At the same time that they offered encouragement to peasant landlords, the Leningrad city authorities tried to cap dacha rents by imposing pricing norms. According to this system, dacha locations were divided into four categories, from the highly desirable northern side of the Gulf of Finland to more remote and less attractive locations. The norm for living space per person was 6 square meters; tenants were charged double for anything above that. A discount of 10 percent was given for dachas more than three kilometers from the nearest station. Rents were partially means-tested.122 Summer train timetables were introduced to make travel to and from the dacha more attractive. On one suburban Moscow line, a “model train” was supposedly introduced: clean and welcoming, it was bedecked with curtains and portraits of political leaders; music was permanently turned on in a special “radio compartment”; the conductor dispensed reading matter; and a particularly comfortable carriage was reserved for mothers and children.123
But these reports of measures to regulate and improve the quality of dacha life brought dachniki little practical benefit. In many settlements the promised canteens had failed to materialize, and in their absence there was nowhere to buy even the most basic foodstuffs. Supply organizations had failed to account for the annual dacha exodus and continued to send food to the cities when it was needed much more in exurban settlements.124 It was forbidden to transport paraffin by suburban train, a rule that even the most law-abiding Soviet dachniki were forced to flout, given the absence of alternative supply channels.125 The transport of furniture and bulkier household items to the dacha was extremely complicated and time-consuming.126 Leaky roofs, glass-free windows, and unplastered walls were commonly encountered on arrival.127
To cope with the dacha shortage, a typical Soviet solution was attempted: to shift the burden of construction to the population. Articles in the Leningrad press in 1935 told “individual builders” that they could expect to obtain credits from various organizations as well as practical assistance and building materials from the housing section of the city soviet (no help would be provided, however, for window and door frames, windowpanes and interior decoration).128 Citizens were advised that if they pooled the family’s earnings, they could save themselves the bother of a rented dacha and build their own modest out-of-town house.129 The dacha was now, in the mid-1930s, presented as an amenity to which the ordinary Soviet worker could legitimately aspire. One exemplary article features a shop superintendent from the Stalin Car Factory by the name of Iakov Rafailovich Fainshtein, along with his friend, colleague, and dacha neighbor Rustem. The factory has given both of them cars, which at first were objects of enormous fascination but are now taken for granted. Fainshtein has brought back a vacuum cleaner and a phonograph, and these have taken their places in the household alongside the “bicycle, car, radio, electrical appliances, and other new things that have been acquired by the family in recent years.” Clearly Stalin-era culture circa 1935 placed a premium on a comfortable standard of living and lifestyle for those who were held to deserve them. And here the dacha had an important role to play:
While they’re drinking tea on the terrace, Iakov Rafailovich reads the second volume
of
“It’s so quiet,” someone quips, “that you can hear the onions growing in our vegetable plot.”
“I should hope so too! We gave it a good enough watering at the end of the day. But look how the potatoes have got going! They’re surging up from the ground!” . . .
