Summerfolk
Subtitle: a history of the dacha, 1710-2000
By: Stephen Lovell.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Ithaca
Language: eng
Number of pages: 260
Subjects: Country homes -- Russia; Country homes -- Soviet Union; Country homes -- Russia (Federation); Russia -- Social life and customs -- 1533-1917; Soviet Union -- Social life and customs; Russia (Federation) -- Social life and customs
Description: "A fascinating work rich in detail, Summerfolk explores the ways in which Russia's turbulent past has shaped the function of the dacha and attitudes toward it. The book also demonstrates the crucial role that the dacha has played in the development of Russia's two most important cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, by providing residents with a refuge from the squalid and crowded metropolis.

Like the suburbs in other nations, the dacha form of settlement served to alleviate social anxieties about urban growth.".

"Lovell shows that the dacha is defined less by its physical location - usually one or two hours' distance from a large city yet apart from the rural hinterland - than by the routines, values, and ideologies of its inhabitants. Drawing on sources as diverse as architectural pattern books, memoirs, paintings, fiction, and newspapers, he examines how dachniki ("summerfolk") have freed themselves from the workplace, cultivated domestic space, and created informal yet intense intellectual communities.

He also reflects on the disdain that many Russians have felt toward the dacha, and their association of its lifestyle with physical idleness, private property, and unproductive use of the land.".

"Russian attitudes toward the dacha are, Lowell asserts, constantly evolving. The word "dacha" has evoked both delight in and hostility to leisure. It has implied both the rejection of agricultural labor and, more recently, a return to the soil. In Summerfolk, the dacha is a unique vantage point from which to observe the Russian social landscape and Russian life in the private sphere."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 241-254) and index.
Table of contents: title: Prehistory; title: Between city and court; title: The late imperial dacha boom; title: Between Arcadia and suburbia; title: The making of the Soviet dacha, 1917-1941; title: Between consumption and ownership; title: Post-Soviet suburbanization?