From Treatment to Vacation 195of this group, local kurort bureaus contracted in advance of each season with
owners of private houses and apartments to lodge the overfl ow. They stipu-
lated the rent that could be charged, how much extra would be charged for
services, and the minimum living space per resident, and they established
minimum sanitary norms. Only landlords whose accommodations met these
requirements would be assigned vacationers through the local kurort bu-
reau.^74 Bureaus also stipulated rules of moral behavior. In the 1982 fi lm Be
My Husband , a single mother and her child are denied a room in a private
home in Crimea because she is unaccompanied by a husband. Meanwhile, a
young male pediatrician sent offi cially for a cure in the south cannot fi nd a
hotel room. He agrees to act as her fi ctitious spouse so that she can rent her
room while he sleeps on the veranda. (In the happy ending, of course, despite
beaches packed with sunbathing bodies and other mishaps appropriate to
romantic comedy, the two become a real couple.) Vacationers had no option
but to accept the room they were offered. “There’s nothing to haggle about,
you’re not buying a cow!” they were told.^75 As long as demand exceeded
supply, there would be some vacationers willing to pay more for a room and
landlords willing to rent for that price. In 1954, although the offi cial contract
had set the monthly rent at 170 rubles, some landlords were charging as
much as 600. Landlords themselves would meet trains and make their own
private arrangements with arriving vacationers: one study suggested that in
Evpatoria, on the west coast of Crimea, only 81,000 of 480,000 unorganized
vacationers had used the kurort’s apartment bureau. Such private arrange-
ments might be repeated for years if renter and tenant were satisfi ed with the
conditions.^76
Unplanned access to food presented greater diffi culties. Only organized
resters could take meals in the sanatorium dining rooms, and restaurants and
cafés could not meet the demand of the unorganized. In Crimea during the
peak season, one study estimated there were forty diners for every seat in a
public catering establishment and one seat for every hundred diners in an
actual sit-down restaurant. Kurort offi cials talked about expanding the array
of catering options in order to accommodate the unorganized resters: more
self-service cafeterias, snack bars, tearooms, buffets, and kiosks; more food
shops, warehouses, and refrigerated storage facilities. Time-budget studies
from the late 1960s showed that unorganized vacationers spent 25 percent
of their day obtaining food, mostly standing in lines, whereas organized va-
cationers devoted only 15 percent of their time to meals, enjoying the dining
- GAGS, f. 24, op. 1, d. 927 (newspaper clippings, 1959), l. 11 (article in Adlerskaia
pravda from 15 April 1959). - Bud'te moim muzhem , dir. Alla Surikova, Mosfi l'm, 1982; GAGS, f. 24, op. 1, d. 460,
l. 31 (article in Krasnoe znamia , 18 August 1953) (quote). - GAGS, f. 24, op. 1, d. 498, l. 106; d. 712, l. 78; Azar, Otdykh , 19; Noack, “Coping,”
- A Sochi native recalls being sent as a teenager to recruit vacationers at the train station
until her family tired of the inconvenience of taking summer lodgers. Personal communica-
tion, 8 April 2011.