ABSTRACT
The vast leisurescapes of the Black Sea sanatoriums intended to bolster the health of Soviet citizens are the most well-known symbols of the worker-centered leisure politics in the USSR. As sanatorium vacancies were in constant deficit and accessible only for individual use, the Soviet state struggled throughout the regime to find adequate resources to meet the ever-rising demands of Soviet citizens for a holiday away from home. This chapter discusses company holiday homes in Soviet Estonia, built by various factories and administrative institutions from the 1960s onward, as a specific measure designed by the state to alleviate the shortage of sanatorium vacancies and meet the demand for family holidays. By introducing new forms of collective leisure, these small-scale wooden modernist buildings dotting Estonian coastal villages, as well as the complex late modernist structures designed in the 1970s, not only embraced a more nuanced understanding of socialist leisure but contributed to the rethinking of the socialist “way of life” where seemingly conflicting values like “collectivity,” “freedom of choice,” and “family-centered private life” could co-exist.
