chapter five
From Treatment to Vacation
The Post-Stalin Consumer Regime
B
y 1967 the resort town of Sochi represented the epitome of the
Soviet spa vacation. It featured coastline and beaches, the dra-
matic backdrop of the Caucasus mountain range, subtropical vegetation, and
a mild climate the year around. The healing springs of Matsesta were re-
nowned throughout the Soviet Union and abroad. Sochi was home to twenty-
one trade union sanatoria, an unreported number of closed Communist Party
sanatoria and rest homes, tourist bases, and an increasing number of “cre-
ative retreats” for artists and intellectuals.^1 The best sanatoria here served
the cream of Soviet society: Stalin vacationed at his dacha in Sochi from the
1930s, and in the 1950s the Party’s central committee and other agencies at
the center of power built a closed network of health resorts that received the
best supplies and the best service.^2 Sochi’s night life boasted symphonies,
theater, fi lm, and a circus, featuring guest appearances by the leading artists
of the capitals. Sports celebrities and cosmonauts made Sochi their home
for training and recovery. In the 1960s visiting foreign dignitaries from the
newly liberated countries of Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean ceremoniously
planted trees of friendship in the arboretum or the public Park Riviera. The
fi lm industry utilized the marble health palaces and lush nature as settings
for many feature fi lms.^3
Sochi’s distinctive welcoming structures—the marble, sandstone, and
granite train station and ship terminals built in 1952 and 1955—transformed
the monumental style of the 1930s into a fairytale version for the postwar con-
sumer age. The train station’s architect, Aleksei Dushkin, had also designed
the fantastical Children’s World department store in Moscow. The ocean
- Trud, 23 June 1961; I. I. Kozlov, ed., Zdravnitsy profsoiuzov SSSR , 3rd ed. (Moscow,
1967), 95–105. - Tour guides were reprimanded for revealing the presence of these closed sanatoria. GARF,
f. 9520, op. 1, d. 84 (excursion materials for North Caucasus, Estonia, 1947–1948), l. 40. - Among the best-loved fi lms set here are the comedies Kavkazskaia plennitsa, ili novye
prikliucheniia Shurika ( The Woman Prisoner of the Caucasus, or the New Adventures of
Shurik ), dir. Leonid Gaidai, Mosfi l'm, 1967; and Brilliantovaia ruka ( Diamond Arm ), dir.
Leonid Gaidai, Mosfi l'm, 1968. In August 2010, a statue commemorating Diamond Arm ’s
heroes was unveiled at Sochi’s marine terminal. See http://www.pravdasochi.ru/?p=761.