Muscovites’ colonization of their oblast was remarkable. By 1995, garden associations numbered more than 7,000 in the region (the total number of plots was 1.5 million). And the average size of a holding had grown significantly, as the area of a new plot was often 1,000 square meters rather than the 600 that had been standard in Soviet times. In thirty-four of the thirty-nine districts (uezdy) the number of sadovody exceeded that of the local rural population. The “old” dachas were privatized (often with a reduction in the size of adjoining plots of land). The total number of urban families with some sort of second home in the Moscow oblast was around 1.65 million (75 percent were Muscovites; the rest were from smaller towns in the oblast).31 In St. Petersburg, it was estimated in 1997 that between 60 and 80 percent of families had some kind of landholding; the time spent there ranged from twenty-seven days annually to virtually the whole of the owners’ spare time.32 In Leningrad oblast in 1999, 2.5 million people went to the dacha every weekend; 500,000 lived at the dacha all through the summer.33 A 1993–94 survey conducted in seven Russian cities found that 24 percent of households owned a dacha (the proportion with some form of landholding would have been much greater). The garden-plot dacha was comfortably the most prevalent variety, forming just over half of the overall dacha population.34 The rural house, by contrast, had suffered a decline in popularity, as people aspired to build their own houses, both better equipped and more conveniently located.35 Overall, the number of owners of plots in the Russian Federation rose from 8.5 million at the start of land reform in 1991 to 15.1 million in 1997.36 In 1999 came the ultimate recognition of the centrality of the garden-plot dacha to the nation’s experience: a public holiday—Gardener’s Day (den’ sadovoda)—was instituted in its honor.37
Subsistence-oriented dacha life expanded most rapidly in the Moscow and Petersburg regions, but it was by no means limited to them. Towns and medium-sized cities had never had much need of the dacha concept or the out-of-town leisure it entailed. Most families had at least a small plot of land within easy reach of their apartment. But now even such modest plots were often reclassified as “dachas.”38 There was some regional variation in vocabulary: in the Urals, for example, a garden plot (with or without a house) tended to be called a sad (garden), while in the northwestern region of Russia it was likely to be referred to as a “dacha.”39 The word “dacha” seems to have made relatively few inroads into the Black Earth region and the south of Russia, where the urban populations ties to the land were rooted firmly in an alternative tradition. In the provincial city of Lipetsk, some 500 kilometers south of Moscow, local people commonly spoke of making trips not “to the dacha” (na dachu) but “to the garden” (na sad, instead of the neutral v sad), which suggests that they conceived of their plot of land neither as a dacha proper nor as a garden plot but as an independent agricultural landholding.
Post-Soviet Dachniki: Social Profile, Attitudes, Ways of Life
Although garden-plot cultivation in contemporary Russia is often viewed as a survival strategy, it is not generally practiced by the poorest families. Post-Soviet dachniki are drawn mainly from the thick middle strata of urban society. Large families with adequate material resources are the most likely to grow their own produce, even if their adult members are in paid employment. As Simon Clarke writes: “Like secondary employment, it seems that rather than being the last resort of those on the brink of starvation, domestic agricultural production provides an additional form of security for those who are already quite well placed to weather the storm.”40 This general observation can be supplemented by certain minor correlations. A household is much more likely to cultivate a garden plot if at least one member has grown up in a rural area or if its head is married. The age of the household head is also significant, thirty to sixty being the peak range for gardening activity. And male-headed households are less likely than female-headed households to grow all or most of their own vegetables. This finding matches abundant anecdotal evidence that women tend to take charge of managing the dacha landholding.41
So, as Clarke points out, the question why people produce ought to be rephrased as why people acquire land in the first place. And here again there is a strong correlation with earnings and occupational status. On the whole, it was families with a reasonable level of material security that took up the state’s offer of a garden plot in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s; the cultivation and upkeep of a plot (not to mention the construction of a house) implied considerable expenditure and little, if any, income. Dacha produce was not usually sold: only 1 percent of all households had any net positive monetary income from subsidiary agriculture. Vegetables surplus to the household’s requirements were commonly distributed among friends and relatives at the end of the dacha season. The food bills of families with a dacha were no lower than those of people without a plot of land.
Subsistence, then, usually cited as the prime motivation behind the dacha boom of the 1990s, is only part of the story. It is worth noting that the powerful garden-plot movement, mostly seen as a pragmatic response to severe food shortages, coincided with a broader deurbanizing trend. Ever since 1927 the Soviet Union had been increasing its level of urbanization; and in the period 1979–88 there had been a distinct leveling up as the less urbanized regions caught up with the others. In 1989–90, however, urban development slowed, and in 1991–94 it actually went into reverse. This trend was particularly marked in the southern agricultural regions, but it also touched major cities in central Russia. Net migration between the city of Moscow and the surrounding oblast by 1994 favored the oblast. The major cities were in this sense becoming provincialized.42 It seems that a significant part of this out-migration was due to rising rents in the city. Trapped in tiny apartments and unable to afford better ones, many Muscovites chose to make their dachas their primary residences.
The Moscow region had been subject to creeping suburbanization (or proto-suburbanization) for several decades. The sheer volume of commuter traffic into the city from the surrounding oblast was telling: 600,000 people a day by the early 1990s.43 In 1979, 120,000 people lived in the most remote peripheral areas of Moscow (beyond the Outer Ring Road); by 1995 that figure had risen to 500,000. In theory, of course, suburbanization was something that Soviet planning was designed to avoid: the Soviet model of the city aimed for a far more even spread of population and function than its Western counterpart.44 A greenbelt was to be preserved around the city, and satellite settlements were to be built beyond this forest zone. In the case of Moscow and several other major Soviet cities, however, this model did not shape reality. Although lip service was paid to keeping distinct the urban-rural boundary around Moscow, in practice this policy was not observed.45