Things Are Bad on the Banya Front

Abstract

Stalin’s “revolution from above” in the Soviet Union directly affected banyas. Forced industrialization suggested that enough banyas could finally be built to meet the demands of the people, and yet they suffered because they were lower priorities than other, more pressing, goals. Collectivization radically transformed the countryside, spreading disease and hunger across the country, increasing the pressure on towns to fight epidemics by using hot banyas to eradicate lice. And campaigns for more cultured living suggested socialist bodies were supposed to be clean bodies. Over the course of the 1930s, however, the Soviet state failed to fulfill its promises of building enough banyas for the population. The problems on the banya front were both laughable (as seen in cartoons in the journal Krokodil) and deadly serious (as the terror suggested.)