Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1710-2000 by Stephen s> Lovell (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 967 Many of the contributorsto this volume have since published monographs that explore and extend the themes covered here. Despite the obvious overlap, this book provides a useful introduction to these important topics in modern Russian historyand culture. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies SUSAN MORRISSEY University College London Lovell, Stephen. Summerfolk: A Histogyof the Dacha, I7I0-2000. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, and London, 2003. xvii + 260 pp. Maps. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography.Index. $29.95: Ci8.95. 'DACHA in the narrow sense of the word is a purely Russian phenomenon', statesan entryin the Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia of I930. It is one of the few Russian words to have entered the English language yet, along with the dachniki or 'summerfolk'who inhabited it, probably remains something of a mysteryto the average anglophone. In this splendidbook Stephen Lovell lays bare the 'dacha phenomenon', tracing it from the early eighteenth century, when Peter I handed out plots of land along the Finnish gulf to encourage courtiers to extend civilization beyond the boundaries of St Petersburg, through the dacha boom of late Imperial Russia, when use and ownership of dachas extended to the growing 'middleclasses',to the present,when millions of Russians still flock out of Moscow and St Petersburgto relax and grow vegetables. These 'exurban'dwellings,which provided a retreatfor the whole summer or forjust the weekend, might be rented peasant izbas, ostentatious privately-ownedmansions,glorifiedgarden shedsor something in between. StephenLovellmeticulouslyexploresthedacha'severycultural,sociological and economic nook and cranny, including architecture and design; the relationship of dachas and dachniki to legal frameworks;local economies and transportnetworks;dachas as social and cultural space within an essentially private sphere of informal sociability (conducive also to 'unbuttoned' sexual behaviour);and as culturalconstructsand literarysettings.Dachas have been the object of Westernist-Slavophilediscourses, connotations of consumerism and individualismvying with narrativesof generous hospitalityand communion with the Russian forest. They have been accused of encouraging 'petty bourgeois philistinism' and harbouring urban interlopers on a par with our own stereotypicalpackage holiday tourists,or praised as pockets of authentic rusticitythat 'improved'their inhabitants.Dachas can be viewed as gendered space, sites of self-validation for urban man (building with his own hands, planting trees, doing deals), where urban woman could also show off her superior skillsin salting and marinating. This is one area that would benefit from an extended treatment, especiallywith referenceto the 'feminization'of dacha culture. The chapters on the Soviet period are especially interesting. The author characterizes Soviet ideology as 'a notoriously fluid m6lange of beliefs, programs,and practicalpolicies that in turnwas interpretedand administered by an equally fluid body of state officials'(p. 26I). Thus the dacha managed to slip through various ideological nets, survivingrevolutionary'iconoclasm' 968 SEER, 82, 4, 2004 and utopianism, redesignation and municipalization, shifting interpretations of property law, outlawing of 'profiteering'and attempts to impose uniform standards of design and use, especially under Khrushchev, when fences around individual plots were banned. Elite retreats for Party workers (including 'nomenklatura' dachas replete with billiard tables, servants and open fires) rubbed shoulders with dacha communes and colonies with strict regimes of healthy leisure activities, official administration through trade unions and factoriescoexisted with privaterentals,reflectingthe complexities and ambiguities of Soviet society. Under Stalin (who made his Kuntsevo dacha his main residence) new attitudestowardsleisure for urban toilersand the positive encouragement of 'symbols of material abundance' for the deservingwithin a patriarchaland hierarchicalsociety prompted an increase in the dacha stock. After WorldWar Two and to the present dachas became an essentialelement of 'survivalstrategies',allowingtheproductionof essential foodstuffsand escape from cramped city apartments (or freeing of space by packingoffchildren,old people and pets for the summer).The dacha emerges as one of the perksor safetyvalves that allowed the USSR to last as long as it did and Russia to survivethe USSR's fall. The storycontinues, with the New Russians' often bizarre kottedzhi, the unregulated spread of suburban sprawl and crime, new property laws and mixed attitudes towards 'Westernization' providingfreshnarratives. As the author notes, everyday cultural phenomena 'leave traces [. ..] in many places' (p. 233), a fact that is reflected in the rich range of his sources, which include both archivaland publishedmaterials:edicts, legal documents, architectural plans, photographs and graphics, films, songs, private correspondence , memoirs, newspapers and journals...