Field Guide to Dachas of the Moscow Region

Field Guide to Dachas of the Moscow Region

for renters, gawkers, walkers and the generally curious 

If you are interested in viewing dachas or renting one for an extended stay in Russia, here is a guide to dacha-viewing, dachnik-watching and dacha rentals.

Rental prices are estimated for a dacha (not a luxurious kottedzh) with all facilities inside (normally warm shower, toilet, kitchen, usually a phone, several bedrooms and about a 1000 m2 allotment (10 sotkas) for the summer season (May through September). Prices are from real estate agencies in Moscow and newspaper advertisements. Prices tend to change from year to year.

A dachnik observes life through the spaces in the green picket fence. 

Through the white window sashes of the terrace.

The dirt road that passes on the other side of the fence is the dacha community’s main social venue. Dachniks, especially the younger ones, go bicycle-riding, or rather bicycle-jumping – jumping the stones, tree roots and potholes that litter the unpaved dacha roads.

Another party of dachniks arrives by car. Dogs bark in greeting. In fact, dogs bark to greet everything that moves along the endless dacha fences. 

Trips are undertaken – to the local grocery store, to the vegetable market at the train station, to the pond, to the river. Dacha life is monotonous and every outing becomes an event.

But for an authentic dachnik, the dacha is a place not so much of rest, as of hard labor on the land. For many, growing their own crops is not an economic necessity, but a hobby that has grown into an obsession. Self-made agronomists exchange seeds and saplings and later proudly lead their neighbors along their vegetable beds – showing off small, delicious-smelling tomatoes, spiny cucumbers with yellow tails washed in the morning dew, tender, thin-skinned squash.

Behind the fence, there is the dacha. The authentic wooden dacha stands modestly at the back of the garden, hidden behind the vegetation. The house is often lacking either a shower or toilet. The latter facilities are in the far corner of the garden, in a wooden cabin with a small window up top, nicknamed the “birdhouse.” The outhouse, usually painted green and surrounded by trees, stands in perfect harmony with nature, and is rated by some dachniks the most romantic spot in dacha topography, despite its humble function. The simple beauty of its design is almost Japanese.

Inside, a dacha resembles a museum, or rather the crossbreeding of an antique shop and a garage sale. It is the place of deportation for all the junk that will not fit into the city apartment. Old books and outdated magazines that no one will read anywhere except the dacha. Old tables, chairs, cabinets and kitchen appliances, some worth hundreds of dollars at a flea market or especially at an antique shop outside Russia. 

Old wardrobes are packed with dowdy coats weeping their quilting. Faded shirts and baggy pants, out of place in town, are the height of dacha fashion. Dachniks, dressed in their post-modern dowdiness, proudly promenade in the evenings, circling the streets – all named of course for writers, composers, scientists, heroes or another category of encyclopedic personalities. 

The coziest part of the dacha is the terrace. In the evening, moths buzz around the lamp, which is already littered with the winged corpses of their cousins. A spider, the dacha-keeper, weaves a web between the window-panes. The smell of apple pie wafts out from the kitchen, together with the warm, cozy lullaby of terrace murmurings. There, in the kitchen, raspberry jam bubbles in the huge, matrimonial brass pan. In the corner, a barrel of pickles reeks pleasantly of black-currant leaves, reminding the ever-hungry dachniks that tomorrow morning they will be ripe for consumption. 

A dacha is a place of complete self-sufficiency. 

It is a world dozing in idleness and yet bustling with inexhaustible activity. It is life so quiet and private, and yet so buzzing and communal.

Some etymology

Webster’s defines “dacha” as “a Russian country cottage used especially in the summer.” The French Le Robert dictionary calls “la datcha” a Russian “maison de campagne.” 

In actuality dacha acquired its present meaning only about 150 years ago. Russian linguist and folklorist Vladimir Dal, in his Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language of the 1860s, has no separate entry for “dacha.” Instead, the word is given as one of the forms of the verb “davat’” (to give), and its primary meaning is explained as “distribution, granting, giving out.” Further on, Dal explains that dacha can also mean “small land allotment granted once by the tsar or given by parceling out.” This is where the word dacha originates. Finally, Dal mentions that dacha can also mean “a house in the country, domicile outside the city.” Dal defines dachnik as “a resident of the country-house,” or, sic, “lover of dacha life.” 

The last definition brings us a bit closer to the true meaning of dacha. A dacha is not simply an object, a building, or a summer retreat. It is a lifestyle, a necessity. 

