Primorskaya Hotel

On August seventeenth, nineteen thirty-six, Primorskaya Hotel welcomed its first guests. It was the first hotel built in Soviet Sochi. After nationalization, the former private hotels were converted into sanatoriums, where people stayed on vouchers and received treatment along with their accommodation. Primorskaya Hotel offered another option: its two hundred rooms accommodated those who had come to the sea on their own.

During the war, the city was ordered to set up more than twenty thousand hospital beds—twice as many as the prewar resort could accommodate. Sanatoriums, holiday homes, and hotels were cleared of guests, furniture was removed, and beds were installed in the rooms. From nineteen forty-three through nineteen forty-five, Hospital Number Two Thousand Ninety-Five was located in Primorskaya Hotel. About five hundred seriously wounded people were treated here every month.

The memoirs preserved by the Sochi Museum include the story of one of them. Romanov, a soldier in an anti-tank gun crew, was brought here after being seriously wounded near Novorossiysk. Food reached Sochi intermittently; sometimes the hospital kitchens lacked even salt and onions. As a joke, Romanov asked the duty nurse, known only as Lida, for chicken broth. He expected to receive another serving of pearl barley porridge.

By lunchtime, Lida brought him a bowl of broth with a piece of chicken. There was no money or hospital ration for it: the nurse went to the market and traded her last dress for the bird.

Romanov survived. After the war, he came to Sochi several times, searched for Lida, and wanted to give her the most fashionable outfit he could manage to buy. He was unable to find the nurse.

After the hospital, the building was again prepared to receive holidaymakers; the hotel reopened in nineteen forty-nine. The historic building is now being restored, and there are no longer wards or operating rooms inside. Before reconstruction, a memorial plaque bearing the hospital number hung on the façade. Lida’s name was not on it.