20 Chapter 1
care system. Despite its democratic foundations, the Soviet spa system
drew aesthetic inspiration from prerevolutionary aristocratic models.
Soviet spas would be constructed in grand style, they would require an
extensive service network as befitting the old aristocracy, and they would
also inculcate in the patients, or resters, an appreciation for high culture
and refi nement. Whether in palaces for young pioneers or in facilities for
summer holidays, the leisure world built for the Soviet proletariat was
luxuriantly aristocratic, offering a world of rest, medical attention, and
ease. At the same time but with less publicity, health planners constructed
local and more modest health spas that would be accessible to blue-collar
workers and white-collar employees in new construction zones around
the USSR.^25
Alongside the kurort system, the Soviet regime introduced a parallel insti-
tution, the rest home ( dom otdykha ), designed to provide medically restor-
ative vacations closer to population centers. While generally administered
by the Commissariat of Public Health, rest homes took on a variety of forms
and complexions. The fi rst homes originated in Petrograd in spring 1920,Rest home of the USSR Soviet Central Executive Committee, 1935, Sukhumi. RGAKFD g.
Krasnogorsk, no. 2102339. Used with permission of the archive.- GARF, f. 5528, op. 4, d. 132, ll. 178–82.