Housing in the major cities was liable to be suddenly and violently appropriated by the new regime. In Petrograd, for example, where revolutionary vengefulness was intense, “bourgeois” families had good reason to fear instant eviction from their homes.4 The situation in exurban locations was less clear and more variable. Although in some places privately owned houses were municipalized almost instantly, the authorities had neither the time nor the inclination to take full control of the dacha stock. The action taken in a particular village or settlement depended on the vigilance and activism of the local soviet—and, not least, on the behavior of the local population. Isaiah Berlin (b. 1909) and his mother escaped “the increasing tension and violence in the city” by moving to Staraia Russa for the summer of 1917. And, at least in the eyes of a young boy, life proceeded much as normal: “There were fancy-dress parties, tombolas, and afternoons in the park listening to an Italian orchestra playing at a bandstand.” The Berlins spent the next two summers in Pavlovsk, though here the Revolution did catch up with them, as they were subjected to a humiliating search by the Cheka in 1919.5
In general, dachniki seem to have been considerably less vulnerable than estate owners to revolutionary violence: many of them rented their houses, and even those who were owners of private property could not be seen by peasants as egregiously laying claim to large tracts of land they did not use or need. A case in point was Iurii Vladimirovich Got’e, professor of history and associate director of the Rumiantsev Museum in Moscow, who by September 1918 had resigned himself to losing the modest estate in Tver’ guberniia where he and his family had passed their summers before the Revolution. Instead, for the following few years Got’e spent time in various villages and dacha locations in the Moscow region; most often he sought refuge in Pestovo (forty kilometers north of Moscow), a settlement that during the Civil War was reached by a twelve-verst trek from the nearest railway station. Pestovo had few comforts but offered compensating advantages—it offered a more reliable supply of basic foodstuffs than did the city, and it was largely ignored by the Soviet authorities; by engaging in hard physical activities, moreover, Got’e achieved brief periods of oblivion from the underlying despair he felt at Russia’s catastrophic social and political situation.6
The dacha zones most at risk were those that had been all but swallowed up by the city. In Moscow’s Sokol’niki, any dachas left unattended were liable to be looted, and wooden constructions were sometimes completely dismantled for firewood.7 In Petrograd, one of the first victims of the breakdown of political authority after the February Revolution was the Durnovo dacha on the Neva, seized by anarchists and converted into a “house of rest” for workers. After a lengthy standoff between the anarchists and the Ministry of Justice, the unlawful occupants were evicted by force. But to keep the dacha in private ownership was still unrealistic; even Durnovo’s own staff, on being informed by the anarchists that the dacha was now the “property of the people,” had readily believed this to be the case. In September 1917, Durnovo offered to hand over the dacha as a hospital for tuberculosis patients.8
The Durnovo dacha was a very public and obvious target in view of its central location (by the early twentieth century it was a dacha in name only) and of the fact that P. P. Durnovo had a lengthy record of state service (he had been governor general of Moscow during the 1905 Revolution). Dachas farther from the public eye, however, might also fall victim to revolutionary violence. Aleksandr Blok was one dismayed observer of the devastation of resorts outside Petrograd that had been among his favorite haunts before the Revolution.9 The damage inflicted by looters would often stretch to several thousand rubles’ worth in a single property as houses were laid waste, their fittings stolen, and their interiors vandalized.10
