From Treatment to Vacation 189Planners also proposed creating new differentiations among vacation des-
tinations in order to channel demand away from the capital- and service-
intensive sanatoria toward more simple and varied types of facilities. The
standard stay at a sanatorium remained fi xed at twenty-six days. Rest homes
continued to serve hundreds of thousands of vacationers, who utilized the
typical twelve-day putevka for healthy and active leisure, often near their
places of residence. The 1960s saw the expansion of the pansion, a fl exible
form of vacation complex, consisting of sleeping quarters and attached din-
ing and entertainment halls: they might or might not offer medical services
(through cooperation with a kurort’s polyclinic). Pansions could accommo-
date as many as four thousand visitors at a time, whose stays could range from
one to four weeks.^55 The 1980 fi lm From the Lives of Vacationers depicts one
such Black Sea pansion in the autumn off-season, where world-weary vaca-
tioners amuse themselves in the hours between morning seaside calisthen-
ics (to the relentless accompaniment of an accordion player), monotonous
meals (“kasha again?”) served on white tablecloths by offi cious uniformed
waitresses, and evenings of Gypsy music in the klub. Rest homes remained
even smaller in scale and more primitive in services. With their dormitory-
type sleeping facilities, notoriously poor food, and lack of amenities, they
had become less attractive to the increasingly discriminating Soviet vacation
consumer. In 1970, rest homes and pansions served a combined 4.77 million
vacationers, while 3.38 million availed themselves of treatments at sanatoria.
Of the three, only the sanatorium received subsidies from state insurance and
medical funds. The pansion and the rest home were required to observe the
principle of cost accounting, balancing their income (the value of the putevki
of the visitors who actually arrived) against expenditures. Differentiation by
type and price also served to address the excesses of demand: a twelve-day
stay at an ordinary rest home cost thirty rubles in the 1960s, but the highest
category of rest home charged twice that price. Twelve days in the highest-
category pansion cost eighty rubles.^56
The transfer of health vacation responsibility to the trade unions provided
new opportunities for individual enterprises and organizations to construct
their own facilities. Economic reform designed to make rational use of pub-
lic resources opened the door to new forms of consumer distinction. Many
of the so-called artistic unions (for composers, writers, architects, etc.) built
“creative houses” in the most desirable resort locations, offering proprietary
and upscale versions of the typical rest home.^57 Individual industrial enter-
prises also negotiated with local governments and construction fi rms to erect
- GARF, f. 9493, op. 8, d. 4, l. 13; Azar, Otdykh, 33.
- Iz zhizni otdykhaiushchikh , dir. Nikolai Gubenko, Mosfi l'm, 1980; Trud , 25 May
1966; GARF, f. 9493, op. 8, d. 326, l. 381; Azar, Otdykh , 14, 30–34. - For the architect M. I. Rudomino, the creative house of the union of architects was
his “second home.” Knigi moei sud'by (Moscow, 2005), 302. See also L. Vertinskaia, Siniaia
ptitsa liubvi (Moscow, 2004), 321–323; L. Lazarev, Zapiski pozhilogo cheloveka (Moscow,
2005), 419–420.