Mending the Human Motor 45chef for the Nal'chik sanatorium, the head doctor asked the candidate if he
understood proteins, fats, and calories: the applicant, who claimed ten years’
experience, admitted he “had never cooked with those foods.” Most ambula-
tory patients fell completely outside the medical dining regime: they had to
either bring their food with them or pay for meals themselves in their pan-
sions or in local restaurants or cafés, undermining the medical benefi t of their
kurort visit.^86
To fi ll the time between medical procedures, meals, and rest, and to add
cultural therapy to the healing mission of the rest homes and sanatoria,
health offi cials advocated a variety of cultural and recreational activities
for patients and resters. As with the entire resort experience, such activi-
ties were saturated with purpose. Here in socialist health enterprises there
would be no casinos to excite patients and no drinking establishments to
undo the benefi cial effects of the day’s rational and healing therapies. Cul-
tural activities stimulated the patient’s intellect and offered new, fresh, and
interesting material for psychic renewal. Similar to the measured doses of
sunbathing and saltwater, cultural uplift also came in prescribed amounts
tailored to the needs of the particular clients. Experts wrote that the low
cultural levels of workers at rest homes in the early 1920s meant that
they needed to receive cultural enlightenment in small, easily digestible
amounts.^87 Later in the 1930s, however, the “growing cultural demands” of
workers and other resters required more sophisticated and varied forms of
recreation and culture.
In the 1920s, rest home organizers developed ambitious and detailed pro-
grams for the enlightenment of their vacationers. While their counterparts in
sanatoria were receiving medical treatments, rest homers would head to the
library for reading and lectures or take scientifi cally planned nature hikes in
the woods and fi elds. Before supper, they could return to the library, prac-
tice on musical instruments, or gather in small groups to prepare the home’s
wall newspaper. The evening hours brought lectures, concerts, and political
agitation activities such as living newspapers and agitation trials: serious fun
alternated with more entertaining activities in order to keep the attention
of resters with little cultural or political background. “Amateur evenings”
( vechera samodeiatel'nosti ) possessed their own intrinsic value, and their
programs of folk dances, balalaika playing, brass band numbers, and amateur
skits became a staple of the Soviet vacation experience. Such activities offered
resters and patients the opportunity to take active part in their therapies, to
learn to appreciate creative work, and to develop habits of public speaking
and group performance, all qualities they could continue to employ once
they had returned to everyday life. In practice, shortages made fulfi llment
- Znamia trekhgorki , 29 July 1936; 8 July 1938; 23 July 1938; 10 August 1938; Mar-
tenovka , 16 June 1935; 6 July 1938; GARF, f. A-483, op. 2, d. 41, ll. 218 (quote), 172. - L. E. Fedynskaia, “Kul'turnaia i politiko-prosvetitel'naia rabota v Domakh Otdykha,”
in Doma otdykha 1920–1923 , 65–66.