From Treatment to Vacation 197people,” one that was socially homogenous and economically equal. The
growth of the category of intellectual labor, one of the results of economic
development, complicated this goal. In Stalin’s time, society consisted of-
fi cially of two ruling classes—workers and peasants, plus an additional stra-
tum—the intellectuals. The expansion of education and spread of technol-
ogy in the 1950s, however, contributed to the growth and differentiation of
an intelligentsia, or “information workers.” Their relationship to the state
of the whole people required Soviet offi cials to develop policy that would
recognize the importance of this new stratum without damaging the prin-
ciple of social equality. This produced a tension in policymaking in many ar-
eas, including the provision of kurort and rest home vacations: by the 1970s,
writes sociologist Murray Yanowitch, the regime faced a “need to appeal to
the egalitarian sentiments of lower strata (via the constant reaffi rmation of
the vision of a ‘socially homogenous’ society) without threatening the mate-
rial advantages—however limited these sometimes are—and social esteem
associated with intelligentsia status.”^79
In a series of important studies and surveys, Soviet sociologists explored
the phenomenon of social stratifi cation, and their work emphasized the role
of nonmaterial advantages obtained by intellectual workers. The growth of
a consumer economy provided opportunities for different strata to express
their differential values in what they chose to consume. Economic capital
combined with cultural capital in the making of these strategic choices, such
as whether to purchase a refrigerator, an automobile, a cooperative apart-
ment, or a seaside vacation.^80 Thus the right to rest became a contest about
the right to choose, and the vacation became a site for the demonstration of
socialist distinction.
In offi cial discourse, the primacy of workers’ right to a vacation remained
sacrosanct. In 1955 Eremenko insisted that given the excess demand for health
resort places, preference should be given to workers “of leading professions
and in leading branches of industry,” workers on state farms and machine-
tractor stations, and invalids and veterans of war. He explicitly excluded in-
tellectuals from this group. The primary responsibility of the health ministry
was to increase the stream of workers and collective farm workers “not only
to second-rank kurorts, but to the leading ones and above all to the Caucasus
and Crimean resorts.” Second priority should go to those who were medically
needy. Again in 1961, trade union kurort offi cials complained that workers
were excluded from the best kurorts in the summer months. By 1963, however,
offi cial declarations began to include intellectuals among the deserving as long
as they were medically entitled. Quoting Khrushchev, the kurort chief insisted,
- Yanowitch, Social and Economic Inequality , 18.
- Ibid., citing studies by O. I. Shkaratan and Iu. V. Arutunian, 40–44; M. Kh. Titma,
“On the Question of Social Differentiation in Developed Socialist Society,” in The Social
Structure of the USSR: Recent Soviet Studies , ed. Murray Yanowitch (Armonk, NY, 1986),
65–80; O. I. Shkaratan, “Changes in the Social Profi le of Urban Residents,” in Yanowitch,
Social Structure , 104–119.