Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1710-2000 by Stephen Lovell

Abstract

MLR, 101.4, 2006 I193 rubrics or parameters, the more theoretical chapters are positioned early on: theory is followed by hypothetical (though well-justified) domains of practice. Uncommon though the following observation may be, I am-after 74I pages convinced that this volume could be of considerable pedagogical benefit to academics pondering how to 'de-canonize' their current course offerings without recourse to the increasingly common (and lamentable) practice of mentioning 'awesome death', 'equally awesome sex', and 'unspeakable, yet intriguing violence' in class titles to increase enrolments. One of the Festschrift's closing articles, therefore, appropriately outlines the function of Pushkin among Leningrad's 'underground' poets between I960 and the I980s. This closing essay, like the collection in toto, suggests how to vivify the often fossilized building-blocks of our discipline. Happy Birthday, Wolf Schmid. UNIVERSITYOFLos ANGELES,CALIFORNIA DAVIDMAcFADYEN Summerfolk: A History of theDacha, I7I0-2000. By STEPHEN LOVELL. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press. 2003. XVii+ 26o pp. $29.95. ISBN 0 8oI4-407i-8. To a large extent, ifnot invariably, academic history reflects the concerns and features of the time inwhich it iswritten. For middle-aged historians of modern Russia like me, the backbone of history has been regime studies: tsarist projects of moderniza tion, the inevitability or otherwise of the 19 I7 Revolutions, the intra-Party struggle, the rise of Stalin and the nature and functioning of the Stalinist political system. Latterly, especially from themid- I970s onwards, Western historiography turned to wards social history in a big way, but again with specific references to high politics: factory history, labour history, women's history, and studies of the peasantry or of elites; all in one way or another were related to or interwoven with the 'big themes' of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-modernization, revolution, industrializa tion, collectivization, purging. Hyper-capitalism in theWest and the demise of Soviet Socialism have framed a new time for Russian history. We can now discern the emergence of something that might be called 'consumption studies'; away of looking at things that incorporates much of the methodology of established images of Russia's past, but which is also influenced by and benefits from the rise of cultural studies, the broadening out of our areas of concern, and the effect of the 'linguistic turn' in the arts generally. Stephen Lovell's wonderful monograph on the history of the dacha and the dachniki is part of this trend, integrating, as it does, careful, nuanced, and imaginative research into realms as diverse as architecture, human geography, local history, politics, mentalities, and economics. Lovell traces the history of the dacha from its origins as an eighteenth-century court residence-one aspect of Peter the Great's maniacal attempt to impose, by administrative fiat, a new culture on Russia's elites via the obsessive mapping of construction projects along the Peterhof Road-to its coming of age in the follow ing century. But if Petersburg played the 'vanguard' role in defining the style and social meaning of the dacha, Moscow was not far behind. By the I83os Petrovskii Park was developing into 'an up-market summer residential area' (p. 25) where the city's elite could indulge in displays of conspicuous consumption, and in new forms of sociability. Thereafter, stimulated by rising incomes and the development of the railways, by the third quarter of the century summer residence in dacha settlements became an established aspect of life for well-off Russians and an object of desire for the not so well-off. In a fine chapter on the period I860-I9 I7 ('Between Arcadia and Suburbia: The Dacha asCultural Space'), Lovell shows how the dacha was imagined as an embedded country retreat-not just a villa or out-of-town house-presenting I I94 Reviews an entire alternative lifestyle to the urban bourgeoisie. Builders' pattern books offered and realized arcadian dreams, and the spaces within the dacha's walls created sites for relations and recreations distinct from city life; leisure, consumption, and feminized space became the hallmarks-cliches even-of dacha life. Revolution marked a break in dacha history, but continuities were evident too. The old dachniki became victims of class war during the Revolution and Civil...