Dacha

Dacha listen ▶(?) (Russian: да´ча) is a name for summer home or vacation house in Russia and CIS countries where people spend their summer holidays and grow Fruit and vegetables for their own use. Dachas of the middle class sometimes has separate banyas (Russian, sing.: ба´ня - Sauna) attached to the house. The house is usually wooden or rarely brick and nearly always hand-built.

In archaic Russian, the word 'dacha' used to mean 'something given' as 'dachas' were estates given to loyal vassals by the Tsar. The common term for a dacha farmer is 'dachnik' (Russian: да´чник).

History

In the very beginning dachas of common people were practically illegal but since there was no actual law against them more and more people grabbed unused plots of ground, first on the city outskirts, then near villages located close to their city. As time passed the number of dachniks had grown geometrically and they had been officially legalized. Legalization brought local government representatives in the form of so-called "Gardeners' Societies" (Russian, sing.: садоводческое общество) together with electricity and water conduits for Irrigation.

In Soviet times prominent officials or cultural figures were granted rights to use state-owned vacation houses as part of their compensation package, though this right was revoked when the official was dismissed or went out of favor.

To this day May Day holidays remain a feature of Russian life allowing urban residents, even of the largest cities, a long weekend to plant potatoes. There are no suitable state holidays to be used for the potato harvest, thus it is usually accomplished very quickly during a usual weekend. Some companies, especially the municipal ones, used to give their staff an extra weekend day specifically for that purpose.

Dacha Farming

Due to poverty and the lack of good equipment even relatively large plots of ground are often cultivated manually using a spade or a hayfork. In autumn the grown potatoes are gathered and transported to the city where they are stored either in specially dug cellars usually located on unused plots of ground, or in personal automobile garages.

The annual process of potato harvesting (and sometimes planting) is a significant (though rather dislikable) event in life of Russians. It is commonly called "to go for potatoes" (Russian: ездить на картошку), in the soviet times visiting a private field plot has been called "to go to fields" (Russian: ездить на поля).

Though dacha farming is absolutely not obligatory, most Russians still prefer to grow vegetables themselves because of the excessive use of agrochemicals and low quality of the vegetables sold through markets and stores. The only acceptable alternative to such Post-soviet form of farming is acquiring vegetables on numerous Russian bazaars called "rynoks" (Russian, sing.: ры´нок) where the products being sold are grown either by rural farmers or by other dacha farmers.

The most common means of transportation for low- and middle-class people to get to their dachas, besides cars, is electric trains, colloquially called "elektrichki" (Russian, sing.: электри´чка). During summer and especially the planting and the harvest seasons, elektrichki are often so filled with dachniks that it becomes hard to breathe inside the cars and even the cars' sliding doors can hardly be closed.

Gosdachas

In modern times many oligarchs live only at their dachas, so they make huge and very expensive houses sometimes comparable to palaces with different luxury decorations such as numerous statues, fountains, basins and even small woods, with construction costs often reaching several millions dollars with armed guard and sometimes several barriers around them.