Mending the Human Motor 31subsidized by state insurance, and workers received special discounts for rail
travel to their destinations.^53
Health and trade union organizations failed to achieve these ambitious
quotas. In 1923 the health commissariat reported that instead of workers ac-
counting for 80 percent of patients, they represented only 36 percent of the
total, while white-collar employees ( sluzhashchie ) (less than 5 percent of the
independent population in 1926) furnished 46 percent of kurort patients. Lo-
cal unions ignored central directives and instead were sending “those who
stood nearer to the directing organs of the trade union.”^54 Even early on in
the Soviet period, connections mattered more than medical status or social
position.
In October 1929 the Central Trade Union Council reiterated its require-
ment that 80 percent of kurort patients be production workers, but Commu-
nist Party investigators reported that offi cials continued to evade this policy.
In 1930 workers constituted only 37 percent of patients at the best all-union
resorts and only 65 percent overall. Too many putevki were obtained for cash
or given away to party offi cials rather than workers. Trade unions allowed
white-collar employees to purchase the putevki reserved for workers. Thus
the state insurance fund reported that while workers traveling on free pute-
vki to the Caucasus Mineral Waters accounted for 78 percent of all patients
in 1930, many of them were in fact white-collar employees. Rest homes lo-
cated in the prime resort areas served sluzhashchie exclusively. Even when
engineers and technical personnel were reclassifi ed as workers in 1930, their
share in all-union sanatoria in 1930—46 percent in mineral water spas, 26
percent in seaside spas, 37 percent overall—remained well under the stipu-
lated quotas. In 1931, a report about the abuse of putevki charged that six
patients sent from a local miners’ union organization included one invalid,
the wife of a foreman, the wife of the union chairman, an employee, his wife,
and his child but not one genuine proletarian. Not only did workers fi nd the
climate resorts diffi cult to access, but they also had to settle for off-season
putevki. The number of nonworker employees vacationing in health estab-
lishments tended to peak in the prime season from July to early October, and
engineers were more likely than workers to fi nd spaces in all-union kurorts
in July.^55
Amid continuing reports that “as a whole, the percentage of the worker
group does not achieve the stipulated norms,” the health commissariat
- Gol'dfail' and Iakhnin, Kurorty, sanatorii, i doma otdykha , 477–479. Eligible for the
lowest of the three price tiers were ordinary workers and peasants, soldiers, invalids, medi-
cal personnel, and party members paying their own way. GARF, f. 9493, op. 1, d. 30, l. 22. - GARF, f. A-483, op. 1, d. 52 (correspondence on allocation of places in health spas,
1923), l. 8. - GARF, f. 5528, op. 6, d. 108, ll. 1–3, 6–8, 18; op. 4, d. 118 (social composition at
Caucasus Mineral Waters resorts, 1931), ll. 35–39; other reports in f. 5528, op. 6, d. 220
(materials on allocation of resort places, 1933), l. 25; f. A-8042, op. 1, d. 5 (review of kurort
work 1932), l. 36.