In Soviet Russia, vacations were as purposeful as work.
Many workers actually looked forward to their state-funded holidays.
Photo reproduced from the book, Holidays in Soviet Sanatoriums.
By 1939, there were more than eighteen hundred sanatoriums all across the vast country.
At their peak in 1990, the sanatoriums could house more than half a million guests at any time.
Others are in critical states of decline.
The pictures in this article are from the resulting bookHolidays in Soviet Sanatoriums.
The Druzhba Sanatorium in Yalta, Ukraine, was built in 1986.
Patients exercise in mineral water baths at a sanatorium in Tskaltubo.
The White Nights sanatorium in Sochi was erected in 1978.
A guest takes an oxygen steam bath at the Rodnik Sanatorium.
A guest relaxes during a luminotherapy session at a sanatorium in Naftalan, Azerbaijan.
A female guest undergoes magnetic therapy at a sanatorium in Belarus.
Vacationers at Kolkhidas sanatorium bury themselves in magnetic sand.
Guests at Janartij Bereg sanatorium in Jurmala, Latvia, getting their daily dose of light therapy.
High frequency electrotherapy at Kuyalnik Sanatorium, in Odessa, Ukraine.
Visitors to an estuary near the Kuyalnik sanatorium in Ukraine smear themselves in therapeutic mud.
A wrestler prepares for a swim at the Aurora sanatorium in Kyrgyzstan.
