Mending the Human Motor 23of production.^30 A certain number of state homes were consequently turned
over to individual enterprises, such as Moscow’s Elektrozavod, to whom the
Moscow health department awarded a home for fulfi lling its fi ve-year plan in
two and a half years. Special rest homes were designated for youth, although
adults grumbled that young people would be better off in less sedentary in-
stitutions. With the introduction of the so-called continual workweek, with
four days on the job and one day for rest, a new “fi fth-day” rest home to
which workers could retreat for rest, nutrition, and culture on their days off
made its appearance. Since a portion of the workforce was always off, these
fi fth-day rest homes could be utilized continually. In fact, however, the con-
tinual workweek never really materialized in Soviet industry, and the fi fth-
day bases soon became utilized fully only on weekends.^31
Some experts called for a massive shift of resources in the second fi ve-year
plan away from the traditional fourteen-day rest home to one-day homes, youth
colonies, and parks of culture, but the rest home remained a standard vacation
option in the 1930s. The huge Hammer and Sickle plant in Moscow opened its
own rest home in 1934 in a former princely residence on the Moscow River. It
offered cozy sleeping accommodations (each bed with its own night table), a
club, electric lights, library, and sports fi elds. The aristocratic legacy was not lost
on the home’s new patrons. Here a shock worker like the fi fty-year old Korolov
could write to the plant newspaper that he “lived just as well as the old princes.
They spent their free time in drinking and idleness, but I live otherwise. I rest in
a cultured manner, and my purpose is to rest better so that I can give more back
to production for my socialist country.” The Elektrozavod plant acquired three
rest homes between 1931 and 1933, the last of them designated for one-day and
weekend stays. In 1933, 4,700 of its workers received two-week stays in the rest
homes (compared with 860 who vacationed in health spas), and another 2,600
visited the one-day rest home. If the quality of food at some homes remained
appalling, meals at Elektrozavod’s home had so improved by 1934 that work-
ers “fought” for passes to go there. Moscow’s Trekhgornaia textile manufacturer
opened its rest home in a reconstructed dacha on the Kliaz'ma River in 1936; a
work in progress, it required the fi rst resters themselves to help build its sleeping
quarters and water supply. Vacationers slept in tents adjacent to the two-story
log main building, and they received their meals at outdoor tables, “surrounded
by wonderful nature.” In the evenings, they watched fi lms, sang, danced, and
“made merry.”^32
- GARF, f. 5528, op. 4, d. 132, ll. 21, 12, 14, 35; d. 131, l. 9; GARF, f. 9493, op. 1, d. 2
(report from central committee of coal miners’ trade union, September 1933), ll. 1–2. - GARF, f. 5528, op. 4, d. 132, ll. 48, 76, 218, 228; see also Sergei Zhuravlev and
Mikhail Mukhin, “ Krepost' sotsializma”: Povsednevnost' i motivatsiia truda na sovetskom
predpriiatii, 1928–1938 gg. (Moscow, 2004), 193; Pechatnik , 15 June 1927, 18; GARF, f. 5528,
op. 4, d. 131, ll. 15–17. - “Lived just as well,” Martenovka , 6 June 1935; 10 July 1935; Zhuravlev and Mukhin,
“Krepost' sotsializma,” 193–195; Znamia trekhgorki , 16 July 1936; 9 August 1936; 4 June
1938; “Surrounded by wonderful nature,” 4 July 1938; “made merry,” 10 August 1938.