From Treatment to Vacation 199Manipulating the medical putevka became another method by which in-
tellectuals and white-collar workers dominated the right to rest. Despite rules
that required potential putevka recipients to receive permission from the en-
terprise medical board, Trud in 1959 noted the well-known slogan, “If there
is a putevka, a diagnosis can be found.” The head of a specialized cardiac
sanatorium outside Moscow echoed the problem in 1962: “Each place in our
sanatorium is very valuable, and so many people wait in line for a putevka to
a cardiac sanatorium. Yet at the same time these sanatoria are full of people
who for the most part would be better off in a rest home or spending their
vacation in the countryside.” Few women arriving at a Moscow oblast rest
home for pregnant women appeared to be pregnant, complained its direc-
tor, and one of those who arrived with a putevka was a man!^85 Just as in the
1930s, the abuse of the putevka allocation system demonstrated just how
highly valued a state vacation had become, both for the personal pleasure it
provided and for the mark of distinction it gave to the recipient.
In the developing culture of leisure consumption, vacations in sanatoria
had come to be the most highly prized and sought after: their level of comfort
and food, leaving aside medical treatments and length of stay, far surpassed
that in rest homes or available to outpatients living in private apartments or
pansions.^86 The state spent millions of rubles on medical treatment and per-
sonnel that were incidental to the vacation experience. For intellectuals and
white-collar workers, vacationing in summer in one of the Black Sea kurorts
signifi ed their status. In his 1978 study of Soviet privilege, Mervyn Matthews
reported that the thirteenth-month bonus for high offi cials was often called
“hospital money,” perhaps enabling the purchase of a putevka to a desirable
resort. The most prestigious institutions controlled comfortable pansions in
the best holiday areas. The Union of Writers could reward its members with
places in one of the seventeen creative houses it possessed. A 1963 report
confi rms that workers were underrepresented among sanatorium patients and
those coming as outpatients; if they vacationed at all, they were more likely
to take their vacation in a rest home. White-collar workers (a category that
encompassed the intelligentsia as well as offi cialdom) were overrepresent-
ed among the sanatorium vacationers.^87 Table 5.2 shows the status of Black
Sea vacation destinations in terms of the percentage of workers receiving
- Trud , 11 April 1959; other mentions in Trud : 30 December 1958; 31 March 1965; 15
October 1965; 23 July 1966; 8 September 1966; 1 August 1967; 2 June 1971; 19 August 1971;
12 May 1974; 1 August 1980; “Each place in our sanatorium,” GARF, f. 9493, op. 8, d. 326, l.
314; TsGAMO, f. 7223, op. 1, d. 1252, l. 42. - Malov (assistant chief of the State Economic Council of the Council of Ministers,
speaking to 1962 kurort conference), GARF, f. 9493, op. 8, d. 326, l. 381. - Mervyn Matthews, Privilege in the Soviet Union: A Study of Elite Life-Styles under
Communism (London, 1978), 49; GARF, f. 9493, op. 8, d. 502 (statistical data on social com-
position and medical results, 1963), ll. 1–3. Data on 447,700 Moscow oblast vacationers in
1968 shows the same result: workers were least likely to vacation in places with medical
treatment. TsGAMO, f. 7223, op. 1, d. 1603, l. 201.