Given the inadequacy of the existing publicly administered dacha stock, the construction
of new settlements became a matter of urgency. The Leningrad housing organization
Zhilsoiuz was required to set up “dacha and allotment cooperatives” at the raion level
and also under the auspices of particular factories. The production of prefabricated
wooden dachas was to be stepped up; the housing department (Zhilotdel) was required
to organize a competition for dacha design and to develop designs for cheap and simple
furniture suitable for dachas. According to the stipulations of this competition,
vacation accommodations were to come in three main types: the “single-apartment dacha”
(
The organization burdened with these considerable tasks was the Trust for Dacha and Suburban Housing Construction in Leningrad oblast (operational from August 1931). Over the three years of its existence, the trust was beset with the problems that afflicted all areas of production in the Stalin era: a poorly trained, inexperienced, and ill-disciplined workforce; a shortage of resources and of ready cash, given that debtors were slow to pay; constant struggles with other branches of production for access to equipment and raw materials; the pressure of relentless and unrealistic production targets (including the construction of many houses of the “winter type,” which were not the trust’s prime responsibility); and the cumbersome bureaucracy that any branch of the supply system entailed.
This dacha at Lisii Nos, which faces directly on the Gulf of Finland, would have been the ideal of many 1930s dachniki.
Despite these difficulties, the Leningrad dacha trust helped to create a new, centralized model of dacha rental and ownership for its region. It did not rent houses to private individuals but worked only with organizations: dachas were to be rented through trade unions, factories, and other state and Party institutions at standard rates. By 1934 such organizations were sending in a steady stream of applications requesting accommodations for their employees.89
The dachas built by the trust were of two main types: individual (for one family) and collective. The former typically consisted of two rooms and contained the following standard-issue furniture: two beds with mattresses (cost 210 rubles), six chairs (60 rubles), two tables (80 rubles), two buckets (5 rubles), one washstand (5 rubles). A list compiled in 1933 gave a total of 108 families resident in the trust’s flagship building developments at Mel’nichii Ruchei (just beyond Vsevolozhsk, on the railway line heading toward Lake Ladoga) and Lisii Nos (on the north side of the Gulf of Finland). The size of the houses they inhabited varied from one to six rooms, but the average was around two. Canteens were to provide meals for the regular dacha population, as well as for shorter-term visitors from the same kinds of organization. The tenants included employees of the following institutions: the dacha trust itself, the OGPU (the political police), banks, supply organizations, and various factories (including the Karl Marx, Sverdlov, and Stalin works).90
Many members of this middling stratum of the Soviet elite, however, were dismayed when they arrived at their dachas. The houses (especially their interiors) were often not completed, rubbish was still lying about the building sites, and amenities were very basic (and sometimes nonexistent). The canteens had not opened and there was little sign of a compensating supply of basic foodstuffs to the dacha settlements. In a report compiled at the end of 1932, the newly appointed head of the trust’s operational department was frank about the problems he faced: building standards were low, as was morale among the construction workers, given the abysmal conditions in which they worked; denied adequate temporary housing, workers had put up in semiconstructed dachas and left them in a wretched state.91 The press relentlessly kept such failings in the public eye.92
