ABSTRACT
For the longest part of its history the Russian spa industry was dominated by a huge segment of institutions (the Russian term for those being ‘sanatorium’) that belonged to the governmental health-care system and before the 1990s were accessible to the country’s population, whenever rehabilitation or prevention measures were considered necessary by physicians. The majority of ‘sanatoriums’ would be located on the sea coasts, close to mineral springs, or in favourable climatic zones. The rehabilitation and medical wellness treatments offered to the patients (who were considered as ‘patients’, not ‘clients’) would include a wide range of naturopathic methods, such as balneotherapy, thalassotherapy, hydrotherapy, and so on, backed by strong medical and scientific evidence. The character of treatments, as well as the location of ‘sanatoriums’, means they could be called ‘spas’, although the term ‘spa’ had never been applied by either Russian professionals or by their patients to those traditional health resorts. Working under the rule of the Ministry of Health, ‘sanatoriums’ would specialise in particular rehabilitation goals (i.e. vertebral dysfunction, lung diseases, cardio-vascular diseases, etc.). Logically, their staff would be a hundred percent medical, and the patients would have to go through detailed diagnostics before receiving any treatments. Besides, the accommodation level was never that of comfort and indulgence, and in an average ‘sanatorium’ would rather resemble a hospital.
