Club Red. Vacation Travel and the Soviet Dream - Diane P. Koenker

Mending the Human Motor 13

debates about building vacation institutions and allocating access to them.

Alongside these debates, the benefi ciaries of the annual socialist vacation

asserted their own preferences for fun and merrymaking as well as medicine

and therapy. By the late 1930s, a Soviet resort vacation had emerged that fea-

tured pleasure as much as medical purpose and attracted more of the Soviet

elite than deserving factory toilers in need of bodily repair.

Socialist Rest
Early discussions of production, leisure, consumption, and health in the
Soviet Union emphasized the utilitarian element of leisure in the socialist
system. New forms of recuperation could provide an antidote to the intensity
of socialist forms of production such as shock work (individuals seeking to
surpass set norms) and socialist competition (work groups challenging other
work units to compete in fulfi lling and overfulfi lling the plan). The scientifi c
organization of labor required a scientifi c organization of rest.^3 Proletarian
leisure had nothing in common with “cinema, skittles, beer, or dancing,”
argued offi cials.^4 Rather, it belonged to the serious realms of production and
public health. In this context, medicalization emerged as an integral char-
acteristic of Soviet annual leisure. All rational leisure pursuits began with a
visit to the doctor, and leisure activists encouraged participants to monitor
their own medical conditions to ensure that they were fulfi lling their respon-
sibilities to rational recuperation.^5 Like a machine, a person needed repair
and recuperation: socialist leisure restored the proletarian machine-body.^6
The English word “vacation” derives from the Latin stem vacare , to be
empty, free. In the context of twentieth-century leisure, vacation is the ab-
sence of work. Similarly, the British term “holiday” conveys something
sacred and exceptional. The Russian terms for vacation convey a different
meaning. The annual leave, otpusk , connotes release, being set free. But the
proper purpose of otpusk, for a Soviet worker, was otdykh , from the verb
otdyshat'sia , or to recover one’s breath. While the term is conventionally

3. G. M. Danishevskii, “Problema massovogo rabochego otdykha vo vtoroi piatiletke,” in
   Zdravookhranenie i rabochii otdykh vo vtoroi piatiletke. Trudy I vsesoiuznoi konferentsii po
   planirovaniiu zdravookhraneniia i rabochego otdykha , vol. 4 (Moscow, 1933), 68; G. Berg-
   man, Otdykh letom (Moscow, 1927), 7.


4. Bergman, Otdykh letom , 15, 18.


5. See, for example, instructions on getting a medical certifi cate ( spravka ) in O. A.
   Arkhangel'skaia, Rabota iacheiki OPTE po samodeiatel'nomu turizmu. (Instruktivno-
   metodicheskie ukazaniia dlia iacheek OPTE) (Moscow, 1935), 20; Puteshestviia po SSSR ,
   comp. O. Arkhangel'skaia and N. Turiutina (Moscow, 1938), 202–205; S. L. Lifshits, “Mediko-
   sanitarnoe obsluzhivanie Domov Otdykha,” in Doma otdykha 1920–1923 , 27–45; L. Ia. Be-
   loborodov, “Printsipy i poriadok otbora v D. Otdykha,” in Doma otdykha 1920–1923 , 46–51.


6. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), f. 5528, op. 4, d. 132 (May 1932
   conference on worker vacations), l. 152. On this machine imagery in literature, see Rolf Hel-
   lebust, Flesh to Metal: Soviet Literature and the Alchemy of Revolution (Ithaca, NY, 2003).