The Health of the People: The Greatest Asset of the Soviet State
The health of the population was the Soviet state’s greatest asset, so it gave special attention to organizing workers’ leisure.
In 1921, V.I. Lenin signed the decree ‘On Rest Houses,’ ordering the creation of facilities where workers could restore their strength during vacations in favorable natural and climatic conditions. The decree kicked off the development of a nationwide network of health institutions.
By 1979, 8.8 million people had been treated or rested in sanatoriums, rest houses, tourist bases, and pioneer camps across the republic. Another 27.6 million people took part in excursions.
As living standards rose, leisure time increased, and annual vacations grew longer, the network of recreational facilities expanded and leisure options diversified.
The “Main Directions of Economic and Social Development of the USSR for 1981-1985 and until 1990” set tasks for worker health: develop and improve the organization of leisure and tourism, expand opportunities for parents and children to combine rest with treatment, enhance excursion services, and further develop resorts and tourist bases.
Fundamental changes across the country brought big shifts in how people spent their free time. Authorities focused on recreational activities that not only restored strength but also supported people’s spiritual and physical development.
Because modern cities were becoming more polluted and crowded—and life moved faster—the demand for vacations in nature rose every year.
City dwellers were increasingly removed from the natural environments humans adapted to for millennia. In artificial urban settings the body struggles to adjust: circulation can worsen, tissues use less oxygen, and hypoxia (oxygen deprivation) can occur. Constant exposure to warm indoor air makes people less able to tolerate cold, so colds are more common. Monotonous physical workloads at work contribute to chronic fatigue.
Workers’ leisure patterns depend on the level of societal development. In the Soviet Union, leisure was widespread, yet it remained a personal matter: needs and preferences varied by age, education, social group, location, and health.
Researchers at the A.N. Marzeev Institute of General and Communal Hygiene (KNIIOKGH) studied leisure needs in the Ukrainian SSR. They asked how many people needed sanatorium treatment and what kind, whether people preferred the sea, mountains, lakes, or rivers, and how they liked to spend free time—traveling to see cultural and historical sites, hunting or fishing, or doing sports. The survey was distributed across cities and villages in Ukraine.
Of the 13,000 respondents, about 90% said they preferred organized leisure in both urban and rural settings. People favored seaside locations and spots along rivers or lakes. Older people preferred quiet, non-resort areas; most people aged 40-59 wanted resort areas; and young people were drawn to the mountains. The steppe was unpopular. The most sought-after destinations were Crimea and the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus.
In the Soviet Union, each worker had roughly 1,100 to 1,500 hours of free time per year: about 1/6 for annual vacations, 1/3 for time after the workday, and 1/2 for weekends. So leisure could be daily, weekly (periodic), or annual.
