House of Rest

a health institution with a regulated regimen for persons who are essentially healthy. The first house of rest in the USSR was organized in Petrograd in May 1920 on V. I. Lenin’s initiative. On May 13, 1921, the Sovnarkom (Council of People’s Commissars) of the RSFSR issued a decree providing for the creation of an extensive network of houses of rest.

The first Soviet houses of rest were established mainly on the country estates of former landowners, in palaces, and in the suburban homes of high officials and capitalists. Construction on a large scale of houses of rest began in the USSR in the late 1920’s. In outer appearance and layout houses of rest resemble sanatoriums, save for the absence of extensive medical facilities. In 1970 in the USSR there were more than 1,200 houses of rest (excluding houses designated for oneday stays), with more than 220,000 beds. There are general houses of rest (for adults) as well as specialized ones—for parents accompanied by children, for pregnant women, and for young people. There are also kolkhoz and interkolkhoz houses of rest and “floating” houses of rest (on ocean liners and riverboats). Houses of rest offering 12- or 24-day stays and those offering one-day stays (for rest on days off) are most common. Some houses of rest function all year round, while others are seasonal. The regimen in houses of rest provides for a definite daily schedule offering a maximum of outdoor activity such as hikes, excursions, gymnastics and sports, boating, and in the winter skiing and ice skating. Large houses of rest, with facilities for 350 or more people, are staffed by a physician and smaller ones, accommodating from 200 to 350 people, by a feldsher; all houses of rest have nurses. Workers and employees are sent to houses of rest by factory and plant committees and by local trade union committees. A large number of the passes issued to workers and office employees are either free of charge or partially cover costs (30 percent of the cost of the pass). Houses of rest modeled on those in the USSR have been organized in other socialist countries.