Sanatorium

I’ve just been on holiday in and around Sochi with my Russian wife. Sochi is a holiday resort in the South of Russia on the Black Sea, at one end of the Caucasus mountains and very close to the border with Abkhazia (or Georgia if you choose not to recognize Abkhazia’s independence). The coastline here is sometimes called the Caucasian Riviera, and together with nearby Crimea it’s the only warm water coastline in Russia. The climate is humid subtropical, and high forested mountains rise up just inland. It’s a beautiful part of the world, and quite strange. Imagine a Soviet Monaco.

One of the books I had with me was a history of Russia, but it failed to cover the one subject that would have given me an insight into the surprising experiences I had while I was there: the Soviet tradition of taking your annual vacation in a Black Sea sanatorium.

Soviet-style sanatoriums, which were also popular in Communist Eastern and Central Europe, were different from Western European and American sanatoriums (or sanitariums), which were mainly for chronic illness or mental disorders. The Soviet ones were more like holiday health resorts, but with more medical facilities than you would find in a Western spa. I knew a little about them through my interest in modernist architecture, but I didn’t know they were still a part of Russian life: that some of them are still going, that there are modern hotels that offer the same treatments, and that Russian attitudes to vacations and health are still informed by the tradition.

The system of sanatorium vacations was based on an ideology that combined patriotic dedication to hard work — which could only be ensured with an annual two to three week rest — with the ideal of a healthy lifestyle supported by natural therapies and “wellness”, preventive medicine, strict diets with no alcohol, and moral and intellectual edification. This was meant to contrast with the decadent bourgeois practice of going on holiday just to have fun.

Being a decadent Western (petit) bourgeois myself, I had intended to consume a lot of rich and unusual food and alcohol. Sochi is in the Krasnodar Krai, which is famous for its wine. Seafood, local figs, and local cheese are abundant. The local bread is as good as any French or Italian bread, but different. Lamb from the mountains is marinated and grilled over wood and served with plum sauce.

And that’s what I did while we were in Sochi itself, in a hotel by the sea that I had booked. But for the second part of the vacation we moved to another hotel, this time in the mountains. My wife chose it and I didn’t know much about it except that it looked nice, that it was surrounded by mountains, and that they demanded a negative COVID‑19 test, which kind of impressed me.

On our first day at this hotel I got a cold, and my wife suggested I visit the “inhalatorium” downstairs. I was sceptical. My normal strategy against colds is like Field Marshal Kutuzov’s successful strategy against Napoleon’s occupation of Moscow: do nothing and it’ll go away. But I went along with her suggestion, and I was curious anyway. It turns out there was a kind of hospital downstairs, staffed by various medical specialists.

When the procedures were over and I’d taken the plastic tube out of my nose, my wife said she’d made some more appointments for me over the next few days and I could cancel them if I wanted. I didn’t cancel them but I did resent the imposition, even though it was well-meant. I hadn’t expected all this. Had it been intentional deception on my wife’s part, or did it seem so normal to her that she hadn’t thought to mention it? I still haven’t got to the bottom of that. In any case, my own feeling is that I don’t mind going to doctors but I don’t want to do it when I’m trying to relax and enjoy myself. It began to dawn on me that there was more to this vacation than I’d been led to believe, that this was some kind of modern-day sanatorium.

And that’s pretty much what it was: true, it wasn’t called a sanatorium but a “medical spa hotel”; we weren’t assigned the accommodation by the state; the services were not free; I could drink wine if I wanted (tellingly though, vodka was unavailable); and our daily timetable was not set by the staff. But otherwise it was definitely in the sanatorial tradition. The mineral water on tap and the oxygen cocktails at the bar all began to make sense.

Just like the Soviet sanatoriums themselves, it was serious stuff. These were real doctors. I had a few diagnostic scans, general checkups and consultations. Turns out I need to lose weight, eat less salt and fried food, and drink less alcohol, or else I’ll be at risk of heart attacks down the road. On the one hand, they would say that. On the other hand, they’re probably right. It shouldn’t have been a surprising diagnosis but I was shocked and disappointed, and became a bit depressed about it, which made me even more resentful.

Then I got gastroenteritis. The result was that I was stuck in the room most of the time, on a diet of gruel, sauceless rice and chicken breast, and herbal tea. And I couldn’t drink coffee or alcohol. My mother-in-law had unexpectedly followed us to the same hotel, so she and my wife ganged up on me to make me comply with these dietary rules.

Through sheer force of will I recovered after 24 hours and eased myself back into holiday decadence. My mother-in-law said that if I was going to drink so soon after my gastrointestinal troubles — which she did not advise — it should be brandy. That was okay with me, but of course, I couldn’t get brandy in the hotel and had to go to a nearby cafe.

The biggest surprise came on the last day. I was due for another ultrasound check and while I wasn’t sure exactly what they were going to check, I was expecting it to be as easy and non-invasive as the previous visits. But as I was undressing, my wife translated one of the doctor’s questions, which was along the lines of “are you sure you’re okay to do this now?” I saw the instrument by her side and asked, “is that an anal probe?” They both nodded gravely and anxiously awaited my response. For a moment I felt panic, but realized that backing out now would have been lame, and anyway, I knew I would have to start getting tested for prostate cancer soon.

Lying on my side with a bulbous plastic transducer up my arse, I said to my wife, who was watching the whole thing, “this is the best vacation I’ve ever had”. We all laughed, and afterwards I went straight out and had three Armenian brandies while waiting for the airport taxi.