[Non-mellow season of domestic health resort business in 1914-1922]. / Nebarkhatnyi sezon otechestvennogo kurortnogo dela, 1914­1922.

ABSTRACT

For a long time, balneotherapy and health resort treatment was considered the privilege of the well-to-do. In Russia, recreational areas developed much later than in Europe. Their development was directly related to restoring the health of the military, the more so since these areas, with few exceptions, were located near the outskirts of the country and the location of large military contingents. The outbreak of the First World War aggravated the lack of capacities of domestic health-resorts. The state expanded the benefits to private and cooperative capital for the development of old resorts and the establishment of new ones. Because of the prolonged delay typical for the tsarist bureaucracy, the work on the development of the domestic health resorts began only in 1916. The war showed the importance of health resorts for preserving the army's combat efficiency and, in some cases, prevented the implementation of these projects due to concern of the local authorities and people towards an increase in the number of outsiders in the formerly sparsely populated areas. After the revolution, the Soviet social support agencies were involved in the distribution of spa vouchers to cash-strapped workers. In the northern provinces, the meager budgets received state funding for the establishment of health resorts on the mined-out salt fields. The local councils of the South set up health resorts in nationalized private dachas. Health resorts of the Black Sea coast and Kavminvod have never stopped their work. They functioned as boarding houses for retired military personnel. After the Civil War, every effort was made to attract leisure travelers to the country's resorts. Voucher-holders and «savage¼ travelers had privileges in food provision. Later, the resort areas were assigned to the first supply category. Despite eight years of military operations on the Russian territory during these years, there were conditions for a sharp growth of mass health resort recreation. This article reviews a large number of original sources and is intended to show, using historical examples, the state importance of health resorts as a means of medical rehabilitation. Paradoxically, it is under difficult political and economic circumstances that health resort recreation has become available for the general population.