34 Chapter 1
(Schoolteachers, although the numbers are small, tend to track with workers
rather than with employees.) A kurort’s status could be roughly measured by
the percentage of workers: the higher the status, the more nonworkers could
be found there. Overall, the most desirable putevki took patients to all-union
climate resorts during the peak summer months. The health commissariat
itself recognized the attraction of these kurorts in setting a goal of only 60
percent workers, as opposed to 80 percent overall. Workers would be lucky
to receive putevki to all-union balnealogical kurorts such as Staraia Russa,
local sanatoria run by oblast and municipal organizations, or rest homes near
their place of residence.
Increasingly in the 1930s, it was not suffi cient to be an ordinary produc-
tion worker in order to merit a putevka to a rest home or sanatorium. And
despite the building boom that began in the 1930s, there would never be
enough places to accommodate all who deserved them. Access to the health
care vacation system became linked to exemplary performance as well as
social position. The 1936 guide to kurorts of the Soviet Union explained that
fi rst priority would go to “recognized shock workers, skilled workers with at
least two years of work seniority without violations of labor discipline.” All
other things equal, workers in the most dangerous departments of the lead-
ing industries should receive putevki before all others. At Moscow’s Hammer
and Sickle factory, this meant that “as a rule, the fi rst to receive access to
kurorts and rest homes will be the best Stakhanovites—production workers
who perform well in their workshops.” Within the resorts, the best rooms
and facilities would be reserved for Stakhanovites.^59
The 1936 Soviet constitution included the right to rest as an absolute en-
titlement of Soviet workers, and this phrase would appear again and again in
propaganda fi lms about the kurort system and in workers’ own expressions of
gratitude for the opportunity to enjoy this right.^60 How then did the regime jus-
tify unequal access to the system, particularly to its best vacation destinations?
We might usefully distinguish between mobilizing inequalities, which served
as part of the labor incentive system, and inequalities that represented more
pernicious aspects of what has been termed the “hierarchy of consumption.”^61
Soviet planners never doubted that material incentives were required to in-
terest workers in production, and they concentrated much attention on the
most effective incentive systems, whether piece rates, shock work bonuses,- “Recognized shock workers,” Kurorty SSSR (1936), 30–31; “as a rule,” Martenovka ,
15 May 1936; GARF, f. 9493, op. 1, d. 24, l. 14. - Podarok Rodiny , 1935 sound fi lm, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv kinofotodoku-
mentov (RGAKFD), no. 3889; Sanatorii i doma otdykha , 1938 silent fi lm with French sub-
titles, RGAKFD, no. 3764; Pravo na otdykh , 1939 sound fi lm in English, RGAKFD, no. 3875;
Zdorov'e naroda , 1940 silent fi lm, RGAKFD, no. 4074; Martenovka , 5 June 1938; 17 June
1938; Znamia trekhgorki , 22 May 1938; 23 May 1938; 4 June 1938; 10 August 1938; 21 June
- Elena Osokina, Za fasadom “Stalinskogo izobiliia”: Raspredelenie i rynok v snabzhe-
nii naseleniia v gody industrializatsii, 1927–1941 (Moscow, 1998).