In 1884, the town of Anapa and the villages of Varvarovka and Pavlovka were transferred to the Kuban Oblast.
Until 1885, authority belonged to the police administration headed by the police chief. In that same year, 1885, a “simplified municipal administration” was introduced in Anapa. The first city elder appointed was retired staff captain Ivan Dmitrievich Tolmazov. From the late 1890s, the Anapa Public Assembly existed at the same time; its chairman was “assessor Yuriy Dmitrievich Pilenko, a garden owner and wine merchant.”
The population of Anapa was 8,296 people. The town had 6 educational institutions and two insurance agencies: the “Rossiya” society (agent V. I. Pilenko) and the “Yakor” society (agent D. A. Maevsky). An agency of the Russian Society of Shipping and Trade operated.
The city doctor in 1990 was V. A. Budzinsky.
On June 21, 1909, using the funds of the founder of the Anapa resort, Dr. V. A. Budzinsky, a sanatorium named “Bimlyuk” with an orthopedic institute was opened in the area of Dzhemete, specializing in the treatment of osteoarticular tuberculosis. The institute successfully treated rickets, scrofula, rheumatism, gout, clubfoot, spinal curvatures, hunchback, and various diseases of the skeletal and muscular system.
A “resort commission” appeared within the structure of the city council, resolving many issues: drafting key documents regulating resort life; overseeing maintenance, leasing, and profitability of municipal resort facilities; compiling the season’s touring program and repertoire plans for the resort hall and monitoring its work; selecting personnel for municipal resort facilities; studying vacationers’ opinions; considering complaints about violations of order, ecology, trade rules, etc.
During the tenure of Mayor Vladimir Illarionovich Pilenko, the magnificent resort hall began to operate actively.
Under V. I. Pilenko, many city streets were repaved, a boulevard was laid out along the entire waterfront, a new billiards room was opened in the city garden, a stage for musicians and a buffet were built, many benches with sun canopies were installed, municipal bathing facilities were built on the sands, and lighting was improved. In the summer months of 1909, the first resort newspaper, “Anapskiy Listok,” began publication in Anapa, edited by A. U. Lvovich-Kostritsa. The city authorities paid great attention to advertising the resort: notices in capital newspapers; a prospectus-guidebook to the resort; black-and-white and color postcards with views of Anapa; and colorful city plans.
The resort’s popularity grew: in 1888, 1,234 people vacationed in Anapa; the peak of attendance came in 1911—15,480 visitors—meaning that over 20 years the number of vacationers increased by more than 12.5 times.
“Anapa as a resort was created by the energy and enterprise of people previously foreign to this area, who devoted all their strength to Anapa and, with honor, managed to draw the attention of all Russia to Anapa as a resort,” stated the organizing committee of the agricultural and industrial exhibition of the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus.
On October 1, 1907, the country’s first private resort gymnasium for weakened and ill students and teachers opened in Anapa.
In 1914, the first departmental sanatorium for “teachers and students” of the Caucasus Educational District opened. Physicians-specialists from “university cities” came to Anapa for sea bathing and practiced there: M. F. Rudnev, A. A. Koltygin, P. L. Fomin, N. S. Troitsky, I. G. Atlas, V. I. Chirihin, A. K. Shenk, and others. Their high professional authority helped attract to the town people who needed consultations from well-known specialists.
In the vicinity of Anapa, the healing properties of a spring located 18 km from the town in the area of Semigorye had long been known.
In 1901, mining engineer V. I. Vinda performed the first analysis of the water of the Semigorye spring, confirmed its medicinal properties, and reported this to the regional authorities in a special memorandum.
In 1905, exploitation of the Semigorye spring began. After examining it, Professor I. A. Chuyskiy gave a brilliant assessment of Semigorye mineral water, noting that “in iodine content it surpasses all known Russian springs and ranks among the first in Europe.” By analysis and beneficial effect, the water was identical to “Essentuki No. 17,” and in the amount of iodine it had no equal.
In 1911, V. A. Budzinsky, as a partner with entrepreneur A. S. Dobrovolsky, began construction of a sanatorium in Semigorye, which opened on the eve of the 1913 season. The “Luchezarnaya” sanatorium for 100 beds had a specially equipped hydrotherapy facility with baths and showers, as well as separate rooms for air and light baths, and a room for electrification and massage. A drinking pump room was arranged at the mineral-water spring.
In June 1913, Anapa established the “Public Committee to Promote the Improvement of the Resort and Surroundings,” headed by V. A. Budzinsky. The society set itself the goal “to care for improving the maintenance of existing roads, footpaths, water channels, shores, and footbridges; to build new public bathing facilities; to establish an information bureau and reading rooms for vacationers, etc.”
