Dachniki

The exceptionalism ascribed to Russian dacha practices extends to descriptions of the individuals who partake of the dacha world. Dacha enthusiasts are dubbed dachniki (sing, dachnik), a flexible term that can include both individuals who own their own dachas and those who rent a cottage, a space in a cottage, or even a section of a dacha garden. In the course of my research, informants rarely distinguished between these groups but rather used dachnik to describe themselves, their friends and relatives, and anyone else who used a dacha. In this book I will therefore follow the lead of my informants and use the terms dachnik and dachniki to refer to anyone who participates in dacha life. 

Throughout the play, both the locals and the visitors try to discern the essential qualities of this new breed of person represented by the dachnik. One set of qualities emerges early in the play when two locals who work as watchmen and provide general assistance for the dachniki discuss the various people who have arrived for the summer. 

Pustobaika Dachniki—they are all identical. I have seen them for five years—more than I can count. They all seem to me like bubbles in a puddle on a rainy day. . . they rise up and then they burst. . . rise up and burst.. . . That is the way it is. ... 

Later, in act IV, Gorky allows the dachniki themselves to debate the real nature of their identities. This question crystallizes in an argument among several dachniki. Zamyslov, an assistant to the lawyer dachnik. 

The dachniki described in this book represent a broad cross-section of Russian society in terms of their social, economic, and demographic... 

Although upper-class dachniki have attracted considerable public attention in Russia because of the large villas they have constructed and the ostensibly ostentatious lifestyles attributed to them, these individuals are not the focus of this book. This is in part because I did not have access to wealthy Russians through my social networks, and in part because popular sentiment among dachniki holds that these individuals are not legitimate members of the social class comprised of ordinary dachniki. Upper-class dachniki did reside in several of the dacha communities I visited and where I interviewed residents, but my friends and acquaintances claimed not... 

Gorky s play offers a glimpse into a typical day in a dacha community at the turn of the twentieth century, as his middle- and upper-class dachniki wander aimlessly into and out of the woods. Musical interludes, poetry recitations, and theatrical performances erupt spontaneously, while emotions flare up and then simmer down as the characters alternately argue... 

The emotional tensions evoked by these disagreements force Gorky s dachniki to recognize that the intimacy of cozy dacha life is scarcely as pleasurable as one might imagine. In Act II, one dacha visitor, Vlas, confesses the extent to which he dislikes the other summer residents in whose company he finds himself ... 

Recognition of the dynamic, phenomenological qualities of place illuminates the significance of the activities that dachniki pursue at their dachas. 

In a context in which the appropriation of labor by the state transformed work into something official and public, dacha activities represented an opportunity for ordinary citizens to redirect and reappropriate their own labor to suit their own interests and needs. This orientation resembles the self-directed appreciation of work captured in Stebbins s notions of serious leisure and occupational devotion (2004), although, as we will see, dachniki such as my informants associate this reclamation of one s activities, time, and body from the state as a form of soulfulness. Activities done for oneself are described as for the soul in recognition of the simultaneously physical and psychical satisfaction that comes from working for oneself and under conditions of one s own choosing. 

A simultaneously physical, psychical, and topographical realm, the dacha world exists as a dimension that is fully present to its inhabitants, a point underscored in dachniki s observations that they felt more alive, more attuned to the world around them, and more human at their dachas. How, then, can this notion of presentism and immediacy be reconciled with the perception that dachas, and leisure life more generally, belong to a dimension that is set apart from everyday life In actuality, these two perspectives are not mutually exclusive but constitute another paradoxical feature of dachas. Specifically, it is these distancing tactics that foster the construction of the dacha world as an enchanted place— another planet. The values and qualities that are believed to characterize the dacha world derive directly from rhetorical tactics that locate it elsewhere, in a state of excep-tionalism separate from the banalities of everyday life. 

Finally, the words of Vladimir, a dachnik in his late seventies, perhaps best of all sum up the themes that emerged repeatedly in dachniki s opinions about the flow of time at the dacha ... 

Mushroom knowledge can be an important indicator of social status, as dachniki assured me. Individuals with seemingly supernatural mushroom-spotting skills were celebrated in the stories told by friends and family. 

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