Polar Record Page 1 of 14 ccopy Cambridge University Press 2014 doi101017S0032247414000710 1

Dachas on permafrost the creation of nature among ArcticRussian city-dwellersFlorian StammlerArctic Centre University of Lapland PL 122 96101 Rovaniemi Finland(fstammleulaplandfi)

Lena SidorovaFaculty of History North Eastern Federal University Ul Belinskogo 58 677000 Yakutsk SakhaRepublic Russia

Received June 2014

ABSTRACT This article analyses the phenomenon of the post-Soviet Russian summer cottage dacha in the ArcticWe take an ethnographic comparative perspective for contributing to the refinement of our understanding of human-environment relations and urban anthropology of incomer-northerners those with roots somewhere outside the northEvidence from fieldwork in Murmansk Oblast West Siberia and Sakha-Yakutia shows how for a socialist and post-socialist northern urban livelihood the dacha has become an indispensable counterpart of life in the urban concretehousing blocks for most Russian northern inhabitants We explore in this article the importance of dacha for northernidentity of urban dwellers by analysing spheres of individual and collective agency freedom attachment to place andland We conclude that the dacha movement has filled a gap that had been left open by Soviet Arctic urbanisation adacha has come to stand for a human-environment relationship that gradually re-introduces rurality to urban life in theRussian Arctic so permanently that dacha places start losing their seasonal character

Introduction

The circumpolar north is associated with survival andadaptation to a harsh environment characterised by ice-deserts permafrost low- and slow growing vegetationand other inhospitable aspects of life

At first glance the livelihood and mode of dwellingthat industrial labour migrants in the Russian north haveseems to be built around the notion of fighting againstrather than living with the environment the life ofnorthern incomers is characterised by big cities massivephysical engagement with the environment conqueringand subduing nature resulting in maximal footprint onthe land which is in some cases considered a desiredoutcome of human interaction with the land that createsattachment to place (Stammler 2011) But recent researchhas also shown that this does not exclude sincere loveand attachment to place among such industrial workersand their descendants (Bolotova and Stammler 2010Bolotova 2012)

It is the indigenous inhabitants of these areas thathave the longest experience in this environment Withtheir hunting gathering and mobile herding livelihoodthey developed a sophisticated way of engaging with thisenvironment with the idea of leaving a minimal footprinton the land Their relationship with the land in the north isreciprocal characterised by giving and taking (Anderson2000) Any material tangible traces of human indigenousdwelling on the northern expanses can be very quicklylsquotaken backrsquo by other non-human agents in the environ-ment once humans decide to abandon a site even thoughit is possible to detect human presence in the area formillenia (Haakanson 2000 Gusev 2010) In other wordsthis indigenous livelihood is embedded into an organic

holistic environment where all the natural componentsincluding the supernatural and human components arerelated to each other

Having studied such local land-based livelihoods onthe one hand and industrialisation on the other the lastthing that we were expecting in the early phase of anurban anthropological research project in the Russiannorth was settlements of summer cottages where peoplego to grow food and build houses to spend their freetime In doing so owners of such places called dachasvoluntarily agree to refrain from lsquoescapingrsquo from thenorth to more temperate regions for holidays which theyusually do for most of their free time Instead they workon their dacha Even in Russian social science researchthis phenomenon has gained attention rather recently(Nakhshina and Razumova 2009) because it is mostly anoutcome of perestroika and its aftermath In this articlewe share some of the insights from seeing thinkingabout and living on dachas in the north as well asfrom talking to their owners and administrators Data forthis article were gathered from three regions the miningcities of Kirovsk and Apatity in Murmansk Oblast in theRussian far northwest the gas extraction cities of NovyiUrengoi Pangody and Nadym in Yamal west Siberiaand the city of Yakutsk the capital of the Sakha RepublicWhile all these places share a harsh northern climatetheir large dacha movement differs substantially Kirovskand Apatity have a population of approximately 110000together and the dacha settlements are located alongthe shore of lake Imandra as well as along the highwaybetween both cities (figures on numbers of dachas werenot available) The absence of permafrost and a longagricultural tradition of the population influenced the ori-entation of many dachas there towards subsistence garden

