DACHA (DAH-chuh)
A
Russian country house or villa Common clues: Vladivostok
villa; Putin's getaway; Russian
country house; Russian villa; Black Sea bungalow Crossword
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once a year Frequency
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42065 / 86800 News: The
dacha: Were Russians disappear to in summer Video:
Stalin’s
dacha at Sochi
Dacha
is a name for a 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 have a separate banyas (sauna) attached to the house.
The house is usually wooden nearly always hand-built.
Dacha
of Boris Pasternak in Peredelkino.
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'.
Dachas
began to appear after the WWII. The reasons for their appearance
were on one side the desire of city people, all living in blocks
of flats, to spend some time at nature and on the other side the
need to grow vegetables. Such need was caused by food shortages
experienced due to Soviet agricultural policy.
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 grew geometrically and they
have since been officially legalized. Legalization brought local
government representatives in the form of so-called "Gardeners'
Societies" together with electricity and water conduits for
irrigation.
In
Soviet times prominent officials or cultural figures were granted
to use state-owned vacation houses as a part of their
compensation package, though this right had to be 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, often give their staff an extra
weekend day specifically for that purpose.
This
article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia
article "Dacha".
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