Summerfolk

It would be most accurate, however, to characterize the Khrushchev era as one of ambivalence; as a time when long-standing areas of tension in Soviet ideology and social policy were laid bare as never before. Published material on the dacha from the early 1960s betrays the confusion and inconsistency that was so characteristic of that period’s “austere consumerism.”78 On the one hand, individual dacha construction was deemed to be a good thing, as it helped to alleviate the housing shortage and raise the standard of living of Soviet people. On the other, it presented people with an opportunity to flaunt their influence and resources and indulge an unhealthy taste for comfortable living. This tug-of-war between promotion and proscription is amply reflected in Soviet journalism of the late 1950s and early 1960s. One 1959 issue of the prominent illustrated magazine Ogonek, for example, described in loving detail the dacha of a model worker at the Hammer and Sickle factory (acquired as a reward for thirty years’ unremitting toil at the factory bench); a few pages later it launched into an exposé of bureaucrats in the distribution system who had abused building regulations in order to build themselves luxurious residences.79 As usual, it was left to the vigilant and perceptive reader to deduce the limits of the legitimate in the spheres of consumption and ownership.

The Intelligentsia Subculture

Against this political backdrop the intelligentsia ethos of dacha life made a strong comeback: the Khrushchev-era quest for moral activism and a repurified socialism ensured that the “spiritual” functions of the country retreat tended to be valued over its material attributes. The de-Stalinization campaign initiated at the Second Congress of Soviet Writers in 1954 forced a reassessment of the privileges that members of the intelligentsia had received in exchange for their contribution to Stalin-era culture. A state-allocated dacha in the writer’s settlement at Peredelkino occasioned, in public at least, self-justification rather than self-congratulation. The wife of the writer Iurii Libedinskii recalled overhearing visitors to Peredelkino in the mid-1950s commenting enviously on the dacha residences they saw: “Look at what palaces they’ve been putting up! I was in Iasnaia Poliana [the ancestral estate of Leo Tolstoy] recently, the house there is a whole lot simpler. This lot live better than a count, but what are they up to as writers?”80 Libedinskaia, on seeing her husband’s pained expression, frog-marched these carping critics into her dacha and showed them the crowded interior: a mere three rooms for a large household of husband and wife, five children, a granny, and a nurse. As the coup de grâce, she directed the visitors’ attention to the writer’s desk, piled high with papers, folders, and books. Presented with such evidence of industry, dedication, and Bolshevik self-restraint, they withdrew in embarrassment.