In 1913, at the All-Russian Hygienic Exhibition in Petersburg, Dr. V. A. Budzinsky’s medical facilities in Anapa were awarded a Small Gold Medal “For good organization of hydrotherapy.”
In December 1913 in Petersburg, the results of the exhibition of the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, “The Russian Riviera,” were summed up. Anapa presented a set of promotional publications about the resort, models of V. A. Budzinsky’s sanatoriums with real Anapa sand—“to touch which many considered good fortune.” The resorts of Anapa and Semigorye were awarded a Gold Medal “For excellent equipment and arrangement of sanatoriums.”
In 1914, V. A. Budzinsky, in order to attract funds, created the joint-stock company “Resorts of Anapa and Semigorye” and transferred to it his three sanatoriums with a total value of 600,000 rubles.
The world war that began deprived Russians of the opportunity to use European resorts. The need to treat wounded soldiers forced the government to pay attention to the young Black Sea resorts. Centralized funding began for the “balneological treatment of wounded officers and enlisted ranks.”
In 1915, V. A. Budzinsky was elected mayor, which testified to his high personal authority and to recognition of the importance of the resort sector in Anapa’s life.
In general, the development of the sanatorium-and-resort field in Anapa up to 1917 proceeded simultaneously with the economic освоение of the region and the coastline and was part of this process—complex and often inconsistent.
At the origins of the sanatorium-and-resort field in Anapa stood devoted enthusiasts: Doctors A. I. Pesochensky, V. A. Budzinsky, G. I. Turner, A. K. Shenk, M. F. Rudnev, D. V. Shabanov, G. L. Antokonenko, I. G. Atlas, and others. Private medical practice dominated resort medicine.
Anapa’s sanatorium-and-resort institutions—multi-profile baths, hydrotherapy facilities, mud-treatment facilities—were built both at the expense of the treasury and by private individuals. Specialized sanatoriums were created by Dr. V. A. Budzinsky using his own funds. Resort medicine in Anapa corresponded to the latest achievements of world science and practice and was the best on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus.
After receiving information about the Bolsheviks’ victory during the armed uprising in Petrograd and about their assumption of full power, ataman of the Kuban Cossack Host A. P. Filimonov (elected October 12, 1917) and the Provisional Kuban Host Government announced that they were taking full authority on the territory of the Kuban Oblast.
World War I and the revolutions of 1917 changed the natural course of events. Health resorts were expropriated and nationalized.
In August 1917, Budzinsky was dismissed. The Trudovik Nikifor Ivanovich Morev became mayor.
In the summer of 1917, a Soviet of soldiers’ and workers’ deputies was organized in Anapa. Its chairman was the Social Democratic lawyer Merezhko.
In small Anapa, three authorities were created: the city duma, the civil committee, and the Soviet of deputies.
On January 25 (February 7), 1918, the 1st Taman Otdel Separate Revolutionary Congress adopted the Regulations on Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, Peasants’, and Cossack Deputies. The posts of atamans, their assistants, and assemblies were abolished as not meeting the requirements of life. “In all stanitsas, villages, khutors, auls, and other populated places of the otdel, the revolutionary-democratic population must proceed to organize Soviets of People’s Deputies, to whose jurisdiction all local power passes.”
From August 1918 to March 1920, the Kuban was under White control.
In March 1920, Soviet power was restored.
In August 1920, Baron Wrangel made another attempt to seize the Kuban. In the Sukko valley, 15 kilometers from Anapa, a White Guard landing force from Crimea was put ashore. In the course of stubborn and bloody battles, the landing force was surrounded and destroyed by Red Army units commanded by M. K. Serikov. A special-purpose detachment (ChON) from Anapa was also under his command.
On July 19, 1923, the founder of the Anapa resort, Vladimir Adolfovich Budzinsky, died.
The resort’s operations almost everywhere bear traces of poor management and little care and forethought in meeting the resort’s urgent needs. Undoubtedly, one of the main reasons for this state of affairs is the too frequent смена of resort directors. Over the year, the resort spent more than 8 trillion rubles in 1923 notes, and if at least 1% of these sums had been spent on improvements, one would not have had to see in sanatoriums, the mud-treatment facility, and other places such intolerable disorder, the elimination of which required relatively negligible monetary outlays, entirely affordable for the resort’s economy. The use of the housing stock is completely disorganized, and many buildings are leased to the resort from the municipal utilities administration instead of being owned by it in accordance with the decree of March 13. This stock is poorly utilized, and some buildings transferred to the resort are left in a state of self-destruction.