2 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Fig 1 (Colour online) Dacha in Novyi Urengoi WestSiberia

production In west Siberiarsquos gas cities dachas on thepermafrost are more oriented towards recreation Figureswere available for Novyi Urengoi where a populationof 115000 has registered approximately 10000 dachaplots which exclude garage settlements also used forrecreational purposes (Vladimir Nuykin Novyi Urengoicity administration personal communication 19 May2013) In Yakutsk there are 210000 people with accessto a dacha out of a population of 318000 according tothe municipality for 2013 Yakutsk has the longest dachatradition among our field sites Another particularity isthe ethnic character of the dacha culture among Sakhaon the one hand and Russians or other Russian speakingincomers on the other

In west Siberia as well as in the Murmansk regionsuch summer activities by incomers to the region startedto become popular after perestroika In Russiarsquos gas cap-ital Novyi Urengoi one of the authors could not believehis eyes seeing people working on a potato plot withimported soil from the south poured onto the permafrostNext to the plot was a beautifully built wooden housewith individual layout (Fig 1) Looking around thisplace there were 10s if not 100s of such little plots andhouses and every one looked different from the otherswhat a contrast from the industrial city built in concretewhat a visual material aesthetic and functional diversity

These data were gathered as a side-effort withinthe afore-mentioned research projects during 2008ndash2012and by living in cities in the three case study regions(see Fig 2) We explore in this article the various rootsof the dacha movement in the Russian Arctic and payspecial attention to the ways in which dacha gives roomfor enacting human relations with the environment inurban northern society in Russia These relations alsoreveal dacha-dwellersrsquo place-specific aspects of identityin particular when it comes to notions of attachment toplace The latter aspect is worth analysing as much ofthe anthropological literature gives the impression thatmainly indigenous inhabitants can have such attachment

We provide evidence for the different ways in which non-indigenous northerners enact their relations to place

Dacha ndash building and dwelling in the north

Dachas in Russia are widespread today although statisticsare scattered and hard to standardise In 2009 out ofa population of 142 million 27 million were dachaowners horticulturalists and gardeners registered withthe Russian Horticulturalistsrsquo Union [soyuz sadovodovRossii] (ILO 2009 21) Considering that such dachaowners spend much of their summers on their dacha thisway of life can be considered to some extent a seasonalmobility of large parts of the population not unliketranshumance of livestock owners We can see this linkparticularly well among dacha owners in Yakutsk whosemove to their summer houses grew out of the pastoralistpast of urbanised Sakha as cattle and horse breeders(Crate 2006 Takakura 2002) Different from more recentindustrial northern cities dachas therefore have a longerstanding tradition in Yakutsk to the extent that morethan 70 of the urban population there has a dachameaning around 210000 people This is remarkable asin Yakutia the permafrost area reaches very far south andthe temperature change between summer and winter ofup to 90deg C is more extreme than in any other Russiancity

The word dacha for the Russian summer housingcomes from a plot of land that is given (davatrsquo daritrsquo)by the state From the time of Peter I onwards dachaswere dwellings with gardens for summer recreation closeto a city

This tradition of the Russian nobility was re-definedby the Soviet state in the 1920s Dacha settlementswere for the Soviet communist party elite (for exampleobkomovskie dachi in Yakutsk) or summer settlementsfor intellectuals that became a prestigious attribute ofstatus A dacha was a place of recreation leisure andretreat not least also retreat from the tight control ofSoviet power as Vainshtein emphasises in her writingson the famous intelligentsia dachas at the Nikolina Gorain Moscow (Zhiritskaia 2008)

When the Soviets started to let cities grow fast fromthe 1950s onwards dacha construction became possiblealso for the broader society including the working classmost of whom had rural roots and where thus used toliving close to the land Some cities in the north suchas Yakutsk or Arkhangelsk saw dacha settlements growat the same time as happened all over the country Thesecities have a century-old local population with deep rootsto the land

The less usual and more recent phenomenon that thisarticle analyses is dacha settlements in Russian Arcticmonoindustrial cities Cities built between 1930 and1980 were mostly planned as lsquosleep townsrsquo or even astemporary settlements for industrial workers Millionswere brought (or induced to move) as a workforcefor extracting gigantic mineral resources discovered by

