182 Chapter 5
elaborate attention to historical tradition, having turned his health place
into a kind of Russian theme park. The customary Russian greeting of bread
and salt, served on embroidered towels, “the symbol of Russian friendship,”
greeted vacationers, who could then take tea from a samovar following the
afternoon rest hour. On the sports fi eld, visitors participated in Russian folk
games and horseback riding “because all Russians love to ride horses.” The
swimming beach featured a rolling barrel and a tame bear, and birthday men
and women received a special pastry, presented to the accompaniment of
Russian folk songs. The buildings here also adopted the style appropriate to
the “glorious tradition of the Russian people.”^38
Khrushchev’s 1961 promise, “This generation of Soviet people will live
under Communism,” emerged as a central goal of the 1960s kurort agenda.
A Communist person would be cultured, and the trade union vacation en-
terprises now devoted new attention to raising the cultural and aesthetic
consciousness of its visitors. Music appreciation received a boost with the
increased availability of record players. “Listening to ‘Evgeni Onegin’ or ‘La
Traviata’ makes me think I am in ‘another world,’ in the Bolshoi Theater,”
wrote one grateful vacationer in 1961. Musical salons included phonograph
concerts, lectures, visits from touring composers and artists, and also “Favor-
ite Songs of Lenin.” By 1975 vacationers in provincial Ivanovo could hear
concerts by the local philharmonic; in the Krasnodar oblast (which included
Sochi), vacationers were treated to productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto ,
and Ruggiero Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci by the touring Sverdlovsk Opera The-
ater, as well as lectures on composers and artists such as Dmitrii Shostakov-
ich and David Oistrakh.^39
The burgeoning Soviet economy of the late 1950s and early 1960s helped
fi nance the regime’s newly prominent cultural mission, and rising standards
of living provided Soviet consumers with the means to access these cultural
products. The expansion of an art book industry provided new possibilities
for art appreciation. Saratov sanatorium vacationers enjoyed their “days of
art,” with lectures on individual artists such as the Russians Il'ia Repin, Vik-
tor Vaznetsov, and Vasilii Surikov; lessons in how to look at a painting; and
lectures on “Marxist-Leninist aesthetics.” Vacationers from Tula lavished
praise on such opportunities in 1975: “We seldom visit Moscow and Len-
ingrad, and we don’t have the possibility to see the paintings of old Rus-
sian masters and Soviet artists. We don’t go to Tula art exhibitions at home
because after work we’re tired, and on weekends we have other things to do.
But here at the sanatorium, we have the free time and pleasure to become
acquainted with art.”^40- TsGAMO, f. 7223, op. 1, d. 1567, ll. 109, 46, 40; GARF, f. 9493, op. 8, d. 227, ll. 124–131.
- GARF, f. 9493, op. 8, d. 326, ll. 234–237 (quote, l. 237); d. 428, l. 76; TsGAMO, f. 7223,
op. 1, d. 1603, l. 114; GARF, f. 9493, op. 8, d. 2258 (report on mass cultural work, 1975), ll.
18–20. - Roth-Ey, Moscow Prime Time ; “We seldom visit,” GARF, f. 9493, op. 8, d. 2258, l. 21.