This pattern of life—to remain in the city over the summer but make regular forays into the surrounding countryside—was by no means unusual in the 1930s, judging by the increase in summer rail traffic.107 On a typical day during the summer over 10 percent of Moscow’s population would head for the forests and lakes surrounding the city. And they had plenty of territory to choose from: the “suburban zone” was taken up predominantly by agriculture and forest (48 and 42 percent respectively) and only very slightly by towns and urban settlements (2.4 percent). That said, leisure facilities were still underdeveloped: the problem of keeping up with the increasing demand for leisure—without, however, violating the forest zone—was discussed regularly in the 1930s and after.108 Given the still inadequate leisure facilities in the Moscow area, it was argued that more land should be released for dacha construction in order to encourage workers to build. Settlements should not be allowed to grow too large (the proposed limit was 1,500 people), and dacha zones should be kept quite separate from other places of leisure. If construction was stepped up in this way, prices would be brought down.109 Yet if dacha building was allowed to continue unchecked, there was a serious danger that urban settlements would expand unacceptably, or that smaller dacha settlements would spring up in inappropriate places. Recent experience had shown that dacha plots were often too big (up to 2.5 hectares) to be ecologically sustainable.110
It seems that the greater part of the expansion of dacha settlements in the Moscow region in the 1930s can be put down to a process of creeping suburbanization: in 1936 it was estimated that 70 percent of the population of such settlements was made up by commuters (zagorodniki). As the Great Soviet Encyclopedia explained in 1930, dachas had “changed their function: they are not so much a summer dwelling for city people in need of a summer break as a dwelling for urban toilers, thus increasing the housing stock of the latter.”111 As for dachas proper (i.e., dachas as places for summer leisure), in 1934 there were places for 165,000 people (around 5 percent of the city’s population) in the Moscow region (compare this with 86,000 for rest homes, 35,000 for Pioneer camps, and 28,500 for preschool colonies). These 1930s dachniki were predominantly women (75 percent), presumably because draconian labor legislation kept men tied to the workplace (two weeks’ annual vacation was the norm in this period). Their class origin was likewise clearly marked: “There are no single dachniki. Very few workers. In the main, they are the families of employees [sluzhashchie].”112 In December 1934, Mosgordachsoiuz reported to Nikita Khrushchev, then Moscow Party boss, that of the 6,400 members of dacha cooperatives in the Moscow area only 455 (that is, 7 percent) were workers.113 But while the underrepresentation of proletarians was common knowledge, it rarely occasioned any public soul-searching.114 Rather, the Soviet press emphasized how urban “toilers” were benefiting from the new Soviet social welfare contract with the state: they were offered subsidized trips to rest homes, and the luckier ones might enjoy a full-blown vacation at a resort in the Crimea or the Caucasus.
The notion of a social divide between dacha residents and “mass” vacationers is supported by memoir accounts. One Muscovite’s recollections of childhood in the 1930s included walks past charming old dachas beyond the Sokol’niki gate that outwardly were unchanged since prerevolutionary times. “It seemed to us that these were some kind of ‘former people’ who were quietly living out their time behind tulle curtains.”115 The actress Galina Ivanovna Kozhakina recalled her 1930s experiences of dacha life in a similar light: “The dachas on neighboring plots were occupied by princes, former priests, and ruined nepmen. Our neighbor, once a noble lady, bred a huge flock of turkeys.”116 The presence of “former people” in dacha settlements was evidence not of privilege but of stigma. Nadezhda Mandelstam, for example, recounted how social undesirables such as her husband were commonly forbidden to live within a hundred-kilometer radius of Moscow. For this reason, they tended to cluster in village settlements just beyond that limit.117Closer to the city, conditions were often no better for less oppressed dacha residents: the more spacious dachas were turned into multiple-occupancy dwellings, the suburban equivalent of the communal apartment.
Such ad hoc arrangements were made possible by the still rather low penetration of outlying areas by the municipal authorities: private owners in former dacha settlements accounted for 59 percent of the total stock, while kolkhoz and peasant ownership was 28 percent. Cooperatives managed only 11 percent. Of the 274 population centers inhabited by dachniki in the Moscow region in the mid-1930s, 51 were “old” settlements, 55 were “new,” and the rest were ordinary villages. Prices for the season varied spectacularly, from 70 to 1,000 rubles.118
Once again advertisements can provide some information on the state of the dacha market. The back pages of newspapers in the 1930s were filled with notices concerning apartment swaps, lost dogs, household help, music lessons, and pieces of furniture, yet dachas were also featured. (As in the 1920s, we must assume that it was primarily a sellers’ market, and that most potential landlords had no need to go looking for tenants.) Dacha advertisements began to appear very early in the year—in the middle of the winter—and continued through to May and June, when they gave way to notices concerning the rental of rooms in city apartments (generally sublet by departed dachniki).119 Perhaps the most common type of dacha advertisement from February to May was that placed by institutions looking to rent or buy accommodations. Many organizations urgently needed to find living space for specialists arriving from other cities (hence the frequently encountered formula “Corners, rooms, dachas”). The demand for dachas was paralleled by the significant numbers of people who were trying to swap houses outside the city for central apartments, though it seems unlikely that these two types of demand were complementary: housing of all kinds—urban, suburban, and exurban—was in short supply.