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 3

Fig 2 (Colour online) Case study sites for Arctic dachas on the background of a permafrost map

soviet geologists (Bolotova 2005) After some years ofwork people were supposed to return where they camefrom to home This is what they thought and what theSoviet state intended for them (Bolotova and Stammler2010 Stammler and Khlinovskaya 2011) After the So-viet Union collapsed it turned out that for many theoption of leaving became unreasonable and temporari-ness became permanent (Stammler 2010 Khlinovskaya-Rockhill 2010) Due to their short history we can tracethrough peoplersquos biographies how dacha construction asexpression of attachment to the north is gaining import-ance in peoplersquos life

Both during and after the Soviet Union decisionmakers are most interested in economic developmentand rationality which figure prominently in both so-viet development-planning for northern industrial cities(Bolotova 2012) as well as in post-soviet northern de-velopment scenarios focusing on fly-infly-out industrial-isation (Eilmsteiner-Saxinger 2013) In both cases peoplewere human resources and care had to be taken for themto the extent that they would do their best for work ratherthan for their needs as persons

The transient workers in monoindustrial Arctic citieswere supposed to do something completely different inthe north than the indigenous population would ever ima-gine extracting resources from under the landrsquos surfaceFor some reindeer herders even sticking a little knifeinto the ground injured the land which has spiritualdimensions

The difference is that while indigenous inhabitants ofthe north exist there because of their adaptive capacity

with their environment incomers seem to be there inspite of the harsh environment Their approach to thenorth is one of maximal footprint on the land ratherthan the minimal footprint idea of the indigenous people(Stammler 2011) We get the impression that the moreincomers to the north change the landscape the prouderthey are about their achievements be it the constructionof huge cities factories infrastructure

Such processes of changing the landscape are alsoevident in the dacha settlements at the fringes of northernmonoindustrial towns A lsquomaximal footprintrsquo approachseems to originate from a very agricultural relation ofpeople to the land Through human intervention be itthrough construction or through cultivating a field theland becomes valuable acquires meaning whereas be-fore human intervention the north is portrayed as beingempty or void of meaning for many incomers (Bolotova2005 Bolotova and Stammler 2010) Sense of belongingamong the northern population with southern originsoften evolves through the creation of a place of onersquos ownfrom an empty space During fieldwork we heard peopleguiding us through industrial cities with pride commentssuch as lsquolook 30 years ago there was nothing but ldquonakedtundrardquo here and now we established a vibrant townrsquo(Yuri Petrovich Kuznetsov personal communication12 February 2010)

The example of Yakutsk shall be used to illustrate thedifferences in which dacha express peoplersquos relations tothe land whereas most of the urban Sakha (ethnic Yakut)use summer homes for living outside and recoveringfrom the dusty dry hot urban concrete environment for

4 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Figs 3a (Colour online) 3b A typical Sakha and typical Russian dacha

incomers with roots in the south dacha becomes thearena for intensive transformation through physical work(intensivnoe osvoenie) Sometimes you can tell fromtwo neighbouring dachas those two different social andcultural worlds In one of them there is a maximum ofopen space and micro-landscape for recreation In theother one you will find plantations for vegetables withnarrow paths between the plant-rows (Figs 3a 3b) Sucha dacha figures in the Nakhshina and Razumova (2009)article as ideal for cultivation

At first glance it would be easy to argue that local andindigenous people follow in Ingoldrsquos (2000 chapter 10)terms a dwelling perspective with minimal physical intru-sion to natural shapes in the landscape whereas industrialincomers from the south have a building perspectivewhere a more physical footprint is considered betterHowever dacha practices confirm what Bolotova (2012649) has argued namely the combination of dwelling andbuilding perspective among urban northerners with rootselsewhere many of them consider their dacha plot as anarena of osvoenie of mastering of adding meaning andvalue The practice of adding such value is through build-ing be it onersquos dacha home onersquos sauna greenhouses orplantation It is material engagement in the environmentthat changes its outer appearance and makes it human-made On the other hand the practice of constructing andchanging the shape of a dacha-plot (uchastok) is verymuch a way of dwelling for the inhabitants In real lifeamong those incomer-northerners the building and dwell-ing perspectives are not as opposed as they might seemwhen reading Ingold (2000 chapter 10) By working ontheir houses on their plantations by digging the groundfor potatoes and other acts of giving their environmentadded human value these incomer-inhabitants exercisepractices of dwelling in the environment

