Dacha living

Sergei Vlasov, An Afternoon Nap at the Dacha, 1910s

A dacha is a Russian country cottage, which could either be a summer house or a winterized dwelling but is always a second home to a more permanent one in the city. The name comes from the Russian verb davat – to give – consequently meaning “something given”. During various historical periods this was a modest piece of land, gifted by the Tsar or allotted by the Soviet state. The people living there were called dachniki. May in Moscow would prompt an exodus from the city, leaving it half-empty until September, with some residents commuting back and forth on weekends and others moving to the dacha for good. Dachas have their own distinct way of life, complete with pastimes, fashions and interior design. The dacha embodies the idea that “summer is a little life”, as deftly expressed by a popular Soviet bard.

A dacha in Saltykovka, just outside Moscow, before the 1917 revolution.

Up to 35% of the population in the Soviet era owned dachas. In most cases, these were tiny lots of 600 square meters with a small house on them, often built by the owners themselves. The lots were handed out by the government and it was common for middle aged workers to have acquired a plot. The nomenklatura (key bureaucrats and officials) and creative elites had their own big, fancy dachas in separate idyllic locations. These are still in high demand and expensive, as they are unique and rarely on the market. Most plebian dachas in Soviet times didn’t have plumbing, just outdoor showers and outhouses. People used their plots of land to grow food. There were potato patches, greenhouses with cucumbers and tomatoes, rows of different gourds and root vegetables. Apple, cherry and plum trees were planted, as well as plenty of berry bushes, with black and red currant leading the pack. The tart, bittersweet, fruity smell of black currant is still one of my favorite, nostalgic smells from a happy, simpler time. What childhood smells like.

The dacha was an indispensible part of the trinity that made up the “USSR consumer ideal” in the 1950-1980s, along with an apartment and a car. Collecting all three meant you had arrived.

A happy family plowing their newly acquired dacha plot in the 1980s

In Soviet times people mainly got dachas through work, as a perk or recognition of years of service. My mother-in-law’s plot was a parting gift from the expired Soviet Union, salvaged from its rubble. She was an administrative university employee who landed a dacha in a village inhabited exclusively by that university’s professors and support staff. My husband later built the first house on that land with his own hands when he was still in high school. Giving out these lots to colleagues, who were often friends and had a lot of history together, made for a special, almost familial atmosphere. Everyone knew each other, popped over for tea and helped out. Thirty years later, most of them are still there and still friends.

Dachas segregated by professional occupation were common during the Soviet period. Some people, like my parents, didn’t own but could rent bigger, better dachas in desirable areas, access granted through work. The next tier up, the crème de la crème, received prized government dachas in the best locations.

My childhood summers were spent at a rented dacha in the village of Bykovo, 35 km away from Moscow, which had been home to dachniki since pre-revolutionary times. It was a large house with high ceilings, flooded with light from tall windows that opened onto a spacious second floor veranda. Sweeping fir branches brushed against the deck and you could reach out and touch them as you ate breakfast. The parents came on weekends and then went back to the city apartment to work, while I stayed at the dacha with my grandma. This was a common arrangement, with children shipped off to dachas en masse for the summer throughout their entire childhood.

Polaroids of me at my childhood dacha

Our dacha was a two-storey wooden house, painted green, the windows trimmed with cheery white typical of the eclectic, gingerbread style of Moscow dacha architecture. A handful of people lived in the little village year-round and many of them kept farm animals. In the evenings, my grandma and I would stroll through the village with our canister and bag of sushki, headed to the goat lady’s house. We walked home drinking warm goat milk with said sushki as the sun set. Sushki are traditional small, crunchy bread rings people have with tea for dessert. Once we arrived to some commotion – a sheep was grabbed and unceremoniously plonked feet up on a tree stump. I was a wide-eyed, dreamy city child. In an upset whisper I asked my grandma what they were going to do to it. They’re just going to shear it, she said, which is what happened - thick, wooly fleece settling on the ground like waves at the foot of the tree stump cliff.

What the dachas of my childhood were like

Dachas were a place of many firsts. Learning to ride a bike. A specific subset of dacha friendships and related dramas. Later on, first kisses and summer romances, the designated dacha boyfriends. I was carried off to foreign lands right before first grade, but got my dose of proper Russian summer to last me a lifetime. Getting goat milk with my grandma is one of my happiest childhood memories. I still see that indignant sheep on the tree stump as the sun sinks behind the house. I remember the various dacha activities. Girls liked to hide sekretiki or “little secrets”. You dug a hole in the ground, arranged some treasures inside – some flowers, an odd button, a carefully cut out illustration on some carboard packaging – pressed it all down with a piece of broken glass and covered it with soil. Clear glass was highly sought-after, as the glass we scavenged was predominantly green and obscured our artefacts. This all had to be done in secret and showing yours to someone was a sign of great trust and respect. Another thing to do was dressing up sewing pins with flower heads and buds. Dandelion skirts were especially chic, when you ripped the stem into several pieces and swirled it around in a puddle, giving them a curl.

