Mending the Human Motor 21operated by the city’s labor department; Moscow followed suit four months
later, but here the city’s public health department organized and supervised
the homes. Many of the original homes were established in confi scated gen-
try estates and bourgeois dachas, located in prime forest or garden spots near
cities. Others occupied newly constructed two-story log homes, some with
outdoor covered dining pavilions. Here workers would receive nourishing
food and medical advice, engage in moderately active cultural pastimes, and
develop lifelong habits for healthy living. Medical doctors administered the
homes, assisted by cultural and sports instructors. As symbols of the fi rst
fruits of the revolution, many individual trade unions, trade union coun-
cils, and even individual enterprises “feverishly” established their own rest
homes in the early 1920s.^26
This expansion raised the question of control and jurisdiction: was the
rest home an extension of the workplace (which provided most of the fi nanc-
ing for these homes) or part of the state’s public health network? Medical
specialists feared that the health benefi ts of vacation homes would dissipate
without more direct supervision by the health commissariats. Consequently,
Moscow’s health department published a detailed compendium of instruc-
tions, representing “best medical practices” for the organization of individual
rest homes. These included instructions for cleaning, sample registration
forms for resters, detailed hourly lists of activities, and menus for the four
meals served daily.^27 Although authority for administering rest homes would
shift from health departments to trade unions over the next decade, the medi-
cal component remained central.
By 1927, some three hundred rest homes had been established throughout
the Soviet Union, with spaces for forty-six thousand vacationers. This was
roughly half the capacity of the sanatorium network. Moscow and Leningrad
accounted for fi fty of these homes and 33 percent of the spaces. By law, rest
homes would resemble small resorts, with sleeping quarters, dining room,
quiet rooms for reading and games, sports fi elds, swimming pool or river
beach, baths, and showers. Resters would pass their days strolling in the
woods, sunning on the river, or playing chess or checkers, and in the eve-
nings they would view fi lms or amateur performances by local peasant folk
groups.^28
A 1928 account of a printers’ union rest home suggested an alternate real-
ity. Vacationers made the four-kilometer journey from the train station to the
home on foot, carrying their suitcases. The library lacked books and newspa-
pers, the food was bad, and many of the resters engaged in the time-honored
- N. S. Rykova, “Opyt organizatsii Domov Otdykha,” Dom otdykha 1920–1923, 11–15.
- Ibid., 18–19; Doma otdykha. Sbornik statei i materialov 1924–1925 gg. (K ustanovke
rezhima v domakh otdykha ), ed. L. E. Fedynskaia, vyp. 2 (Moscow, 1925) (hereinafter Doma
otdykha 1924–1925 ). - Gol'dfail' and Iakhnin, Kurorty, sanatorii i doma otdykha, 405–448; Danishevskii,
“Problema massovogo rabochego otdykha,” 73.