Dachas and Natural Foods
April 11, 2012 by peterpak
In the chapter “Dacha Enchantment”, I found it interesting how the owners of the dachas, or small cottages in Russia, responded when asked how they bought a dacha. Instead of saying that they paid for the dacha, they tell others that it was given to them. It represents communism and that the people feel they are entitled to this land from the government.
This is a picture of several dachas in Omsk, Russia. The way the gardens are setup reminded me of our talks about Cuban urban agriculture and how each individual owns their own plot of land to garden.
In the chapter titled “Natural Foods”, I found it interesting that berries are a major part of the culture. “So reliable are the berries- and the pickers- that in Tver it is possible to set one’s watch and calendar by them…” People will even use these berries as currency. It is a competition between neighbors and acquaintances to see who can collect more berries and brag about them.
This is a picture taken in Kirov Oblast, Russia of berry pickers selling their berries.
http://roadtripsacrossrussia.com/m/news/index?id=7
The point about ownership (the dachas were “given to them”) is an interesting one, and certainly relates to a legacy of communism (in the Soviet Union many workers’ families were, in fact, given small parcels of land outside of cities, on which they constructed dachas), but it is worth noting that Caldwell points out that “by the seventeenth century dacha had come to signify land distributed by the state” (6). In other words, the use of the term in this way pre-dated communism by several centuries.