Rest and the art of workers' maintenance

Tourism as a use of free time and as an economic resource is a relatively new concept for the countries of the former Ussr. Society is a large production machine that can not stop, at most needs maintenance for its parts subject to wear so vacation from work would still be intended in medicalized terms, moved by the sanitary purpose of putting workers in force. The medicalized approach, concentrated on the individual and organized for the masses, determines peculiar figures for the domestic Soviet tourism. It is not possible to speak of tourist resorts, but rather of places of treatment; thousands of sanatoriums, large buildings or complexes in contact with nature, will therefore be formed on this model: minimum residential cells for guests, that are divided by gender, and grand spaces for collective entertainment facilities; by discouraging families in favor of the individual, the holiday destinations do not reproduce the urban design of the residential city. Children are not allowed because they must experience the first forms of associative life framed in the formations of young pioneers hosted in a network of summer camps designed to immerse the youth in the wild. Market economy and individual independence after the collapse of the Ussr convulsively led the Russians to be among the biggest consumers and investors tourist in Europe, colonizing, often aggressively, entire regions; at home, instead, while many vacation complexes perish, some plants continue to offer their charms, though often disfigured in adapting to presumed Western standards.