1. Pattern books that illustrate this trend are “Arkhitekturnyi sbornik” sel’skikh postroek i modnoi mebeli (Moscow, 1873); and N. Zheltukhin, Prakticheskaia arkhitektura gorodskikh, zagorodnykh i sel’skikh zdanii (St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1875). Whereas the pattern books of the 1830S and 1840S
(discussed in Chapter 2) commonly speak of the “country cottage” (sel’skii domik) for dacha-type constructions, in the 1870S the diminutive is removed and the sel’skii dom becomes the focus of attention. From this change we might infer that in the earlier
period rusticity had been a form of stylization, whereas later on it was treated with
less cultural detachment.
2. J. Randolph, “The Old Mansion: Revisiting the History of the Russian Country Estate,”
Kritika 1 (2000): 744
3. I. Lazarevskii, “Kollektsionerstvo i poddelka,” Stolitsa i Usad’ba, no. 7 (1914), 24.
4. T.P. Kazhdan, Khudozhestvennyi mir russkoi usad’by (Moscow, 1997), 181. Some of the ungainliness of the original has been preserved
in the translation.
5. Quoted in A. Pyman, The Life of Aleksandr Blok, vol. 1, The Distant Thunder, 1880–1908 (Oxford, 1979), 38. Even where a family’s summer residence was unhesitatingly called
a “dacha,” in intelligentsia circles emphasis tended to be placed on its remoteness
from urban civilization and its rustic simplicity. One example was the house in Tarusa
(Kaluga guberniia) where Marina Tsvetaeva and her sister Anastasiia spent much of
their childhood. Anastasiia (no doubt self-deludedly) recalled the summers they spent
there as a time of untroubled simplicity: see her Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1971), 52–60. Marina’s memories were also extremely upbeat, but she presented
Tarusa more assertively as emblematic of her family’s heroic spirit and as radically
opposed to the cluttered and pretentious interior she found at the “dachlet” of an
acquaintance who lived nearby: see “Zhenikh” (1933), in her Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1988), 2:16.
6. A.L. Pasternak, Vospominaniia (Munich, 1983), 95–97.
7. See, e.g., A. Ianishevskii, Dacha na Volge (Kazan’, 1900).
8. An account of Chekhov’s experiences can be found in Kazhdan, Khudozhestvennyi mir, 291–303. Kazhdan identifies Melikhovo as an “intermediate” form between estate and
dacha; she sees it as a “Chekhovian” model of the estate, quite distinct from the
“Turgenev” model (301–2).
9. Chekhova, Iz dalekogo proshlogo, 116.
10. N.L. Persiianinova, Bol’shie i malen’kie (Moscow, 1912). Eventually, of course, the wife sustains huge losses on her dealings
and offers to teach evening classes to make up the money.
11. V. Nabokov, Pnin (London, 1997), 148–50. Note also Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, where the author’s first love, Tamara, comes from the culturally remote dacha (thereby,
perhaps, gaining added fascination in his eyes).
12. G. Iu. Sternin, “Abramtsevo: Ot ‘usad’by’ k ‘dache,’” in his Russkaia khudozhestvennaia kul’tura vtoroi poloviny XIX-nachala XX veka (Moscow, 1984), 186.
13. Ibid., 199.
14. N.A. Leikin, Neunyvaiushchie Rossiiane (St. Petersburg, 1912), 227.
15. Iu. A. Bakhrushin, Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1994), 101–7.
16. On Malakhovka, see ibid., 290–95.
17. The ease of commuting is evident in P. A. Shchukin, “Iz vospominanii Petra Ivanovicha
Shchukina,” Russkii arkhiv, no. 12 (1911), 546–57. Similar were the experiences of the Kharuzin family (another
merchant dynasty, whose money came from the textile trade), who rented a dacha at
the Iusupov estate of Arkhangel’skoe every summer from 1870 to 1879. At that time,
only seven houses were let out as dachas, so tenants enjoyed a high degree of privacy
(the Kharuzins, e.g., had very little to do with their neighbors and spent their time
in an extended family group): see V. N. Kharuzina, Proshloe: Vospominaniia detskikh i otrocheskikh let (Moscow, 1999), 265–336 passim.
18. V. P. Ziloti, V dome Tret’iakova (New York, 1954), esp. 189.
19. Quoted in Kazhdan, Khudozhestvennyi mir, 212.
