These settlements, of which there were estimated to be several hundred in the Moscow region alone in the early 1910s, set themselves a number of practical goals in the early years of their existence: to improve rail links; to establish a regular police presence and a fire-fighting force; to provide medical care and schools; to improve sanitation; to plan and administer the territory of the settlement effectively; and, on the political front, to establish a productive working relationship with local councils (zemstva) and city authorities.100 In the 1900s and early 1910s dozens of settlements applied for registration to the Moscow guberniia administration. Almost all of them had their own societies for improving services and infrastructure (obshchestva blagoustroistva).
“Settlers” (poseliane) sought to develop their own way of life and a set of values clearly distinct from those of the city; their efforts to cultivate a new cultural identity were only fueled by the superficial and dismissive treatment they continued to receive from city journalists.101 Promotional brochures presented exurban settlements as the salvation of a “middle class” that was currently at the mercy of rapacious landlords in the big cities; as more and more people joined up and the level of infrastructure and services improved, a dacha suburb would become a cheap, healthy, and pleasant alternative to life in a cramped urban apartment.102 One prominent architectural guidebook of the time recommended the “detached house” (dom-osobniak) as the optimal form of dwelling for the “middle class of people”:
Here a person can spend his private life in peace, satisfying his personal requirements and inclinations, without troubling himself or others. Everything takes on the imprint of his individuality, everything acquires the more enclosed, intimate character that is so valuable for concentrated and productive work, for the development of independence, self-awareness, and the cultural strength that follows from these.103
But the value of the exurban settlement was not conceived of only in individualistic terms. Efforts were made to construct a new kind of collective spirit based on an informed commitment to community life. Periodicals representing the settlements complained of the unruly behavior of city dwellers who frequented the local theater and turned it into a “cabaret” and “seedy bar,” and discussed the problem—one of acute public concern in late imperial society—of thieves and “hooligans”; it also registered the difficulty of harmonizing the interests of settlement dwellers (posel’chane) with those of dachniki proper (the latter were unwilling to pay taxes and generally to pull their weight in maintaining the settlement’s infrastructure). Posel’chane were urged to develop their own communal self-help ethos.104
Constraints on Exurbanization
Through little fault of their own, the settlements achieved only limited success. The practical obstacles they faced were enormous. Public transport systems developed so slowly and sporadically that the possibilities of decentralization were limited.105 Adna Weber, an influential pioneer of comparative urban geography, in 1899 identified four principal means of avoiding unacceptably high levels of urban concentration: a shorter workday, ownership associations for workers, cheap transit, rapid transit.106 As of 1917, Russia had achieved none of them.
The difficulties faced by the settlements were not, moreover, simply a matter of infrastructure. They were caught in a no-man’s-land between zemstvo and city, and hence received financial support from neither.107 The neighborhood spirit necessary to overcome this disadvantage never really developed, given the absence of appropriate institutions (such as town councils).108 The 600 or so dacha settlements in the Moscow region by the time of World War I had come into being without any planning on the part of the municipal or regional authorities. Their emergence had been commercially driven, so there was little opportunity to coordinate the provision of basic services; many of them were too large and crowded to offer their inhabitants a reasonable exurban standard of living. Crucially, settlements did not have the authority to levy taxes, so they had no way to force residents to contribute to the costs of improving infrastructure.109 Most of the local newspapers of the time complain of underprovision of basic services and of inadequate building standards caused by the pressure to exploit the land commercially; it was estimated, for example, that only 10 percent of buildings in Shuvalovo/Ozerki would meet fire safety regulations. Many dachniki felt short-changed by the shareholders’ companies, which were ostensibly responsible for the management of the settlement but in reality shifted the burden of basic maintenance to residents. Losinyi Ostrov, a settlement formed in 1899 that had over 2,000 permanent residents (as well as many more seasonal visitors) by the end of the 1900s, was typical in the problems it experienced:
Houses are multiplying endlessly. One fence adjoins another, forming long straight lines. On one side of the fences there is culture: one can see neat paths covered with sand, flowers, and fountains. But on the other side there is something vaguely reminiscent of a pavement, which, along with the roads, is layered with impassable mud in rainy weather, is a dustbowl when it’s dry, and is buried in snowdrifts in winter.110
It was almost impossible, the same editorial complained, to make residents show more concern for the settlement’s public spaces: “Shut away on our plots of land, we live aloof from one another.”
Dacha communities felt particularly acutely the lack of strong institutional backing in the face of the growing problem of maintaining public order. The settlement of Starbeevo, just outside Moscow, for example, in 1904 proposed to solve its security problem by imposing two hours of compulsory watch duty for each plot with a house.111 Other settlements might petition the police to send extra constables their way. The Sheremetev estate at Kuskovo was by 1904 attracting up to 3,000 dachniki in the summer (spread over 600 desiatinas) as well as thousands of day trippers on public holidays. The local constable wrote in desperation to the police chief of Moscow uezd that disturbances were becoming ever more common for two main reasons: first, the imposition of a state liquor monopoly, which meant that drunken crowds tended to congregate at particular retail outlets instead of dispersing around the many watering holes that used to exist; second, the spread of popular theater and other entertainments, which acted as magnets for the rowdy lower social strata. A further problem was the watchmen, who, paid a mere 15 rubles per month, were less than vigilant. On average, between fifteen and twenty dachas were burglarized each season.112
The issue of public order in Petersburg dacha locations was publicly recognized in 1871, when a “suburban” police force was set up to look after settlements whose status fell in between city and village; in the late 1870s it was expanded to take in Shuvalovo, Sestroretsk, Ligovo, Lakhta, and others.113 Yet problems remained. Particularly vulnerable were those dacha locations that adjoined worker settlements. One such place was Sestroretsk, a center for the arms industry but also a vacation resort, whose population of 5,000 in the mid-1880s was policed by a mere three constables.114 Some dacha communities made their grievances known to the higher authorities. In 1901 the police department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that the Pargolovo society for local services had petitioned the guberniia authorities to have two state-owned liquor shops closed to eliminate regular drunken disturbances in the area. At the same time, the police put in a bid to the Ministry of Finances for extra personnel, noting that in summer only eleven constables were employed to maintain law and order in settlements whose combined population swelled to 25,000. Village constables could not be sent in, as Shuvalovo-Ozerki did not fall under their jurisdiction.115