– Dasha Shkurpela –

disregard for the natural environment of many of these enterprises is notorious.

The Decree on Construction of Summer Dwellings of 1958 sanctioned the building of summer cottages by Soviet citizens. These summerhouses, or dachas, though subject to many regulations and the constant need to lie to circumvent the system, were the least monitored spaces of Soviet life, allowing the illusion of privacy and, if not freedom, then some liberties. In her memoir, Galina: A Russian Story, Galina Vishnevskaya recalled:

When Krushchev was in power, people were allowed the private use of small bits of land for growing fruit and vegetables. On those garden plots they were permitted to build little one-room shacks as shelter from the summer rains and to keep their gardening tools in. But the Soviet people, who had learned not to be choosy, live in the shacks during the summer months – whole families at a time – and remembered Tsar Nikita with gratitude.

The rural dimension was re-admitted into the lives of the citizens. The summer plots helped address food shortages. The planned economy operated in another unseen space. Many citizens filled their leisure with labor of the most primitive kind – manually building summerhouses from found or stolen materials, in a way analogous to camp life, where extreme scarcity produced inventiveness that made one tremble. The

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