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A History of the Russian
Dacha |
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It’s
Дачный
сезон
(dacha season) in Russia. Dachas have existed for centuries, surviving
revolutions, purges, and falls. They remain an integral, if at times
hard-to-define part of Russian life; many Russians scoff at them, many
hold them dear, and many, oddly, do both. Yet "dacha season" remains so
widespread that stores announce
Распродажи
в
дачный
сезон
(dacha season sales - for which building and gardening equipment are
discounted) in ads nearly as large and pervasive as those for
"back-to-school" in America. |
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So what is a "dacha?" The
word has made significant inroads into English because, although it can
theoretically be translated as "summer house," or "cottage" the dacha is
not necessarily that comfortable, leisurely symbol of affluence, or that
picturesque image of country living. A dacha usually lays a 1-2 hour
local train (электрички
- elektrichki) ride away. These elektrichki are usually overcrowded with
people of every social class and, we have seen, the occasional
livestock. For those fortunate enough to own a car (it is common to have
a dacha, but no car), the trip can take twice as long, as the roads are
not built to handle the mass exodus that occurs every weekend. |
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To look back in time, the
term "dacha" was born of early medieval Russian. It meant "a gift given
publicly," (Публичный
дар)
and later came to specifically mean "property given and used in feudal
fashion" (имущество,
переданное
и
используемое
по-феодальному).
A dacha could include land, houses, outbuildings, serfs (serf =
Крепостный
крестьянин),
etc. It was the main unit of property right up until emancipation
radically changed property concepts in 1861. The definition of "dacha"
changed as well and in modern Russian this feudal conceptualization is
better served by "поместье"
(manor) rather than "dacha." |
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Peter the Great also
altered the meaning, even before emancipation. After the Great Northern
War, armed with expanses of new land and a desire to create a "Road to
Versailles" that would run from St. Petersburg to the royal dacha of
Peterhof, Peter gave out tracts bordering the Gulf of Finland,
instructing the recipients to build grand houses and sculpted gardens.
These new dachas would be used primarily not for agriculture, but social
entertaining. The owners were expected to maintain city residences as
well. |
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As the real estate market
liberalized, and as dissatisfaction with living in the bustling,
expensive, and dirty St. Petersburg grew, owning a dacha became popular
among the new “middle class” of bureaucrats and businessmen. Hence, the
word actually came to mean: "summer house." A building boom ensued,
forming communities of dachas. The craze even hit the working class, who
rented rooms or "corners" (углы)
in other people’s dachas for a few rubles for the summer. By 1850,
дачники
(dachniki - "summer residents") became a staple of Russian literature,
often satirized as lazy or, alternatively, revered as Russia’s newly
cultured class. |
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This uncertain cultural
status would be important after the October Revolution, when many people
took the communists at their word that land should be communal. A lot of
people marched into the countryside and built small dachas with garden
plots wherever someone else was not already living. The reason for this
is clear: the First World War had caused starvation, and people were
just trying to survive. |
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Steven Lovell, in his
award-winning Summerfolk, a History of the Dacha, understates this
unofficial and undocumented process, but it seems to have not been
uncommon. He states that a fair number of dachas were officially
registered well after their construction. There are also many Muscovites
who claim their family dachas were built in this manner. |
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The main controversy
revolved around whether the dacha should be part of the bourgeois past
or the communist future. Although a policy was never officially spelled
out, dachas were placed under the control of district committees known
as raiispolkomi (Райисполкомы
or Районные
исполнительные
комитеты
- "Regional Executive Committees"), and thus effectively legitimized but
with restrictions: each family was allowed only one dacha and "lordly"
dachas (with running water or large stoves) were forcibly nationalized. |
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As more individuals and
unions sought dacha space, even outbuildings were re-classed as dachas.
Several country estates were turned into
Дома
Отдыха
(Doma Otdixa). Many of these "houses of rest," which can be understood
as a sort of communal dacha, are still state-operated and inexpensive.
New construction was entrusted mainly to housing cooperatives. |
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Dachas also became a
political tool. For example, funding to build the writers’ colony at
Peredelkino was freed shortly after the Union of Soviet Writers adopted
an official, state-friendly genre. Afterwards, only writers in good
standing with the state received dachas there. Political meetings from
the local to the national level were often charged with accusations of
блат
(blat - a Russian word referring to systematized bribe-taking and
favor-playing), in connection with dacha allocations. Recently, Alexei
Pankin, the opinion page editor for Izvestia, even published a piece in
the Moscow Times entitled "The Dacha Theory of History," in which he
asserts that all major political shakeups in Russia are preceded by
infighting about the control of dachas. |
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Interestingly, demand
continued to swell and the dacha solidified as a cultural icon despite
that most were poorly built, even unsanitary structures. They were and
largely are "summer houses" because most lack heating and are thus
unusable during the winter. Many westerners might also find it strange
that Russians would commute from the city to the countryside (the
opposite from the western practice) in order to visit such places
regularly. |
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As the Russian economy
expands, many young Russians are beginning to think of a dacha more as a
summer home, as a place of relative affluence where vacations are taken
and gardening is laughable. While a different word has yet replaced the
small, rustic dacha, these Russians will insist that they are connected
almost solely with elderly pensioners, who use them to bolster their
meager state-provided funds. While this seems to be not entirely the
case, the fact that the question "what is a dacha" will spark an
argument is interesting in and of itself. |
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But for many Russians, the
dacha is still a simple home-away-from-home. Every weekend, many don
large rubber boots (резиновые
сапоги)
and weed and care for their vegetable patches. They eat shashlik (a kind
of barbeque on skewers), play outdoor games, go for walks and just
relax. At night, they retire to what usually amounts to a simple wooden
shack, often lacking running water and electricity. To many, this is a
"return to the soil," to their roots and the ways of their forefathers.
Although some scoff at this ramshackle Russian tradition, both
supporters and scoffers alike will agree that the dacha is an important
part of народность
(Russianness). |
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www.sras.org
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«Единственное,
что я себе позволяю – иногда после работы на час, другой заезжать к себе
в деревню подышать воздухом, физически поработать. Сюда приезжают
друзья, с которыми я могу поговорить не о работе, а знаете, и ни о чем,
и обо всем…». - Виктор Маслов