Days were spent playing badminton, a favorite dacha sport, riding bikes, lying around in the grass daydreaming and climbing trees. We swung from hammocks hung in overgrown gardens, occasionally peeling off to grab some biscuits or a book from the house. We ate berries off the bush and foraged for mushrooms in the woods adjacent to our houses. The days were measured by grandma calling you in for lunch and then releasing you. You tumbled out of the house impatiently, the corners of your mouth stained with homemade jam. On weekends, parents came and there were endless dinners lasting well into the night with neighbors, with lots of drinking and singing, and often dancing. Guitars were dragged out of closets and the adults became flushed and rowdy.

The dacha always had an abat-jour, an elaborate fabric lampshade with tassels and trim that hung over the largest table in the house. Like a majestic hoop petticoat, it presided over the house court and saw all its comings and goings. Thick, heavy tapestries adorned the walls behind the beds in our bedrooms. I remember an intricate one with Little Red Riding Hood that I would trace my fingers around before falling asleep.

Typical dacha decor from Pinterest, only our abat-jour hung lower

Mismatched clothes layered on in defiant ways are dacha style staples. The dacha look is a combination of your mother’s fashions from decades past with tattered coats, woolen shawls and boots several sizes too big for you. There is a saying that old things of dubious usefulness are first banished to the apartment balcony and later exiled to the dacha as their final resting place. Old radios and record players, funny looking china and Soviet duvet covers with a rectangular hole on top all ended up at our dacha. My grandmother’s heirloom samovar traveled to the dacha with us every summer.

Photographer Fyodor Savintsev published a unique book on Russian dachas called Dacha: The Soviet Country Cottage. My personal favorite of his is Dachas of Kratovo, a beautiful collection of old Moscow dachas, from a village where the intelligentsia summered and where he spent his own childhood with his grandparents. We used to call the place AristoKratovo because of its vibe. The book is a touching love letter to a time slipping through our fingers, replaced by new money and construction indistinguishable from the country houses that populate coffee table books in every foreign Airbnb. It’s a slice of quintessential Moscow summer life, with its verandas, wildflowers and long afternoons of tea and laziness.

I came across an interesting theory in the Russian Houses book by Elizabeth Gaynor and Kari Haavisto that rings true for me about dachas.

“The city residence was more formal than the dacha. … In their urban dwellings, the Russians attempted to be more modern and European, whereas at the dacha they could indulge their Russian roots. This domestic split mirrors the larger societal rifts that occurred between Westernizers and Slavophiles in the nineteeth century, typified by the characters of Oblonsky and Levin in Lev Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Oblonsky chooses city life and French manners, while Levin remains very Russian in his attachment to the land, representing Tolstoy’s own preference. Most members of the landed gentry, however, were unable to reconcile fully the different modes of life signified by the Western town house and the Russian country house, feeling eternally caught between the two.”

Some 150 years later, this duality is still the case. Being invited to someone’s dacha is the next level in human relationships, the soft underbelly being revealed to you in all its vulnerability and glory. It is where people go to be themselves.

Nearly every Russian writer had a dacha, some several, as it’s such an integral part of Russian culture. It was a welcome and necessary respite from the pace and sensual overload of the city, where many writers escaped to write, recharge and spend their summers.

Turgenev’s dacha in Spasskoye-Lutovinovo, where he hosted many famous contemporaries, including Tolstoy.

Dachas have survived through Tsarist times, wars, the revolution, more wars, seventy years of the Soviet regime and its eventual collapse, and remain an important part of Russian culture today. A 2024 nation-wide Russian survey revealed that 52% of the population own dachas. Of these dachas, 25% are fit for year-round living. 66% of dacha owners still grow fruit, vegetables and herbs for their own consumption. Of those that don’t yet have a dacha, 61% aspire to own one.

Chekhov’s dacha in Melikhovo, the annex where he wrote The Seagull.

Over the past thirty post-Soviet years, dachas have evolved, many outfitted with every modern comfort from high speed internet to washing machines. There are still pockets of old, authentic dachas untouched by minimalism and smart house systems. A handful of villages known for housing colonies of writers, painters and sculptors for decades are household names, and a snagging a plot there is a big win. We would probably have bought a dacha, had we stayed. I’ve always wanted to replicate those sprawling firs tickling the veranda on the second floor.

In my adult life, my closest friend occasionally whisked me away to her dacha, whether to save me from forest fire smog lingering over the city or just because. Her dacha was managed by her monumental grandmother. The grandmother was an athletic septuagenarian who swam in the ice-cold, fast-flowing river at the foot of the house every day. An aerospace engineer, this was a straightforward, laconic, endlessly charismatic woman who answered all our wild, ridiculous questions with dignity and poise. I wanted to be adopted as a grandchild. She worked the land, cooked and ran the dacha in a way that made you never want to leave. There were evenings out on the veranda, hair permanently smelling of bonfires and cuddles with an enormous Wolfhound called Petrukha.

At my friend’s dacha with my son

The dacha is a feeling, a state of being suspended in time and space. You wake up in a room streaked with sunlight, opening your eyes to white lace curtains gently moving in the breeze. You can smell the kefir pancakes your grandmother is making in the kitchen. The whole long summer lies ahead, and your entire life.