48 Chapter 1
instruments along with their chess and checkers sets. And there was danc-
ing. The outdoor dance fl oor at a rest home belonging to a Moscow branch of
the machine-building union operated daily from 11:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m.,
with activities coordinated by a paid mass organizer and accordion player.
Every day featured “mass dances, games, contests for the best performance
of folk, Western, and ballroom dances.” In the intervals between dances, the
mass organizer led games like political quizzes and brain-teasers. Elsewhere,
dances were the only thing that the cultural workers organized. At Hammer
and Sickle’s rest home, workers grumbled that the cultural organizers should
be more active: they wouldn’t teach new songs, and the accordionist refused
to play.^91Pleasure or Purpose?
Propaganda fi lms made about Soviet health resorts in the second half of
the 1930s projected an image of abundance, care, and equality to a capitalist- TsGAMO, f. 4179, op. 1, d. 436, l. 15 (quote); GARF, f. 9493, op. 1, d. 1495, ll. 48, 74;
Martenovka , 10 July 1935; 15 July 1938.
Outdoor activities at a rest home in Darasun, a spa town in Chita oblast, 1936. Photographer:
Zel'ma. RGAKFD g. Krasnogorsk, no. 0266198. Used with permission of the archive.