Summerfolk

Себя отнюдь не возносить.16

Second, the social and economic functions of the dacha in eighteenth-century Russia were quite distinct from those of the country estate. A residence on the Peterhof Road enabled people to have a break from the city without taking themselves too far afield. It allowed a lifestyle of short, habitual holidays instead of a single annual absence of several months at a far-flung country estate. The emergence of a modern (that is, post-Petrine) dacha depended on an administrative order that required regular and reasonably continuous attendance in the office or at the court by a class of state functionaries and noblemen. Its prime function was to enable prominent families to maintain contact with the grandees on whose favor their advancement depended, to safeguard their position in Petersburg’s peculiarly patrimonial bureaucracy. This point was understood perfectly by F. F. Vigel’, a memoirist unusually well placed to observe the overlapping worlds of aristocracy and elite civil service. In 1800 Vigel’ was driven out to the residence of Count F. V. Rostopchin to request in person an appointment in the prestigious Board of Foreign Affairs. Not yet fourteen years of age, Vigel’ was traveling along the Peterhof Road for the first time, and he marveled at the chain of splendid dachas that extended “almost uninterruptedly” on both sides for twenty-six versts. This was, he commented, the only place around Petersburg where “rich folk of all estates [vsekh soslovii]” could spend their summers; people of lesser means could not afford such a luxury. His remarks confirm the Peterhof Road as a place for the social elite; equally, however, they suggest that membership in this elite was determined not simply by aristocratic lineage but also by money and by position in state service. As an older man, Vigel’ was less admiring of the dacha habits of St. Petersburg’s mandarins, who, in his opinion, had abandoned the expansive ways of the country estate and opted instead for cramped and undignified suburban dwellings in their overriding anxiety to maintain proximity to the court. Their houses were, from this point of view, more reminiscent of servants’ quarters than of truly aristocratic residences.17

This somewhat jaundiced view of the Petersburg dacha and the implied unfavorable comparison with the more autonomous estate culture of the Moscow aristocracy would become a mainstay of later social commentaries. Such typological distinctions between Russia’s two major cities do, however, tend to obliterate historical nuances. Even in the eighteenth century, the social function and composition of the Peterhof Road was far from static. In the early days, its orientation toward the Peterhof palace was indeed at least as important as, if not more important than, its proximity to the city. But this initial stage of the modern dacha s history came to a symbolic end with the completion of the Winter Palace by Bartolomeo Rastrelli in 1768, after which the imperial household relocated to Petersburg. In actual settlement patterns, understandably enough, there was no such clear break; the palaces retained their social prominence and the more adjacent outskirts of the city were only gradually made fit for dacha colonization. Even so, one can observe a shift in elite residency toward the “East End” of the Peterhof Road in the second half of the eighteenth century.18

This spatial reorientation was accompanied by changes in social composition. In 1762 the first section of the road toward Peterhof—between the Fontanka and a substantial dacha named Krasnyi Kabachok—was subdivided into smaller plots and handed out to new owners. Krasnyi Kabachok had been given by Peter I to a translator named Semen Ivanov with full rights of inheritance (though without the right to sell the land), but when Ivanov died in 1748 his family was approached by the chief of police, Vasilii Saltykov, who had designs on this potentially profitable stretch of land. Under huge pressure, the family gave in to his demands and sold their estate for a mere 600 rubles. But Ivanovs sister appealed to Empress Elizabeth, who promptly canceled the contract of sale and allowed the Ivanovs to sell the property to whomever they pleased. Ivanovs sister soon took advantage of this ruling and cashed in her assets, and Krasnyi Kabachok changed hands several times over the following decades.19