Some History 

Dachas in the modern meaning of the word started sprouting up in Russia soon after the abolition of serfdom (1861) and the quickening of urban industrialization. In the summers, city dwellers sought a way to flee the intolerable heat, noise and factory fumes of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The rich went to the Black Sea or to Europe. The less well-to-do “middle class” went to the suburbs around Moscow and St Petersburg. 

LOPAKHIN: Excuse me, but you people … I have never met anyone so unbusinesslike, so impractical, so … so crazy as the pair of you! Somebody tells you flat out your land is about to be sold, you don’t even seem to understand!

LIUBOV ANDREYEVNA: But what should we do? Just tell us what we should do?

LOPAKHIN: I tell you every day what you should do! Every day I come out here and say the same thing. The cherry orchard and the rest of the land has to be subdivided and developed for leisure homes [dachas], and it has to be done right away. The auction date is getting closer! Can’t you understand? All you have to do is make up your mind to subdivide, you’ll have more money than even you can spend! Your troubles will be over!

LIUBOV ANDREYEVNA: Subdivide, leisure homes … excuse me, but it’s all so hopelessly vulgar.

 – Anton Chekhov, “The Cherry Orchard” 

(The Plays of Anton Chekhov, transl. by Paul Schmidt, HarperCollins, 1997)

In the 1920s, as the new Soviet regime sank in its roots, a new generation of dachas emerged. Again, they were “given” – doled out by the regime to the crème of soviet society: party leaders, army generals, writers, composers, scientists, movie directors and other celebrities. Each community got its own dacha settlement. Writers had Peredelkino, academics – Zhukovka, and so on. 

“It’s nice on the Klyazma now,” said Bosun George, egging everyone on because she knew the writers’ colony in Perelygino on the Klyazma was a universal sore spot.

“The nightingales are probably singing by now. Somehow I always work better in the country, especially in spring.”

“For three years now I’ve been paying in money, so I can send my wife to that paradise for her Grave’s disease, but so far it’s no go,” said the novelist Hieronymous Poprikhin venomously and bitterly.

“It’s just the luck of the draw,” rang out the critic Ababkov from the windowsill.

Joy blazed in Bosun George’s little eyes, and softening her heaving contralto she said, “No need for envy, comrades. There are twenty-two dachas in all, and only seven more are being built, and there are 3000 of us in MASSOLIT.”

“3,111,” interjected someone from the corner.

“Well, there you have it,” continued the Bosun, “what’s to be done? It’s natural that the most talented people got dachas …”

 – Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita 

(transl. by Diana Burgin & Katerine Tiernan O’Connor. Vintage, 1995)

Then came Stalin’s purges. As arrested dachniks were driven away, often picked up at their dachas, as in Nikita Mikhalkov’s Oscar-winning film, Burnt by the Sun, new residents filled the vacuum.

In the 1960s, the dacha took on a mass character. It became not just a place to spend the summer, but a source of self-subsistence for under-nourished soviets. The state distributed dachas to its subjects, usually through places of work, to help them complement their modest diet with vegetables and fruit. Dachas were now no longer the prerogative of the intelligentsia, but something every soviet citizen could claim (or at least get on a waiting list for). 

The most common size of a land allotment was 6 sotkas (1 sotka = 1 hundred square meters). The new dachas were united into “gardening associations.” A member of a “gardening association” was not allowed to let his 6 sotkas stand idle. Every square meter was to be used to grow something edible – fruit, berries, vegetables, herbs. Once a place of leisure and creative inspiration, the dacha was now a place of work, where dachniks were encouraged to feed themselves vitamins in the summer and even bottle up enough extra to last them through the long winter.

Dachas of a New Type

After perestroika (1985-1991) the dacha boom continued. In the hungry years of the early 1990s, when sugar and butter were rationed, subsistence farming acquired immense proportions. Now, a decade on, fruit and vegetables are plentiful again in the markets and stores, so more well-to-do Muscovites and Petersburgers are slowly abandoning the habit of planting potatoes. Why go to all the effort when they can be purchased at 15 rubles a kilo in any shop? For the new generation of dachniks, now in their 20s and 30s, the dacha is once again becoming a place of leisure, a place for barbecues, banyas, parties, and even the “bourgeois” sports of golf and tennis. 

Some of the new dachas hardly resemble a dacha, in the conventional meaning of the word, at all. Rather, like pets, they resemble their owners. In the mid-nineties, the suburbs of Moscow became swamped with shock- and awe-inspiring red brick dungeons, Gothic castles and security-fenced communities – all built by the nouveaux riches in their own image. 

