Summerfolk

Summerfolk

A History of the Dacha, 1710–2000

STEPHEN LOVELL

Cornell University Press

ITHACA AND LONDON

For my parents

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Glossary

Abbreviations

Maps

Introduction

1. Prehistory

2. Between City and Court

The Middle Third of the Nineteenth Century

3. The Late Imperial Dacha Boom

4. Between Arcadia and Suburbia

The Dacha as a Cultural Space, 1860–1917

5. The Making of the Soviet Dacha, 1917–1941

6. Between Consumption and Ownership

Exurban Life, 1941–1986

7. Post-Soviet Suburbanization?

Dacha Settlements in Contemporary Russia

Conclusion

Note on Sources

Bibliography

Illustrations

Map of St. Petersburg and surrounding area

Map of Moscow and surrounding area

B. Paterssen, View of Novaia Derevnia from Kamennyi Island (1801)

B. Paterssen, The Kamennyi Island Palace as Seen from Aptekarskii Island (1804)

Neoclassical dacha design from the 1840s

Dacha “in the Gothic style”

Dacha with a minaret “in the Mauritanian style”

A gulian’e at the Stroganov gardens

A modest design of the 1870s

A more elaborate dacha of the late imperial era

The dacha of Rakhmanov fils

A house for a “prosperous peasant”

Floridly rustic dacha of the 1870s

Dacha in the style of “northern modernism”

A dacha at Siverskaia

A dacha at Aleksandrovka

Postcard view of Kliaz’ma station

“Dacha delights”

A house at Sokol

A dacha at Lisii Nos

Soviet design for a “paired” dacha

Layout of a medium-sized prewar dacha plot

Boris Pasternak’s dacha at Peredelkino

Dacha built in the 1940s at Mel’nichii Ruchei

A dacha at Abramtsevo

“Lady goldfish, turn my dacha into a smashed-up washtub!”

“Dacha for Hyre”

A standard design for a garden-plot house

Simple garden-plot house at Siniavino

Temporary hut (vremianka) made largely of old doors

Garden-plot house at Krasnitsy

A dacha at Abramtsevo

New Russian dacha at Mozhaiskoe

House at Zelenogradskaia

A dacha at Mozhaiskoe

A dacha at Zelenogradskaia

A post-Soviet garden-plot house at Krasnitsy

A dacha at Mel’nichii Ruchei

Garden settlement (Zelenogradskaia)

Settlement near Pavlovo, Leningrad oblast

Acknowledgments

This book would probably not have been written without the award of a Junior Research Fellowship by St. John’s College, Oxford. I thank that enlightened and generous institution for support both financial and intellectual.

Institutional assistance of a different kind has been provided by Cornell University Press, where Bernhard Kendler has been a courteous and efficient editor, and Karen Laun and Barbara Salazar have done excellent work on the manuscript.

My research has been made possible by the staff of several libraries and archives. In Oxford, I thank especially Mrs. Menzies at the Bodleian and the delightful and expert personnel at the Slavonic annex of the Taylor Institute. In Helsinki, Irina Lukka has been unfailingly helpful with illustrations and bibliographical queries. Librarians and archivists in Moscow and St. Petersburg, although not invariably charming, have been much more obliging than their abysmal salaries and working conditions give me any right to expect.

Several friends and colleagues have made my stays in Russia more pleasant and productive. I am especially grateful to Konstantin Barsht, Daniel Beer, Irina Chekhovskikh, Ol’ga Egoshina and Vladimir Spiridonov, Al’bin Konechnyi and Ksana Kumpan, Sergei and Ol’ga Parkhomovskii, Natal’ia Poltavtseva, and Ol’ga Sevan.

I gratefully acknowledge the helpful information I have received from Jana Howlett, David Moon, and Andrei Rogachevskii.

Several people have given me the benefit of their brainpower by reading various pieces of work in draft form. For this help I thank Charles Hachten, Steven Harris, Barbara Heidt, Julie Hessler, Geoffrey Hosking, Judith Pallot, David Saunders, and Gerry Smith.

Catriona Kelly has contributed to this book in more ways than I have space to enumerate here.

Liz Leach took time away from her own work to join me on trips to Russia, and her intelligent interest in the summerfolk was surprisingly undiminished by the experience; she has also taught me more about domesticity than any dachnik ever will.