Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1710-2000
"Lovell directs the reader to experience Russian history as it relates to the concept of country life represented by the dacha. . . . This original study is recommended for public and academic libraries with Russian History collections."—Library Journal, March 15, 2003"Stephen Lovell has scoured all possible sources—literary, architectural, economic, legal—and supplemented them with the finding of an oral-history project of his own devising. Summerfolk opens up a whole new field of inquiry and is one of the most insightful works to appear in the relatively young discipline of Russian cultural studies."—John Keep, Times Literary Supplement, April 25, 2003"Mr. Lovell does a splendid job of telling the story of the dacha, which is by now a hallowed feature of Russian life. Each summer Moscow and St. Petersburg still virtually shut down for July and August as millions of Russians head for the country, and no study of the Russian mentality can be complete without an understanding of a phenomenon which really has no proper equal in any other culture. An enormous amount of research has gone into this attractive book, but the scholarship is worn lightly, and the writing style is lucid and wryly amusing. There are many delightful illustrations and references to a wide range of relevant literary works."—The Economist, June 21, 2003"For Boris Pasternak, a dacha was a place to dig potatoes and write For Joseph Stalin, a home for his final years as dictator. But while the famous and the infamous had their country retreats, so did ordinary Russians. Dachas, notes Stephen Lovell, have ranged from sumptuous villas to cottages to shacks, reflecting changing views of property and its uses throughout Russian history."—Nina C. Ayoub, The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 13, 2003, Vol. XLIX, No. 40"Stephen Lovell's choice of the dacha as a prism through which to look at the changes in Russian society is inspired. . . It shows Lovell to be a first rate social as well as cultural historian."—London Review of Books, October 9, 2003"Stephen Lovell's 'Summerfolk' is a wonderfully rich yet concise history of this peculiar Russian institution the dacha which brilliantly illuminates its diverse cultural and social themes. Lovell argues that the dacha was defined not so much by its physical appearance or location (it could be a country mansion or a suburban shack) as it was by the routines, values, and ideologies of its inhabitants. The . . . subject of his book is the dacha's history, but its broad theme is the complex interplay of 'cultural meanings and social practices' across several centuries. . . . As Lovell demonstrates, the story of the dacha is a good way to reflect on the zigzag history of the relationship between the Russian state and private property."—The New York Review of Books, January 15, 2004"Summerfolk is superbly researched, well-organized, meticulously documented, and clearly written. Lovell describes a unique Russian phenomenon of settlement and domestic space in the clear language of empirical data illuminated by a symbolic interpretation of the experience of those who lived in (or next to) dachas. There is no comparable book on the subject."—Professor Irina Paperno, University of California, Berkeley, author of Suicide as a Cultural Institution in Dostoevsky's Russia