The new Russian’s multi-storied dachas can host as many guests as a medium-sized hotel. Yet often the windows are so small they seem to be redoubts for firing weapons at potential aggressors. There are lavish columns, arches, balusters, balconies and even watchtowers equipped with video-cameras and armed guards. At one, a bull-terrier sporting a golden collar lollygags in utter boredom behind the three meter high red brick walls topped with barbed wire. 

In recent years, these architectural monsters have been slowly giving way to more tasteful and creative architecture. Modernist villas, English cottages, alpine chalets, Russian izbas, and Japanese gardens are sprouting up in the suburbs of Moscow, making certain areas, such as the prestigious of strip of land along Rublyovo-Uspenskoye highway, an eclectic dacha Disneyland. 

Meanwhile, the nostalgic, 20th century dacha conceals its wide wooden planks and white windows behind tall oaks and broad pines, peeping out at its stony neighbors with a loathing tinged with curiosity.   RL

PEREDELKINO • èÖêÖ—Öãäàçé

Rent a dacha: from $2,000 per month 

Travel: 25 minutes by suburban train from Kievsky train station (Kievskaya metro station)

This dacha settlement in the middle of a pine forest is known as the “writers’ dachas.” Peredelkino was founded in the 1930s, when twenty-four spacious two-story cottages were built on large allotments covered with pine-trees, so that the best Soviet writers could live and create there. Many of the dachas we see today, including the ones that used to belong to Kornei Chukovsky and Boris Pasternak, have remained unchanged from the 1930s. This suburban paradise for the masters of the quill is mentioned in the Bulgakov quote on page 40. In The Master and Margarita, the literary critic Berlioz has a dacha in Perelygino, a pun on Peredelkino. Dachas in Peredelkino were granted to the crème de la crème of Soviet literature, many of whose names have been long forgotten. However, Peredelkino was also home to Valentin Kataev, Isaak Babel, Boris Pilnyak, Kornei Chukovsky and Boris Pasternak. The dachas of the latter two have been made into museums.

If you decide to visit Peredelkino, which is an easy day trip from Moscow, get an early start, as the writers’ dachas which are museums close quite early – around 4 pm.

The train for Peredelkino leaves from Kievsky train station. Exiting the platform at Peredelkino, turn right and walk along the road. On your right, you will see the Church of the Transfiguration (photo, left). Behind the church is the cemetery where you will find the graves of Pasternak and Chukovsky. Walking along the road, you will eventually see two signs. The one pointing to the right is to Pasternak’s dacha, at ulitsa Pavlenko, 3 (tel: 934-5175, open Thursday through Sunday 10 am – 4 pm).

The sign pointing to the left will lead you to Chukovsky’s dacha at ulitsa Serafimovicha, 3 (tel: 593-2670, open Monday, Thursday through Sunday 10 am – 5 pm). There are excursions for adults and children, but usually only in Russian, although museum staff admit they speak English.

Chukovsky lived in Peredelkino from 1938 until the year of his death in 1969. One of his fairy-tales, Bibigon, starts with the words “I live at the dacha, in Peredelkono. It is not far from Moscow. With me lives a tiny Lilliputian, a boy the size of a thumb, whose name is Bibigon. Where he came from I do not know. He says he fell from the Moon …”

This museum is a real treat for kids. Grandpa Chukovsky wrote for children and his house is filled with fairy-tale objects. As you walk along the path to the house, you will see a tree decorated with all kinds of children’s shoes. The tree is from Chukovsky’s famous poem Chudo-derevo (“The Tree of Miracles”), where “stockings and shoes grow like apples.” Another “Tree of Miracles” is found in Chukovsky’s study on the second floor, along with Humpty-Dumpty, a headdress of an Indian chief, an “English-speaking” lion, a fish from Japan, a crocodile from Africa and other characters from Chukovsky’s works and translations. The verandah on the second floor has another relic: Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s bicycle. Solzhenitsyn stayed here once and worked in the room on the first floor; museum staff joke about “foreign tourists” who always take photos of his table.

In the back of the house there is a clearing with brightly-painted benches. Here Chukovsky held his “fires,” where he would invite hundreds of kids from the nearby dachas, villages and pioneer camps and hold performances for them.

Walk down Serafimovicha street and turn right into the street of Karl Marx. Here Peredelkino flows into another celebrity settlement – Michurinets (å˘ÛË̈). As you turn into ulitsa Dovzhenko, on your right you will see a mosaic-style house behind a red brick fence. This is the dacha of the prolific sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, the creator of many controversial pieces of art in Moscow and beyond, including the giant sculpture of Peter the Great on the Moscow river. 

