Mending the Human Motor 43Along with their medical booklets, sanatorium patients received table as-
signments and customized diets based on their diagnosed conditions. The
sanatorium dining room typically consisted of tables seating four persons
each, set with linens and decorated with fl owers. In both rest homes and
sanatoria, the dining room and kitchen block constituted the most impor-
tant physical feature of the establishment (although in summer, sojourners at
rest homes might take their meals in open-air dining pavilions). Uniformed
waitresses served the meals. Beginning in 1935, the spas in Sochi initiated
a “semirestaurant” system of meals: patients would order from a menu two
days in advance, giving them more choice and allowing the kitchen staff to
secure the needed food items to make up the meals. In some cases, patients
could order on the spot, selecting from two to eight different dishes in each
course. This system soon spread to other kurort centers.^83
Patients and resters ate four meals a day, with the main meal taken usu-
ally at 1:00 p.m. Breakfast came at 8:00 a.m., a light snack was available at
4:00 p.m. to break the dead hours fast, and supper was served at 7:00 p.m.
In some places, patients received an additional bedtime snack of milk and a
pastry at 9:00 p.m. In 1924 the health commissariat published a set of recom-
mended two-week menus for use in rest homes. On the second Monday of
the session, for example, breakfast would consist of cocoa made with milk,
white bread, butter, and oats cooked in milk. The three-course dinner began
with mushroom soup with vermicelli, continued with Viennese veal cutlet
with potatoes and cucumbers, and concluded with apple puree. Afternoon
tea included white bread and butter, and supper consisted of meat roulade
with rice, a glass of milk, and tea. Meals were planned to provide variety
during the course of the session, with meat, fi sh, vegetables, and dairy prod-
ucts (plus an occasional egg but no chicken) all on the menu. To be sure,
these were norms, not actually served meals. Moscow printers commented
positively on the “tasty and fi lling” diet in one rest home in 1927, but else-
where an open letter to the union journal complained about the meager food
portions—the writers were alive and well, but no thanks to the cook. Propa-
ganda fi lms from the period depict a regime of plenty: a truckload of bread
being unloaded at a Leningrad rest home in 1924; a sanatorium farm (pigs,
cows, chickens) and close-ups of each of the day’s meals (eggs, sausage,
cheese, soup, oranges, butter) in a 1927 fi lm.^84
The collectivization-induced famine of the early 1930s brought noticeable
changes to the dietary regime in the health establishments. Central supply
agencies could no longer guarantee adequate provisions, and individual san-
atoria, kurorts, and rest homes had to seek provisions on the open market or
- Sochinskaia pravda, 6 June 1935; GARF, f. 9493, op. 1, d. 24, l. 62; f. A-483, op. 2, d.
41, l. 218; f. 9493, op. 1, d. 2, l. 60. - GARF, f. 9493, op. 1, d. 24, l. 63; Doma otdykha 1924–1925 , 59–61; Pechatnik , 15
June 1927, 18; Pechatnik , 15 August 1928, 19; Dom otdykha na Krestovskom ostrove v Lenin-
grade , 1924–1940, silent fi lm, RGAKFD, no. 1221; Zdravnitsa TsK Vserossiiskogo profsoiuza
sakharnikov , 1925–1927, silent fi lm, RGAKFD, no. 248.