From Treatment to Vacation 177also expanded, and some sanatoria began to offer immunological and allergy
treatments. By the end of the 1970s, the use of sanatoria for postoperative
cardiac care was receiving increased attention. The expansion of medical
care also included physical therapy and exercise, labeled “therapeutic physi-
cal culture,” a continuing staple of the rest home regime. Morning exercises,
gymnastics, walking, and organized sports contests constituted the medical
portion of the rest home stay.^27
With medical science at the core of the kurort regime, the role of medi-
cal experts remained central. The expansion of higher education in the
Khrushchev years allowed the regime to establish a rule by experts, a dem-
onstration of socialism’s direct inheritance of the Enlightenment spirit
of science and reason. The emerging intelligentsia not only became the
leading clients of this regime but also made it function. Clearly delineated
hierarchies of medical authority in turn created an emotional sense of de-
pendency by vacationers on their skilled medical overseers. Head doctors,
- GARF, f. 9493, op. 8, d. 2303, l. 36; Trud , 2 February 1982; TsGAMO, f. 7223, op. 1,
d. 1603 (kurort medical reports, 1968), l. 56; d. 1567 (rest home medical reports, 1959), ll.
18, 86, 97, 117, 123.
Vacationers at the Gelendzhik rest home of the State Trade Employees trade union taking
sunbaths, 1947. Note the nurse on the right monitoring a pulse. RGAKFD g. Krasnogorsk, no.
0–189130. Used with permission of the archive.