Families live in limbo as these jewels of Soviet architecture slowly crumble
| Tskaltubo, Georgia
Just two children call this ghostly building home.
And yet, 6-year-old Saba and his 3-year-old sister, Nia, laugh as they play in the darkened corridors of the crumbling five-story building. Saba is kicking a soccer ball while Nia excitedly chases after him. Their mother, Irina Bondarevi, watches nearby, wistfully recalling a time when 500 families lived here.
This is the Rkinigzeli Sanatorium, a vestige of postwar Soviet architecture in Tskaltubo, a town in the Republic of Georgia. Nearly two dozen former sanatoriums are still standing in the town, housing a dwindling number of families like Ms. Bondarevi’s.
Members of the Soviet elite and everyday citizens alike once flocked to the majestic buildings via a railway line connected directly to Moscow, eager to soak themselves in Tskaltubo’s restorative hot springs during their state-prescribed vacations. (Workers’ right to rest was enshrined in the 1936 Soviet Constitution, which also guaranteed the “provision of a wide network of sanatoriums” across the vast territory that made up the Soviet socialist republics.)
Not long after Georgia declared its independence in 1991 and the Soviet Union collapsed, thousands of ethnic Georgians came to live in these abandoned sanatoriums, fleeing a bloody dispute over the contested Abkhazia region in the South Caucasus. Today, Georgia’s government wants to restore the buildings to their former splendor and make Tskaltubo a leading hydrotherapy resort town once more. As of 2022, some 14 sanatoriums had not yet been sold off to private investors as part of the government’s New Life of Tskaltubo project, which valued the properties at 50 million Georgian lari (about $18 million) total. Families who have still not been rehomed remain in limbo in the dilapidated dwellings, awaiting word of somewhere else they can go.
Across the road from the Rkinigzeli Sanatorium, a hidden path through a wooded area leads to another former sanatorium, the Metalurg. A huge arched-glass window enhances the entrance to the imposing four-story building, which was constructed in 1957 and is one of the best-preserved sanatoriums.
Mindadze Gurau has lived in the Metalurg with his wife for more than 30 years. But he senses their days here might be history.
“For decades, we have all maintained this place as best we could,” Mr. Gurau says. “But we don’t have much time left, and it is falling apart.”
Standing in the Metalurg’s ornate lobby, which retains the building’s original chandelier as well as its original wooden and wrought-iron railings, resident Tania Jan says she is reluctant to leave. She moved into the sanatorium in 1992 with her three children after her husband died fighting in the Abkhazia conflict.
“We have not been offered any better option than this,” Ms. Jan says matter-of-factly. “I don’t know what will become of us, once again.”
For more visual storytelling that captures communities, traditions, and cultures around the globe, visit The World in Pictures.
