The dacha shortage was exacerbated by the reluctance of many villagers to let out rooms because of concern that they would be liable for extra taxes. In Leningrad in 1932 it was noted that ordinary people could obtain dachas only through acquaintances, and even then at ridiculously high prices; the local authorities were often blamed for imposing extra charges that discouraged villagers from renting out their property and ultimately resulted in inflation.120 The ispolkom of Moscow oblast had already (in May 1932) taken the initiative in this matter by allowing collective farm workers and all other non-“kulak” landlords 300 rubles of untaxed nonagricultural income, by giving the dacha economy full exemption from the agricultural tax, and by forbidding local soviets to impose any unauthorized new charges on landlords and tenants. In the wake of the Great Leap Forward, village people needed much convincing that they would not be treated as kulaks if they rented out their property over the summer.121
At the same time that they offered encouragement to peasant landlords, the Leningrad city authorities tried to cap dacha rents by imposing pricing norms. According to this system, dacha locations were divided into four categories, from the highly desirable northern side of the Gulf of Finland to more remote and less attractive locations. The norm for living space per person was 6 square meters; tenants were charged double for anything above that. A discount of 10 percent was given for dachas more than three kilometers from the nearest station. Rents were partially means-tested.122 Summer train timetables were introduced to make travel to and from the dacha more attractive. On one suburban Moscow line, a “model train” was supposedly introduced: clean and welcoming, it was bedecked with curtains and portraits of political leaders; music was permanently turned on in a special “radio compartment”; the conductor dispensed reading matter; and a particularly comfortable carriage was reserved for mothers and children.123
But these reports of measures to regulate and improve the quality of dacha life brought dachniki little practical benefit. In many settlements the promised canteens had failed to materialize, and in their absence there was nowhere to buy even the most basic foodstuffs. Supply organizations had failed to account for the annual dacha exodus and continued to send food to the cities when it was needed much more in exurban settlements.124 It was forbidden to transport paraffin by suburban train, a rule that even the most law-abiding Soviet dachniki were forced to flout, given the absence of alternative supply channels.125 The transport of furniture and bulkier household items to the dacha was extremely complicated and time-consuming.126 Leaky roofs, glass-free windows, and unplastered walls were commonly encountered on arrival.127
To cope with the dacha shortage, a typical Soviet solution was attempted: to shift the burden of construction to the population. Articles in the Leningrad press in 1935 told “individual builders” that they could expect to obtain credits from various organizations as well as practical assistance and building materials from the housing section of the city soviet (no help would be provided, however, for window and door frames, windowpanes and interior decoration).128 Citizens were advised that if they pooled the family’s earnings, they could save themselves the bother of a rented dacha and build their own modest out-of-town house.129 The dacha was now, in the mid-1930s, presented as an amenity to which the ordinary Soviet worker could legitimately aspire. One exemplary article features a shop superintendent from the Stalin Car Factory by the name of Iakov Rafailovich Fainshtein, along with his friend, colleague, and dacha neighbor Rustem. The factory has given both of them cars, which at first were objects of enormous fascination but are now taken for granted. Fainshtein has brought back a vacuum cleaner and a phonograph, and these have taken their places in the household alongside the “bicycle, car, radio, electrical appliances, and other new things that have been acquired by the family in recent years.” Clearly Stalin-era culture circa 1935 placed a premium on a comfortable standard of living and lifestyle for those who were held to deserve them. And here the dacha had an important role to play:
While they’re drinking tea on the terrace, Iakov Rafailovich reads the second volume of Peter I while his wife reads Engineer Garin’s Hyperboloid. They plunge into a little discussion of the works of the author of these books, Aleksei Tolstoi. Liusia Kharitonovna [Rustem’s wife], turning over the latest issue of the newspaper, interrupts the discussion by asking: “What is a stratosphere balloon made of?” Then the two friends—the engineer Rustem and the head of section Fainshtein—share the latest factory news. When there is nothing left to tell and the tea has been drunk, silence falls. Some of them carry on reading, others just “breathe,” as this pursuit in a pine wood in the freshness of the night itself offers no little enjoyment.
“It’s so quiet,” someone quips, “that you can hear the onions growing in our vegetable plot.”
“I should hope so too! We gave it a good enough watering at the end of the day. But look how the potatoes have got going! They’re surging up from the ground!” . . .
When the light goes out in the windows, this dachlet is completely swallowed up by the woods. Near Moscow there are lots of woods like this, lots of dachas like this, and lots of people like this relaxing in them. But the people who enjoy their rest most are those who work hardest!130
This account is highly representative of the time in its mixture of legitimizing strategies: a trip to the dacha is unashamedly a leisure activity and is quite explicitly linked to material aspirations, yet at the same time it is linked to a rural “good life,” to the values of “cultured” and purposeful work.
The model of dacha life fostered by the Stalin era comes over clearly in architectural handbooks of the 1930s. As Vladimir Papernyi observes, “individual wooden houses, cottages, and dachas became an increasingly legitimate category for architectural design and probable architectural commission.”131 A book published in 1939 identified 200 basic types of dacha design (the variation depended on climate and function) but advocated above all “communal” plots with shared or “paired” dachas, thus implying a criticism of a ministry regulation of the same year stipulating that buildings should take up no more than 10 percent of the territory of any plot of land.132 The “mass” dacha generally lacked running water and other basic amenities, but for people with greater resources the legal restraints were fewer than later in the Soviet period:
There are no restrictions on the design of the accommodation, and dachas can have verandas (either open or with windows), terraces, balconies, oriel windows, galleries, bathrooms, washrooms, various other facilities (such as a cellar, a boiler for central heating, or a laundry room and so on), rooms for special purposes (a darkroom) and so on.