Artek (camp)

See also: Artek (homonymy)

The international Center for children “Artek” (Russian: Международныйдетскийцентр “Aртек” ) is a complex of 11 holiday camps located in the Crimea (Ukraine), close to towns of Aloupka, Gourzouf and Yalta.

The first camps of Artek was inaugurated on June 16th 1925. At the time Soviet it was the most prestigious summer camp of the Soviet Union. The majority of camps of Artek function all the year having a secondary school so that the children can there remain and study apart from the summer period. The site has of an at the same time maritime subtropical microclimate and mountain, favourable with health.

A few years after the Revolution of October, Lénine had decided that the Crimea would be from now on “a place of rest for the workers”. It was to be a reaction Bolshevik with the fact that since the end of the nineteenth century, the place had become vacation resort and had seen pushing many luxurious villas. Lénine died on January 21st, 1924 but as of the following year, one of his/her friends, Doctor Simoniev Solokiov engaged the construction of the camp of Artek, with an aim of accommodating young sick Muscovites.

Located a few kilometres from Yalta, in extreme cases is southern part, this camp was installed between the small balneal city of Gourzouf and the mount of Aïou-Dag, otherwise called “the Mountain of the Bear”.

June 16th, 1925, the first children lodged in these places hoisted the first flag of the history of Artek. At that time, they were only some tents but, as from 1928, those were replaced by military hutments. During the German occupation in the Crimea, Artek was used by the Wehrmacht.

It was from 1957 that the camp took a resolutely modern form. At the instigation of Khrouchtchev, with the mixture of concrete, metal and glass, the buildings were the result of an architecture of avant-garde. The place was considerable since constructions were spread out over a zone of two hundred and thirty hectares. In the idea of the Soviet leader of the time, that which had one day struck with its shoe the desk of UNO, the finality of Artek was to be multiple: “to train new men”, by rewarding by these holidays the young Pioneers, to familiarize them with a quasi military lifestyle and finally, to accommodate foreign children to show in the world what were “free and happy children”. To some extent, Artek was to be used as window in the USSR.

Since, it was Brejnev which directed the country and the small warming perceived at one time had made place with the icy retreat of the Cold war. The work directed by the team of Anatoli Polianski was completed a little before 1965, i.e. for the fortieth birthday of the camp

External bond

Official site of Artek
not-official Site of Artek
Site of old of Artek
" A Kid at Soviets"
" Historia pierwszej milosci"

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