Summerfolk

Whatever the mechanisms of the decision-making process, the overall effect was to make the life of the humble Soviet gardener more stressful. One such person was Grigorii Kravchenko, who acquired a plot in a garden cooperative at the least promising moment: in 1962, at the height of the campaign against individual property, a time when even very modest dwellings might be bulldozed if they infringed regulations. The statutes of Kravchenko’s cooperative stipulated that members should absolutely not build houses, however small, on their plots; but this condition was universally disregarded, and log shacks (typically 4 × 4m) quickly started to mushroom. What is more, the upper beams of such houses might intentionally be left to overhang the sides with a view to adding an extension at some later stage. In due course, the district authorities summoned the president of the trade union and the secretary of the Party bureau from the sponsoring organization and forcefully instructed them to bring the settlement into line. When the team of inspectors reached Kravchenko’s plot, he was ordered to dismantle his house in the two weeks that remained of his vacation. Kravchenko nodded obediently, but when the inspectors had departed did nothing to comply with their instructions. And it seemed the trouble had blown over, until the settlement received another inspection, this time by the district architect. This second official visitor was even more literal-minded in his implementation of policy, demanding that all individual plots be liquidated and all land be turned over for collective use: he adhered rigorously to the official vision of garden associations as collective farms for city dwellers. Kravchenko was able to avert disaster only by giving what was effectively a bribe: he offered a plot of land in the cooperative to the architect, who declined but mentioned an acquaintance who would be glad to have it. After that, Kravchenko and his fellow settlers heard nothing more from him.

Official strictures extended to many other activities at garden plots. One man in Kravchenko’s settlement took to breeding rabbits covertly (livestock of all kinds was at the time strictly forbidden), and then took the further bold step of acquiring a pig. But he was so apprehensive of denunciations by his neighbors and of punitive administrative intervention that the unfortunate animal was kept cooped up in a tiny shack and so never got any exercise or even saw the light of day. The pork fat produced after the pig was slaughtered was revolting: mainly liquid in texture, with bunched globules of fat.

Even after a plot had been obtained and unwelcome interference from the local authorities had ceased, building a house and cultivating a garden plot were fraught with difficulties. The first was making the territory fit for settlement: the land had to be drained, roads built, and trees planted—and all this at an inconveniently long distance from the city. In the early days of a garden collective, employees of the organization in question were commonly bussed out on weekends for days of “voluntary” labor so as to help carry out labor-intensive preliminary tasks.

When garden-plot holders began to cultivate their land, they commonly found essential seedlings and fertilizer hard to obtain by normal means. In Kravchenko’s words:

I remember how we got hold of manure for our first vegetable patches when there were still no houses or roads. There was a collective farm field next to us where a small herd of cows was led out to graze. Sometimes the herdsman led the cows right up close to us and they lay there and rested. You had to keep watch to see when the herd went away and the cowpats were left behind. You couldn’t afford to hang around, because by this time a few other manure lovers would always have turned up as well. And then we were off, a bucket and two plywood scoopers in our hands.