The notion of a social divide between dacha residents and “mass” vacationers is supported by memoir accounts. One Muscovite’s recollections of childhood in the 1930s included walks past charming old dachas beyond the Sokol’niki gate that outwardly were unchanged since prerevolutionary times. “It seemed to us that these were some kind of ‘former people’ who were quietly living out their time behind tulle curtains.”115 The actress Galina Ivanovna Kozhakina recalled her 1930s experiences of dacha life in a similar light: “The dachas on neighboring plots were occupied by princes, former priests, and ruined nepmen. Our neighbor, once a noble lady, bred a huge flock of turkeys.”116 The presence of “former people” in dacha settlements was evidence not of privilege but of stigma. Nadezhda Mandelstam, for example, recounted how social undesirables such as her husband were commonly forbidden to live within a hundred-kilometer radius of Moscow. For this reason, they tended to cluster in village settlements just beyond that limit.117Closer to the city, conditions were often no better for less oppressed dacha residents: the more spacious dachas were turned into multiple-occupancy dwellings, the suburban equivalent of the communal apartment.
Such ad hoc arrangements were made possible by the still rather low penetration of outlying areas by the municipal authorities: private owners in former dacha settlements accounted for 59 percent of the total stock, while kolkhoz and peasant ownership was 28 percent. Cooperatives managed only 11 percent. Of the 274 population centers inhabited by dachniki in the Moscow region in the mid-1930s, 51 were “old” settlements, 55 were “new,” and the rest were ordinary villages. Prices for the season varied spectacularly, from 70 to 1,000 rubles.118
Once again advertisements can provide some information on the state of the dacha market. The back pages of newspapers in the 1930s were filled with notices concerning apartment swaps, lost dogs, household help, music lessons, and pieces of furniture, yet dachas were also featured. (As in the 1920s, we must assume that it was primarily a sellers’ market, and that most potential landlords had no need to go looking for tenants.) Dacha advertisements began to appear very early in the year—in the middle of the winter—and continued through to May and June, when they gave way to notices concerning the rental of rooms in city apartments (generally sublet by departed dachniki).119 Perhaps the most common type of dacha advertisement from February to May was that placed by institutions looking to rent or buy accommodations. Many organizations urgently needed to find living space for specialists arriving from other cities (hence the frequently encountered formula “Corners, rooms, dachas”). The demand for dachas was paralleled by the significant numbers of people who were trying to swap houses outside the city for central apartments, though it seems unlikely that these two types of demand were complementary: housing of all kinds—urban, suburban, and exurban—was in short supply.
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
