an all-Union Pioneer camp named after V. I. Lenin on the southern coast of the Crimea, near Gurzuf. It was founded in 1925 by the Komsomol Central Committee and the Russian Red Cross Society—ROKK (Z. P. Solov’ev, chairman of ROKK, was in charge of the construction of Artek). Artek is under the jurisdiction of the Komsomol Central Committee.

Artek is the USSR’s biggest year-round children’s health institution. It covers an area of 320 hectares and has more than 150 modern buildings and facilities, including more than 40 dormitories, three medical buildings, an eight-year school, a Pioneer palace, a young technicians’ center, a 7,000-seat stadium, three swimming pools, a regional study museum with a wildlife preserve (there are altogether five parks at Artek), the Pioneer film studio Artekfil’m, a radio club, open-air theaters, athletic fields, and a motorboat station. The camp is staffed by about 1,000 Pioneer counselors, teachers, circle and section leaders, and medical personnel.

Artek is conducting large-scale work on the Communist upbringing of Pioneers. Its activities include children’s forums, festivals, bonfires, celebrations on the seashore, excursions, hikes on partisan trails, and athletic contests; the Pioneers meet with officials of the CPSU and the international workers’ and Communist movement and with cosmonauts, poets, writers, artists, and composers.

Pioneers are sent to Artek on the recommendation of councils of Pioneer brigades, if they combine good work in school with active work in the Pioneer organization or are winners in reviews or contests. The capacity of the camp is about 27,000 Pioneers a year; in the summer the camp accommodates 4,500–5,000 children, who are grouped in ten Pioneer brigades. Between 1925 and 1969 Artek has accommodated more than 300,000 children, of whom more than 13,000 came from 70 countries outside the Soviet Union. Artek was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1945 on its 20th anniversary and the certificate of the World Peace Council in 1957 for its important work on strengthening peace and friendship.

The health facilities of Artek are well equipped with medical and diagnostic offices and laboratories for X ray, physical therapy, and clinical diagnosis, with fotarii (light and heat therapy), and with athletic fields. The main therapeutic methods are climate therapy, sea bathing, gymnastics, hiking, and the like.

Architecturally Artek is a group of individual camp compounds. The P. Togliatti Morskoi Pioneer Camp (1960–61) and the Pribrezhnyi Pioneer Camp (1960–64; USSR State Prize, 1967) were built by the architects A. T. Polianskii and D. S. Vitukhin, the engineer Iu. V. Ratskevich, and others. The architects have achieved a maximum openness of the inner space: the buildings, painted in bright colors and made of prestressed reinforced concrete and glass, are light in appearance and have outside stairs, open porches, and penthouses. The whole complex is a successful example of a synthesis of nature, architecture, and sculpture and decorative art (stained glass, mosaic panels, and so on).