From Treatment to Vacation 187The Economy of Shortages
The Soviet spa vacation became one more defi cit item in the growing so-
cialist economy of shortages. Their increased demand pitted Soviet consum-
ers directly against the economy’s structural inability to respond to it. The
history of the Soviet defi cit economy has been well documented by theorists
and contemporary social scientists as well as by the cartoonists at the humor
magazine Krokodil' , by thundering offi cial speeches assigning blame, and by
the hand-wringing of the new intelligentsia assigned to resolve problems of
central planning.^49 The business of Soviet spa vacations provides a microhis-
tory of this fundamental feature of Soviet economic decision making.
Two features of vacation consumption exacerbated the growing shortfall
between demand and supply: the seasonality and the geographic concentra-
tion of consumer preferences. Since the 1920s, vacation offi cials had tried to
encourage utilization of rest homes and sanatoria in winter as well as sum-
mer. To build elaborate infrastructure and facilities that stood idle three,
six, or eight months a year constituted impermissible waste in the rational-
ly planned economy. Qualifi ed staff could not be found for seasonal work;
building housing for staff who worked only three months in the year could
not be justifi ed. Yet Soviet consumers wanted to take their vacations in sum-
mer. A 1965 study indicated that nearly half of the urban population took
their vacations in July and August, another 20 percent in May and June.^50
Summer congestion imposed additional burdens: long waits for everything
from train tickets to meals to mineral water baths.
Congestion peaked in the favorite vacation spots along the Black Sea: from
Odessa to Crimea and along the Caucasus Black Sea coast from Anapa to the
southern border of Georgia. The development of beachside complexes on the
Baltic Sea attracted an increasing fl ow of vacationers to the Lithuanian and Lat-
vian republics, but these resorts did not diminish popular demand for the sun
and sea in the south. By the 1970s, offi cials supported the development of new
kurort regions in Siberia, the Far East, and Central Asia, and they also placed
new emphasis on the construction of vacation complexes in forested areas closer
to large industrial cities. Lake Seliger, an expansive region of waterways and for-
est in Kalinin oblast between Moscow and Leningrad, remained accessible only
to intrepid tourists until the 1960s, when plans to develop rest homes and spas
began to receive support. In 1961 offi cials addressed the huge excess demand for
a Sochi vacation by dramatically expanding the city limits of the resort town,
creating a “Greater Sochi” that extended 140 kilometers along the coast from just
south of Tuapse to the border with the Georgian republic. The new designation
- Lewin, Political Undercurrents; James R. Millar, The ABCs of Soviet Socialism (Ur-
bana, IL, 1981); Ledeneva, Russia’s Economy of Favours. The classic theoretical analysis
is by János Kornai, Economics of Shortage (Amsterdam, 1980). Most recently, the Soviet
economy at the end of the 1950s has become the stuff of fi ction: Francis Spufford, Red Plenty
(London, 2010). - GAGS, f. 24, op. 1, d. 498, l. 80; GARF, f. 9493, op. 8, d. 227, ll. 35–37; d. 238, l. 188;
d. 2303, l. 110; Azar, Otdykh , 48.