From Treatment to Vacation 185state secret that Soviet vacationers remained disappointed in the level of service
they received or the food they consumed during their holidays, and vacationers
could also infer from these reports that they were entitled to something better.
The gradual shift in vacations from a welfare benefi t provided by the state to a
leisure commodity purchased by a consumer led eventually, if belatedly, to the
transformation of Soviet health-based vacationing into something resembling a
business but one that produced services rather than goods.
Recreational boat rides at Sochi, from the 1962 kurort guide. S. V. Kurashov, L. G. Gol'dfail',
and G. N. Pospelova, eds., Kurorty SSSR (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo meditsins-
koi literatury, 1962), facing page 208.