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 chief of police. In that same year, 1885, a “simplified municipal administration” was introduced in Anapa. The first town elder appointed was retired staff captain Ivan Dmitrievich Tolmazov. From the late 1890s, the Anapa Public Assembly also operated at the same time; its chairman was “Assessor Yury Dmitrievich Pilenko, an orchard owner and wine merchant.”
The population of Anapa was 8,296 people. The town had 6 educational institutions and two insurance offices: 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 was in operation.
In 1990, the town doctor was V. A. Budzinsky.
On June 21, 1909, using funds provided by the founder of the Anapa resort, Dr. V. A. Budzinsky, a sanatorium called “Bimlyuk” with an orthopedic institute opened in the locality of Dzhemete, specializing in the treatment of osteoarticular tuberculosis. The institute successfully treated rickets, scrofula, rheumatism, gout, clubfoot, spinal curvature, hunchback, and all kinds of diseases of the skeletal and muscular system.
A “resort commission” appeared within the structure of the town council, resolving many issues: drafting the core documents regulating resort life; overseeing the maintenance, leasing, and profitability of municipal resort facilities; compiling the season’s touring program and the resort hall’s repertoire plans and supervising its work; recruiting staff for municipal resort facilities; studying vacationers’ opinions; considering complaints about violations of order, environmental rules, trade rules, etc.
During the tenure of the town head Vladimir Illarionovich Pilenko, an excellent resort hall began to operate actively.
Under V. I. Pilenko, many town streets were repaved, a boulevard was laid out along the entire embankment, a new billiard room opened in the town 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, “Anapsky Listok,” began publication in Anapa, edited by A. U. Lvovich-Kostritsa. The town authorities paid great attention to resort advertising: notices in capital newspapers, a prospectus-guidebook to the resort, black-and-white and color postcards with views of Anapa, and colorful city plans were published.
The resort’s popularity grew: in 1888, 1,234 people vacationed in Anapa; the attendance “peak” came in 1911 with 15,480 visitors, meaning that over 20 years the number of vacationers grew 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,” the organizing committee of the agricultural and industrial exhibition of the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus stated.
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 specializing in sea-bathing treatments came to Anapa from “university cities” to practice: M. F. Rudnev, A. A. Koltygin, P. L. Fomin, N. S. Troitsky, I. G. Atlas, V. I. Chirikhin, 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 locality of Semigorye had long been known.
In 1901, mining engineer V. I. Vinda carried out 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. Chuevsky gave a brilliant assessment of Semigorye mineral water, indicating that “in iodine content it surpasses all known Russian springs and occupies one of the first places in Europe.” The water in the spring was identical in analysis and beneficial effect to “Essentuki No. 17,” and in terms of iodine quantity it had no equal.
In 1911, V. A. Budzinsky, in partnership with entrepreneur A. S. Dobrovolsky, began building a sanatorium in Semigorye, which opened on the eve of the 1913 season. The “Luchezarnaya” sanatorium, with 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, an “Public Committee to Promote the Improvement of the Resort and Surroundings” was established in Anapa, headed by V. A. Budzinsky. The society set as its goal “to care for improving the maintenance of existing roads, footpaths, water channels, shores and piers; to arrange new public bathing facilities; to establish an information bureau, reading rooms for vacationers, etc.”
In 1913, at the All-Russian Hygiene Exhibition in St. Petersburg, Dr. V. A. Budzinsky’s medical institutions in Anapa were awarded a Small Gold Medal “For the good organization of hydrotherapy.”
In December 1913, results were summarized in St. Petersburg for the exhibition of the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, “The Russian Riviera.” Anapa presented a set of advertising publications about the resort, models of V. A. Budzinsky’s sanatoriums with real Anapa sand “which many considered happiness to touch.” 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 three of his sanatoriums with a total value of 600,000 rubles.
The world war that had begun 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 financing began for “balneological treatment of wounded officers and enlisted ranks.”
In 1915, V. A. Budzinsky was elected town head, which testified to his high personal authority and to recognition of the importance of the resort industry in Anapa’s life.
Overall, the formation of the sanatorium-and-resort sector in Anapa up to 1917 proceeded simultaneously with the economic development of the region and the coastline and was part of this process—complex and often inconsistent.
At the origins of the sanatorium-and-resort sector in Anapa stood enthusiast devotees: Doctors A. I. Pesochenky, 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 bathhouses, hydrotherapy facilities, and mud-bath clinics—were built both at state expense 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 their assumption of full power, the ataman of the Kuban Cossack Host A. P. Filimonov (elected on October 12, 1917) and the Provisional Kuban Host Government declared 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. The health resorts were expropriated and nationalized.
In August 1917, Budzinsky was dismissed. The town head became the Trudovik Nikifor Ivanovich Morev.
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 bodies of power were created: the city duma, the civic 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 levies were abolished as not meeting the requirements of life. “In all stanitsas, villages, khutors, auls, and other населённые пункты, the revolutionary-democratic population of the district 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 was put ashore from Crimea. In the course of stubborn and bloody battles, the landing force was encircled and destroyed by Red Army units commanded by M. K. Serikov. Under his command was also a special-purpose detachment (ChON) from Anapa.
On July 19, 1923, the founder of the Anapa resort, Vladimir Adolfovich Budzinsky, died.
The resort’s хозяйство almost everywhere bears traces of poor management and little care or forethought in meeting the resort’s urgent needs. Undoubtedly, one of the main reasons for this state of affairs is the overly frequent смена of resort directors. Over the year the resort spent more than 8 trillion rubles in 1923 currency, and if at least 1% of these sums had been spent on improvements, there would be no need to see in the sanatoriums, the mud-bath clinic, and other places such intolerable disorder, the elimination of which required comparatively negligible monetary expenditures, entirely within the resort’s means. Use of the housing stock is completely unorganized, and many buildings are leased by the resort from the municipal housing authority 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 have been left to self-destruction.