From Treatment to Vacation 183An increasing array of “theme days,” lectures and presentations, exhibitions,
and participatory quiz shows added social and political purpose to the medical
restoration offered by the kurort vacation. An evening in which patients shared
information about the “city where I live” broke the ice and helped them get to
know one another but also to know more about their native land. In Moscow-
region rest homes and sanatoria, cultural offi cials recognized that vacationers
came with different interests and needed a full menu of activities from which to
choose. In 1968 these included evenings devoted to literature and art, a celebra-
tion of the Komsomol’s fi ftieth anniversary, puzzle-lovers’ clubs, excursions to
battle sites of the Great Patriotic War, fl ower-arranging exhibitions, and stamp-
collecting groups. In the run-up to the hundredth anniversary of Lenin’s birth
in 1970, the cultural repertoire had added special Lenin content to musical eve-
nings, literary events, excursion plans, and fi lm series.^41 Televisions appeared
increasingly in the public rooms of rest homes and sanatoria, and evening pro-
grams in sanatorium clubs echoed much of the content of Soviet television of
the 1960s and 1970s. Vacationers had long enjoyed viktorinas; now they could
also watch popular quiz shows on television and reenact them during their vaca-
tion stays. In the mid-1970s Soviet sociologists began to worry about channeling
young people into proper professions: Soviet television addressed the problem
with a game show designed to showcase various trades, and at kurorts, vacation-
ers could judge competitions for the best waitress or the best cook or celebrate
holidays of professions by attending performances by the feted group on the
“Day of the Miner” or “Day of Teachers.” Naval Day would be celebrated in
Tuapse with a Neptune Festival and parade down the main street of the seaside
town.^42
Unlike their predecessors in the early postwar years—when the cultural
content of most kurort vacations consisted of old movies, stale amateur con-
certs, dancing, and games produced from the cultural organizer’s book of
365 Games and Leisure Hours —Soviet vacationers could now expect a much
fuller cultural and medical experience during their stays away from home.^43
But all these new activities remained directed toward education and mobili-
zation, healing the body and elevating the mind. The idea of pleasure for its
own sake, as an antidote to the permanent mobilization citizens experienced
during their working months, did not appear on the agenda of the vacation
offi cials. Socialist consumption of leisure would be rational and purposeful,
and that in itself should be pleasure and purpose both.
- GARF, f. 9493, op. 8, d. 428, ll. 27, 16; TsGAMO, f. 7223, op. 1, d. 1603, ll. 102–126.
- Murray Yanowitch, Social and Economic Inequality in the Soviet Union: Six Stud-
ies (White Plains, NY, 1977), chap. 4; Vladimir Shlapentokh, Public and Private Life of the
Soviet People: Changing Values in Post-Stalin Russia (Oxford, 1989), 41; Roth-Ey, Moscow
Prime Time , chap. 5; GARF, f. 9493, op. 8, d. 2258, ll. 15–16. - On complaints about boring evenings, see GAGS, f. 24, op. 1, d. 498 (1954), l. 99;
TsGAMO, f. 7223, op. 1, d. 1252, ll. 134–135 (1956); GARF, f. 9493, op. 3, d. 1982 (sanatoria
and rest homes conference on cultural work, June–July 1949), l. 31; Trud , 18 April 1958.