Largely because of the lack of clarity and the ineffectiveness of property law, some
former state-sponsored dacha settlements acquired a complex and disputed status in
the 1990s. One example is the writers’ settlement at Peredelkino, run by the state-sponsored
funding organization for literature, Litfond, from the late 1930s. On the collapse
of the Soviet system, Litfond lost its subsidies and felt the pinch of market reforms.
Legally, it did not even own the land on which the Peredelkino dachas stood. All it
could do was rent out the existing accommodations. The central vacation home, the
“House of Creativity,” accordingly became a modest hotel where rooms could be rented
for as little as $10 a night. But even this sum fell outside the price range of most
post-Soviet writers. Residents apprehensively discussed privatization of the dacha
stock in the settlement as a whole, as private ownership was sure to change the character
of the place irrevocably—to lead to the displacement of writers by newly moneyed families
or representatives of the nonliterary elite. Peredelkino was among the most desirable
locations for such people, as it combined ease of access to the city, excellent ecological
conditions, and prestige. Even in the absence of a thoroughgoing privatization program,
it had been infiltrated by the post-Soviet military and governmental establishment
and by the despised
The Garden Plot as a Mass Phenomenon
The story of former state-sponsored dacha settlements in the 1990s is revealing of
post-Soviet networks of power and patronage, but it sheds little light on the dacha’s
broader social significance. This significance, as we have seen, increased enormously
with the postwar growth in cultivation of allotments and garden plots, and the years
of Gorbachev’s reforms brought a further giant step forward. A joint Soviet Party-government
resolution of 7 March 1985 pledged support to the garden-plot movement. The immediate
response of the RSFSR government was to formulate a program for boosting infrastructure
in garden associations with a view to providing between 1.7 and 1.8 million new plots
between 1986 and 2000.11 In 1986, a recommended form for the statutes of such an association was approved.
Traditional Soviet restrictions were still very much in force: buildings on garden
plots were to be mere “summer garden huts” (