Individual and collective agency in dacha practices

A main organising element of socialist city-space (sots-gorod) is a clear division between work and leisure

industry and lsquonaturersquo The latter acquires within thesocialist city-landscape a function as barrier for industrialpollution (Bolotova 2012 646 660) However in manycases the cities and industrial areas have expanded and inmany places dachas are at the outskirts of town and veryclose to such industrial zones be it airports mineral pro-cessing plants construction material depots or pipelinepumping stations So while lsquonaturersquo in the sotsgorod issupposed to function as a unpopulated pollution sink andgreen belt to protect the city houses from industry theexpansion of dacha places means that now these pollutionsinks and green belts are populated This shows thatdachas are part of the city environment and occupy zonesthat were for various reasons considered unfit for humanyear round inhabitation

While many incomers are attached and proud of thecity they built and live in (Bolotova and Stammler 2010Yakutsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 20139) the urban environment there did not afford them thefreedom to enact their own ideas of turning a non-place(barren land) into a place of their own Whatever physicalconstruction they did in the cities during the Sovietosvoenie was always part of a bigger project by orderof the state or an industrial company even though manyinhabitants identified with such a corporate identity

With perestroika and the increase of individualismin Russia it became possible to some extent even ne-cessary to not only work in northern industrial citiesbut also live and individually engage with the land inthe north Building dachas creating onersquos own place andgrowing food there is one possible way of doing so Thisis why many dacha settlements evolved at the outskirtsof monoindustrial towns from the grassroots sometimeseven to the surprise of the city authorities

Although still part of the city-environment and undercity-territorial administration dachas are not subject tothe same standardised functional planning of buildingsin the industrial city An important attribute of theseplaces is that they allow people to enact their own

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 5

Fig 4 (Colour online) Tik-Guba Apatity

individual creative freedom (Bolotova 2012 664) Thisplace-creation follows closely Ingoldrsquos building perspect-ive (2000 chapter 10) the idea that man changes theappearance of nature through building a house lsquocultivat-ingrsquo the land around it In dacha constructions one can seehow the Soviet building perspective of mastering natureas a collective on the one hand and individual agriculturalbuilding perspective of creating onersquos own place on theother meet at the outskirts of industrial zones Howeverindividual agency is closely regulated even on dachaspaces which are much part of the city as we shall showbelow

Alongside the deeply individual process of creatingonersquos individual place dacha creation is also a funda-mentally social process in Russia Evidence for this maybe found in the very social logic of land allocation bycity administrations for dachas a larger territory fordacha settlements is earmarked as a whole and thenseparated into individual plots of the same size typically6ndash10 lsquosotokrsquo (600ndash1000 m2) This means that the dachaneighbours live in very close vicinity to each other thehouses usually not more than 30 m apart and the plotsbordering one another with no barren land between them(Fig 4) The city authorities transfer the administrationof the plots to cooperatives of plot holders (dachnyi ko-operatif) associations that are responsible for the ordercommon infrastructure utilities and their fees peaceconflict resolution and all other issues on the dacha areathat are common for all plot holders

In late Soviet times the trade unions were re-sponsible for the allocation of land plots for dachasGood locations were given to privileged groups Thetrade union committees acted as extension arms of theSoviet administration which meant that the steeringgroups of dacha cooperatives resembled in personnelthose of committees within industrial enterprises Cor-respondingly the names of many of the early cooper-atives revealed what kind of people were its memberssuch as lsquostroitelrsquo (meaning members of a constructionenterprise) lsquogazovikrsquo (Novyi Urengoi members of gasextraction company) lsquoavtomobilistrsquo (Apatity membersof transport company) lsquovodokanalrsquo (Kirovsk membersof wastewater company) With the development of a realestate market and land having become a commoditythe membership in dacha cooperatives has become morediverse and the names would not tell much about the

