Historians Find The First Dachas Appeared in Russia as Early as the XIV Century

The “dacha” culture has a long history in Russia. Originally, having a country house for recreation was a privilege available only to members of the high social classes. Later it became a mass phenomenon. Olga Semerikova, Associate Professor of the UrFU Department of Russian History, told about the history of dachas and garden plots in pre-revolutionary and Soviet times.

The word “dacha” has an ancient history and comes from the verb “to give”, explains the historian. One of the first references to dachas we find in written sources from the XIV century, the era of Ivan Kalita. When for the development of the territories of the Moscow Principality, those who wanted to come and settle there, while receiving a number of benefits. In the XVI century under Ivan the Terrible, land plots (“dachas”) were issued for service to the state. The dacha in the modern sense, as a suburban land plot with the possibility of building a house, organizing recreation and/or growing agricultural products for a long spring and summer period, appeared during the reign of Peter the Great. After the beginning of the construction of Peterhof as a summer royal and then imperial residence, on the way to it from St. Petersburg, Peter the Great, so that the dignitaries and nobles did not leave in the warm season to their distant Moscow estates and always remained at hand, began to give them land plots for the construction of “temporary houses”.

“The boom of dacha construction and the formation of prerevolutionary dacha culture in general took place already in the second half of the 19th century. When in the conditions of the completion of the industrial revolution and the transition to the era of industrialization and urbanization, the abolition of serfdom in 1861, the construction of railroads connecting cities and suburbs, as well as the official permission of 1861, issued to former landlords from among the nobility, representatives of other estates, to rent their land, not related to peasant plots, there was a sharp increase in supply and demand for dacha plots”, – explains Olga Semerikova.

The period of mass construction of gardens and dachas began in the Soviet Union. In the 1920s and 1930s the dacha continued to exist as a place of recreation. Then, as the historian notes, there were several formats of dachas: state dachas (for example, Stalin’s), nomenklatura or treasury dachas (given to the political, cultural and scientific elite) and for citizens, who in 1932, according to the resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, were allowed to allocate land plots to organize recreation and build dacha houses.

In the conditions of mass industrialization and collectivization, the movement of a significant number of villagers to the city, as well as the difficult period of economic recovery after the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet authorities were constantly faced with the task of overcoming the situation of food shortage in cities and industrial settlements. As a result, dachas were transformed from a place of recreation into a vital necessity.

“In 1949, the Council of Ministers of the USSR issued a decree allowing local authorities to allocate land plots to workers and employees on the basis of perpetual use (private property did not exist at that time) for the cultivation of agricultural products. In this case, according to the decree, workers and employees were obliged within the first three years to fully develop by their own labor or the labor of their families allocated land plots for gardening and planting fruit trees and berry bushes, otherwise they could be transferred to others”, – comments the historian.

Initially, the size of a land plot that could be acquired by a Soviet citizen varied from 12 to 25 hectares. Later, due to the great demand and shortage of land in the urban agglomeration, as well as the need to prevent speculative practices, a calculation was made according to which the size of a plot that could provide the necessary products for a family of four to six people was determined to be the “classic” six hundred acres.

“From 1949 to 1966, there were regular decrees that changed the number and amount of land. The number of people who wanted to buy land increased, while the amount of land in the city, or as close as possible to the city, decreased. As a result, they began to allocate land plots of no more than six hectares,” says Olga Semerikova.

In addition to growing agricultural products, the dacha was one of the ways for Soviet citizens to realize their creativity, says Olga Semerikova. Citizens showed skill and imagination, creating complex architectural designs from improvised materials. For example, they built house walls out of shovel cuttings, or constructed terraces and porches from recycled materials. The dacha began to be perceived again as a place for recreation.

“In the past, the dacha was seen as a plot of land exclusively for agricultural production, but since the 1960s and 1980s it has become a place where the whole family gathers. The dacha has become one of the ways to express the family values that are typical for Russian culture. Despite the fact that in the 2010s dachas began to be abandoned, I believe that this phenomenon will not go away and will have another interesting continuation and development,” says Olga Semerikova.