The house behind the rickety green fence at 11 ulitsa Dovzhenko is the dacha of Bulat Okudzhava, which has also been turned into a museum. The doorbell has been fixed to the fence post with scotch tape and the cable from it stretches all the way to the house, where there is a photo of the smiling bard on the façade. The dacha is just a few minutes from the Michurinets train station. (tel: 593-5208, open Thursday through Sunday 11am - 4pm).

Today Peredelkino and Michurinets are still home to some well-known writers, including Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Fazil Iskander, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky. However, it is no longer a writer’s only enclave. Rich businessmen from Moscow are coming to Peredelkino and their cottages have sprung alongside the writers’ dachas. Peredelkino is considered “prestigious” by the rich, because they know it as a “place of writers,” according to Pavel Kryuchkov, a guide at the Chukovsky museum, who himself rents part of a dacha in Peredelkino. Today it is very difficult to find a dacha in Peredelkino. Michurinets might have more and cheaper offers. 

KRATOVO • äêÄíéÇé

Rent a dacha: from $800/month

Travel: 1 hour from Kazansky train station (metro Komsomolskaya), or 30 minutes from the train platform at Vykhino metro station.

This old dacha settlement stands in the dense pine forest on both sides of the train station. The part of Kratovo to the right side of the train-station is quite heavily touristed on summer weekends – with day-trippers from Moscow and surrounding dacha areas who come here to take refuge from the summer heat in Kratovo’s lakes – clean enough to swim in. Kratovskoye lake is just a short walk from the station. Near the lake you will find a rare treat for kids – a Children’s Railway, with a real train run by and for children from Kratovo to the previous train station from Moscow – Otdykh (éÚ‰˚ı), which is also a very pleasant place to rent a dacha. The children’s train runs from June to August, Wednesday through Sunday 10 am to 2 pm. Tickets are just 4 rubles for a child and 10 rubles for an adult.

ABRAMTSEVO • ÄÅêÄåñÖÇé

Rent a dacha: from $1,000/month

Travel: Suburban trains to Abramtsevo or Radonezh leave from Yaroslavsky train-station (Komsomolskaya metro). The trip takes about 1 hour. By car, Abramtsevo is about 60 km along Yaroslavskoye shosse.

A little further from Moscow than most places mentioned in this article, Abramtsevo is still worth a visit (see Russian Life Mar/Apr 2002). A tourist destination, thanks to its 18th century estate and the huge number of celebrities who lived there, Abramtsevo is nevertheless a very quiet and peaceful place. 

In Soviet times, dachas here were divided into four settlements – those of generals, composers, academics and artists. The academics’ dachas, with enormous allotments, are about a kilometer to the right of the Abramtsevo estate. The artists’ dachas are to the left. 

Today dachniks no longer live in communities divided by profession and social status. Abramtsevo offers a fusion of some fine examples of “general’s” dachas, dilapidated cabins, nostalgic intelligentsia dachas, characterless red brick castles and modern kottedzhi of all blends and styles. However, the combination is not tasteless. Every street has its own face. The landscape is beautiful, with spruce and birch forests, little ponds and vast fields. If you are ready to sacrifice closeness to Moscow for fresher air and more natural surroundings, this might be the place for you.

Home to many historical and cultural sites, Abramtsevo offers many sightseeing opportunities. The most famous one is the Abramtsevo Estate-Museum, about 10 minutes walk through the forest from the Abramtsevo train station. In the 19th century the estate was owned first by the writer Sergei Aksakov and then by the famous patron of the arts, Savva Mamontov. Many famous writers and artists lived and worked here at Mamontov’s invitation and transformed the estate into a hive of cultural activity and a living museum. 

Kids will have fun exploring the park – the teremok, the izba on chicken legs and other fairy-tale like objects built by Mikhail Vrubel, Victor Vasnetsov and others. There is even a ceramics workshop, where visitors can make something for themselves. The workshop has summer classes for children (workshop cellphone is 8-903-275-7898, ask for Sergei Dmitrievich). The Estate-Museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, 10 am – 5 pm.

Across from the main entrance to the estate, at Muzeynaya street, 3, there is a red brick building decorated with mosaics. It is the Galereya restaurant, and it is common to see pheasants and peacocks strolling in the yard. Prices range from very expensive to affordable. 

