28 Chapter 1
socialist control and converted to sanatoria and rest homes. In the mid-1920s,
new construction of bath buildings and sanatoria at Matsesta expanded the
medical capability of the fl edgling seaside resort.^43
In 1933, the Soviet Union’s Central Executive Committee adopted a deci-
sion to make Sochi the new showplace of Soviet leisure culture. Plans called
for the expansion of existing sanatoria and the construction of new ones.
More important, Sochi’s infrastructure received a massive infl ux of invest-
ment, including new sewage, electricity, and heating facilities, and the ad-
ministrative and commercial parts of the town were relocated away from
the shoreline. A broad and straight tree-lined boulevard (Stalin Prospect)
replaced the narrow winding road along the seacoast; granite bridges with
carved sculptures spanned the small rivers that fl owed from the mountains to
the sea; a landscaped terraced embankment, planted with cypresses, palms,
magnolias, and other fl owering trees rose up from the narrow pebble beaches.
The country’s leading architects lent their skills to design the new sanato-
ria and public buildings, including the nine hundred-seat Winter Theater.
The much-photographed Voroshilov Central Red Army sanatorium, with its
constructivist lines and modern funicular connecting the sanatorium’s beach
to the main buildings high above, became the symbol of the modern Soviet
health resort, “not life, but paradise,” as one rapt worker wrote her comrades
back home.^44 By 1936, the Sochi area offered fi fteen thousand beds to pro-
spective resters and patients.
Beyond these three major centers, another thirty thousand sanatorium and
rest home spaces were available in numerous small health spas across the
country. Most of them lacked adequate funding and attracted mainly a lo-
cal clientele. For Leningraders, the spa of Sestroretsk on the Gulf of Finland
offered climate therapy with beach, park, polyclinic, and concert hall only
twenty-two kilometers from the city’s outskirts. Kazakhstan reported seven
underfunded health spas in 1938, a typical complaint in these years.^45 Health
resort investment followed vacationers’ demands for rest cures in the tradi-
tional areas of the Black Sea and Caucasus Mountains.
High mountain spas gained in popularity in the 1930s. Teberda, located
along the Sukhumi Military Highway in the Caucasian Karachaev autono-
mous oblast, had been known as a destination for tuberculosis patients since
before the revolution. Despite its primitive waterworks and lack of electric-
ity, the alpine resort attracted patients and vacationers with its cool sum-
mers and warm winters, the stunning beauty of its surroundings, and the
picturesque journey itself. Tourists and alpinists as well as medical patients
fl ocked to Teberda. By 1936, the site boasted three sanatoria (one belonging- Gol'dfail' and Iakhnin, Kurorty, sanatorii i doma otdykha , 121–23; GARF, f. 9493,
op. 1, d. 8, ll. 52–54. - Kurorty SSSR (1936), 145, 158; Martenovka , 30 May 1936.
- Gol'dfail' and Iakhnin, Kurorty, sanatorii i doma otdykha , 308–310; Kurorty SSSR
(1936), 238–241; GARF, f. 9228, op. 1, d. 24, l. 14.