Mending the Human Motor 27The socialist transformation of Kislovodsk began in the mid-1920s with
the gradual conversion of private villas and hotels to sanatoria and rest
homes for government agencies. Construction of new facilities also appeared
on the agenda of the fi rst fi ve-year plan, with modernist designs provided by
some of the country’s leading architects. Between 1928 and 1936, the four
towns more than doubled their capacity, reporting ninety-three sanatoria and
rest homes by 1936 (forty-three of these in Kislovodsk), with a total capacity
of fi fteen thousand beds.^40
The resort city of Sochi will always be linked with the name of Joseph Sta-
lin, who chose the spa for his summer residence and infl uenced the decision
to turn Sochi into the premier national health resort. (Presidents Vladimir
Putin and Dmitrii Medvedev also vacationed both summer and winter in
Sochi, and Putin was primarily responsible for the city’s designation as a
candidate—ultimately successful—to host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.)^41
Before the revolution, Sochi was just one of a series of small towns along the
eastern Black Sea coastline, a long narrow strip of habitable land at the base
of the Caucasus mountain range. Accessible primarily by water (a railroad
link did not extend there until 1925), Sochi itself had acquired a reputation
as a “remote, dusty, and dirty little town,” but nearby villages gradually be-
came desirable sites for summer dachas for tsarist offi cials, counts, princes,
generals, and scientifi c and artistic notables.^42 Toward the start of the twenti-
eth century, private entrepreneurs developed hotels, pansions, and elaborate
parks that featured imported exotic plant species from around the world.
The subtropical climate of the shore offered rich possibilities for botanical
experimentation, but it also provided a breeding ground for the mosquitoes
that transmitted malaria. Not as rich in mineral springs as the northern Cau-
casus slopes, the area fi nally developed its own spa in 1910, with the open-
ing of the Matsesta baths, inland from the coast (and mosquitoes) and twenty
meters above sea level.
Climate and topography contributed to the area’s growing popularity in
the early twentieth century. The moderating breezes off the Black Sea made
the coastline enjoyable for about nine months a year, and the nearby moun-
tain station of Krasnaia Poliana offered a readily accessible change of scenery
and air. The subtropical vegetation and exotic local ethnic groups created a
fairy-tale sense of escape that attracted more and more middle-class visitors
to the grand Caucasus Riviera hotel and park and smaller pansions such as
Svetlana (named after the heroine of a Zhukovskii ballad). When Soviet power
came to the Black Sea coast, these private facilities and dachas fell under
- Kurorty SSSR (1936), 100–103; Gol'dfail' and Iakhnin, Kurorty, sanatorii i doma ot-
dykha. - “If Putin wants it, they will build it.” Sochi taxi driver, 8 October 2006.
- M. Ia. Rudakov, “Sochi-Matsesta k 20-letiiu Oktiabria,” Voprosy kurortologii , no. 5
(1937): 37; Istoriia Sochi v otkrytkakh i vospominaniiakh. Part 1, Staryi Sochi. Zabytie stran-
nitsy konets XIX–nachalo XX vv. (Maikop, 2006), 22.