From Abramtsevo you can make day trips to several other locations. One of the most important symbols of the Russian Orthodoxy, the famous Troitse-Sergieva Lavra, the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery is just 15 minutes further down the railway, in Sergiev Posad/ëÂ„Ë‚ èÓÒ‡‰. The estate of Muranovo/åÛ‡ÌÓ‚Ó, known as the home of two poets – Evgeny Baratynsky and Fyodor Tyutchev – is about a half hour drive from Abramtsevo. If you are traveling by public transport, take a train to Ashukinskaya/įÛÍËÌÒ͇fl (third station from Abramtsevo in the Moscow direction) and hike 4 kilometers along a picturesque road.

Pokrovsky Khotkov convent is a short walk from Khotkovo (ïÓÚÍÓ‚Ó) train station, which is the next one after Abramtsevo. The nuns are devoted floriculturists: in the summer the convent territory is wildly abloom. By the entrance to the convent there is a small gallery where you can buy paintings, toys, ceramics and other crafts made by local artists and arts students.

NIKOLINA GORA • çàäéãàçÄ ÉéêÄ

Rent a dacha: from $2,000/month 

Travel: It is easiest to travel here by car along Rublyovo-Uspenskoye highway. Without your own transport, the trip is quite a challenge. You can take a train from Belorussky train station to Perkhushkovo (40 minutes) and then a bus to Nikolina Gora for another 30 minutes. Buses leave from the bus-stop in front of the “Rus” shop near the train platform. There was also a mini-bus going directly to Nikolina Gora from Molodyozhnaya metro station in Moscow at the time of publication.

One of the most prestigious dacha locations, housing a panoply of Russia’s political and business elite, Nikolina Gora has nonetheless preserved its beautiful natural setting and the authentic dacha atmosphere. 

Shrouded in dense pine forest overlooking the Moscow river, Nikolina Gora was spotted by dachniks-to-be in the early 1920s. The dacha settlement they founded was called dacha cooperative RANIS (Rabotnikov Akademii Nauk i Iskusstva) – dacha cooperative of the Workers of the Academy of Sciences and Arts. 

Nobel prize-winning physicist Pyotr Kapitsa, polar explorer Otto Shmidt and many other prominent Soviet personalities had summer homes in Nikolina Gora; the composer Sergei Prokofiev spent the last eight years of his life here. Today’s famous residents include violist Yuri Bashmet, pianist Nikolai Petrov, the Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky dynasty and other celebrities. The infamous show trials prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky also lived here – in a dacha expropriated from the old Bolshevik Leonid Serebryakov, whom he had arrested.

Today, large sections of the pine forest have been cut down to give space to new dachas. The original dachniks of Nikolina Gora complain that soon there will be nothing left of the forest and the surrounding fields and their own allotments. However, some of the pine forest still stands and the beautiful beaches are still open to the public. Some dachas have long wooden staircases going down to the beaches. 

Nikolina Gora might be a nice getaway from Moscow, especially on a weekday, when there are fewer people, but do not expect to do a lot of dacha and dachnik watching here – most houses stand behind high, solid fences – no slots have been left between the pickets for curious passers-by. So if you do come here for just a day, take a picturesque walk along the river, leaving Nikolina Gora behind and continuing into the fields. 

Besides Nikolina Gora, there are many other “elite” dacha spots along Rublyovo-Uspen-skoye highway to choose from. 

AROUND ISTRINSKOYE RESERVOIR

àëíêàçëäéÖ Çé—éïêÄçàãàôÖ

Rent a dacha: from $800

Travel: About 60 km from Moscow by car (Novorizhskoye or Volokolamskoye highway) or by suburban train from Rizhsky train station (Rizhskaya metro) or Tushino platform at Tushino metro station.

This beautiful region in northwest of Moscow is situated around the clean Istra reservoir, fit for both fishing and swimming. It offers a more rural atmosphere than the previous options and has many neat dacha settlements and villages to choose from. Easy to explore by car, the region is quite difficult to get to for those who rely on public transport. The Istra reservoir is about 25 kilometers from the town of Istra, which is reached by suburban train from Rizhsky train station in a little over an hour.

The tourist pilgrimage of the region is Novy Ierusalim, or New Jerusalem. Novoierusalimsky Monastery was founded in the 17th century by Patriarch Nikon, who wanted to create Russia’s own Palestine. The monastery has its own Zion, Favor and Garden of Gethsemane. The monastery is open every day except Monday, 10 am to 5 pm.

Situated on the 54th kilometer of Volokolamskoye shosse, the monastery is easy to get to by car, but more difficult to reach by public transport. Buses run to the monastery from bus stops at Istra or Novoierusalimskaya train stations. RL