Summerfolk

Largely because of the lack of clarity and the ineffectiveness of property law, some former state-sponsored dacha settlements acquired a complex and disputed status in the 1990s. One example is the writers’ settlement at Peredelkino, run by the state-sponsored funding organization for literature, Litfond, from the late 1930s. On the collapse of the Soviet system, Litfond lost its subsidies and felt the pinch of market reforms. Legally, it did not even own the land on which the Peredelkino dachas stood. All it could do was rent out the existing accommodations. The central vacation home, the “House of Creativity,” accordingly became a modest hotel where rooms could be rented for as little as $10 a night. But even this sum fell outside the price range of most post-Soviet writers. Residents apprehensively discussed privatization of the dacha stock in the settlement as a whole, as private ownership was sure to change the character of the place irrevocably—to lead to the displacement of writers by newly moneyed families or representatives of the nonliterary elite. Peredelkino was among the most desirable locations for such people, as it combined ease of access to the city, excellent ecological conditions, and prestige. Even in the absence of a thoroughgoing privatization program, it had been infiltrated by the post-Soviet military and governmental establishment and by the despised nuvorishi. The most striking new mansion there belonged to Zurab Tsereteli, effectively the court architect of the Yeltsin regime. Good contacts in high places were sufficient to obtain permission to build new residences even in heritage zones such as this. Peredelkino’s vulnerability to the private building boom was accentuated by its uneasy administrative status: the settlement itself was located within municipal territory, but the adjoining lands were subject to oblast authority, and here new construction proceeded without adequate planning controls.10

The Garden Plot as a Mass Phenomenon

The story of former state-sponsored dacha settlements in the 1990s is revealing of post-Soviet networks of power and patronage, but it sheds little light on the dacha’s broader social significance. This significance, as we have seen, increased enormously with the postwar growth in cultivation of allotments and garden plots, and the years of Gorbachev’s reforms brought a further giant step forward. A joint Soviet Party-government resolution of 7 March 1985 pledged support to the garden-plot movement. The immediate response of the RSFSR government was to formulate a program for boosting infrastructure in garden associations with a view to providing between 1.7 and 1.8 million new plots between 1986 and 2000.11 In 1986, a recommended form for the statutes of such an association was approved. Traditional Soviet restrictions were still very much in force: buildings on garden plots were to be mere “summer garden huts” (letnie sadovye domiki) with a total living space of no more than 25 square meters; outbuildings (including huts for rabbits and poultry, sheds for gardening equipment, and outdoor toilets and showers) were to total no more than 15 square meters; the overall area of a plot was to fall between 400 and 600 square meters.12 The RSFSR program for garden-plot development was by this time much more ambitious than the previous year’s: now the plan was to increase the number of plots by more than 700,000 a year over the next five years and to improve the supply of building materials and the provision of services in garden settlements.13 And in 1988 even the approved statutes were more relaxed: now garden houses could be heated, the area of land under construction could be 50 square meters (not even including terraces and verandas), and there was no stated limit on the area for outbuildings.14 A 1989 resolution promised to set up trading centers in garden settlements where dachniki could sell their produce and buy building materials and equipment.15 All the while, the Moscow ispolkom was pledging to accelerate the creation of new settlements by searching out suitable land and taking less time over the necessary paperwork.16 By 1987, more than 4.7 million citizens of the Russian Federation had “second homes” on garden plots (as compared to a mere 55,000 with dachas proper).17