178 Chapter 5
as we have seen, resisted ceding administrative authority to professional
managers. The doctor’s touch, they avowed, was just as important as sun,
air, and mineral water. “Complaints begin on the day that the health place
director loses contact with patients and vacationers,” insisted the chairman
of the trade union of medical workers in 1962. Our sophisticated Soviet va-
cationers forgive much in the way of shortages, he added, but “they cannot
forgive an indifferent attitude on the part of the head doctor.”^28 Socialist
experts combined science with the human touch. Socialist consumer sat-
isfaction elevated humanism and social interaction above the soulless and
lonely accumulation of goods.
“Junior medical personnel”—nurses and orderlies—also played their role
in creating the vacationer dependency. Those too ill to engage in vigorous
calisthenics could opt for “dosed walking” under the supervision of a nurse.
A physician and as many as three and four nurses at a time monitored medi-
cal beaches to ensure that recipients of heliotherapy changed positions at- GARF, f. 9493, op. 3, d. 1955 (chemical workers union kurort offi cials’ conference,
January 1955), l. 48; op. 8, d. 326, ll. 210–211.
Vacationers and medical attendants on the veranda of the Yalta sanatorium of the Ministry of
Heavy Industry, July 1958. Photograph by Ginzburg. RGAKFD g. Krasnogorsk, no. 0–213579.
Used with permission of the archive.