The Ministry of Health proposed to cancel Lenin’s decree on the nationalization of resorts

Formally, it is still in effect

The Russian Ministry of Health proposes to cancel the Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR “On medical localities of national significance,” signed by Lenin back in March 1919. The draft government decree, which provides for the abolition of the document that is formally still in force, has been published on the portal of regulatory legal acts.

The Lenin document, in particular, proclaims that medicinal areas or resorts, wherever they are located and whoever previously belonged to them, are the property of the Republic and are used for medicinal purposes. Resorts were nationalized “together with all structures, buildings and movable property” that previously served the resort and were located on lands annexed and assigned to the resort. And although now the resort areas still belong to the state, quite a lot of private sanatoriums have appeared on their territories, which clearly contradicts the text of the decree.

In all other respects, the document does not contradict the current legislation; the norms and rules in accordance with which resorts live are prescribed in many regulatory documents adopted in recent decades. This is the law “On Natural Healing Resources, Medical and Health Areas and Resorts,” adopted in 1995, and the Water, Urban Planning and Civil Codes. Therefore, the Ministry considered that it was time to cancel the Decree.