
absence of suitable and qualifi ed cultural leadership emerged over and over as
a major problem in the Soviet vacation experience. Cultural programming at
health spas and rest homes fell under the jurisdiction of the “cultural worker.”
Ideally this kul'trabotnik would be joined by a musician, usually an accor-
dion player, assigned to provide dance music, accompany amateur musical
performances, and give music lessons as well: a good accordionist could help
ensure a happy stay at a sanatorium. A specialized librarian might supervise
the library and organize the question-and-answer games. In addition, and
increasingly in the 1950s, the cultural staff would also include the “group
leader,” massovik , who performed a function similar to that of the Redcoats
of Billy Butlin’s holiday camps in the United Kingdom. Part entertainer, part
master of ceremonies, part camp counselor, a good massovik would motivate
the vacationers to take part in the games and activities of the spa.^68 Cultural
workers received miserly pay, and given the seasonal demand for their servic-
es, it was diffi cult to recruit and retain good workers who possessed both the
talent to lead mass games and the ideological credentials to be trusted to pre-
pare programs on political and social themes. Among tourist groups, guides
doubled as cultural programmers.^69 They received short training courses from
the TEU, but here too the pay was low and turnover a perpetual problem.
If the level of medical skill at vacation palaces had increased by 1950,
the low professionalism of cultural workers drew consternation. In general,
cultural programming represented yet another element of the socialist project
that received more vocal than material support. As Kristin Roth-Ey notes in
her study of postwar Soviet culture, “it was not until the late fi fties that the
regime was materially capable of making any culture a part of everyday life
on a mass scale.”^70 Within the realm of vacations, tourism ranked even lower
in the provision of cultural funding than the health resorts.
- Trud , 29 August 1950; GAGS, f. 24, op. 1, d. 368, l. 49ob. (quote).
- GAGS, f. 178, op. 1, d. 9, l. 16ob.; Ward and Hardy, Goodnight Campers! , 87–89; see
the 1990 fi lm Moia Moriachka ( My Sailor Girl ), dir. Anatolii Eiramdzhan, starring Liudmila
Gurchenko as a Crimean resort massovik; GAGS, f. 24, op. 1, d. 355, ll. 7–7ob. - TsGAMO, f. 7223, op. 1, d. 305, l. 7; GARF, f. 9493, op. 3, d. 141, l. 5. In a later period,
a confl icted Georgian massovik who resents entertaining his Russian guests is featured in the
fi lm Plovets (Georgian, Mocurave ; The Swimmer ), dir. Irakli Kvirikadze, 1981; TsAGM, f. 28,
op. 2, d. 15; GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 260, l. 18; d. 80, ll. 44–45; d. 193, l. 33; d. 262, ll. 88–89. - Kristin Roth-Ey, Moscow Prime Time: How the Soviet Union Built the Media Empire
That Lost the Cultural Cold War (Ithaca, NY, 2011), 10.