Fig 5 (Colour online) Strict leadership style in a dachacooperative in Novyi Urengoi The text reads Announce-ment 15 September at 1400 is the reporting and electingmeeting of the members of the lsquoenthusiastrsquo dacha cooper-ative Also the question of connecting to the electricity grid[will be discussed] Presence of all is mandatory report tothe chairman

background of their members such as lsquoLetnye Yurtyrsquo(Novyi Urengoi) or lsquoSevernoe Sianie (Kirovsk northernlights)

While during Stalinrsquos times members had to leavethe dacha cooperative when they left their job later theycould hold on to their dacha regardless of their employ-ment and forms of social life in these cooperatives arenot as predefined as they were before In some casessuch as in Novyi Urengoi cooperatives self-organisedeven before the city authorities officially earmarked theexact area for the dacha settlement It seems that thisway of organising dacha space corresponds to the deeplysocial idea of a group of Russian people relating to theland Living close by your neighbour is not thought to bea problem unless you are enemies In fact since dachapeople actually spend a lot of time outdoors often there ismore communication with their dacha garden neighboursthan with their neighbours in their apartment blocks in thecities We want to emphasise this deeply social aspect ofdacha livelihood as this aspect is so far underrepresentedin the otherwise so richly argued publication on northerndachas by Nakshina and Razumova (2009)

As the photo shows some cooperatives have a ratherstrict leadership style (Fig 5) maybe inspired by Soviettrade union committee and Komsomol (youth organisa-tion) practices while others are more loose in style

While dacha people may lsquoescapersquo from the city toenact their individual creativity the landscape they runfrom one standardised collective (the industrial city thework environment) to another collective where theypractice social control by having to make compromisesin their freedom for the benefit of their (dacha) collect-ive The difference may be that in the industrial citydecisions about the creation of place are not made by theresidents themselves whereas in dacha settlements the

6 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Fig 6 (Colour online) Dacha built of concrete blocks inTik-Guba Apatity

members have more decision making power over howtheir assigned plot can look Rather than seeing dachasas mostly an expression of peoplersquos individuality and theindividual adaptation of southern migrants (Nakhshinaand Razumova 2009) we take their argument further byfinding a combined expression between the individualand the social dimension in the Russian northern dachaplaces which also combine the idea of the city withelements of lsquonaturersquo It is this collectivity that is the maindifference of the dacha from the idea of for example theFinnish summer cottage (Fig 6)

Cityscape and lsquowild naturersquo in peoplersquos summerhome narratives

Although Bolotova (2012 662) also considers industrialpeoplersquos activities further away from the city she con-ceives both the activities in remote forests and suburbandachas as practices in nature outside the city IndeedArctic industrial city dwellers often define lsquonaturersquo asspace outside town not regulated by the standardisedSoviet city planning In light of the tight organisation ofdacha collectives we would slightly rectify this statementas dacha is so much part of the city-environment andhuman-made engineered surroundings

As such this is very different from peoplersquos cabins inthe forest This is why Bolotova distinguishes differentlsquonaturesrsquo paraphrasing Macnaghten and Urry (1998) Forexample 81 year old Valentin Ivanov in Nadym (westSiberia) has a very different approach to the environmentfrom the dacha people He talked with pride about hisremote cabin in the forest that is far away from anyother man-made structure where he fishes and picks thegifts of nature with his wife lsquoI take the gun with meonly because of the bear He is the master of the taigabut for scaring away this is neededrsquo (Valentin Ivanovpersonal communication 1 April 2008) An importantcharacteristic of this place for him is its distance verymuch unlike a dacha locality with all the close neighbourrelations He would not call his forest cabin 100 km away

from Nadym a dacha Ivanov intimately knows that forestplace and his narratives of being there convey a mix ofadventure and meditation

The difference between these two recreational placescity-scape and lsquowildrsquo nature becomes evident when com-paring Ivanovrsquos narrative to that of the dacha-dwellerwho perceived the forest surrounding his dacha as anextension of his living room where he walks wearing hisslippers In an extended forest-living room you wouldneither have the idea of respecting other masters suchas the bear nor take a gun along for your own safetyOn the other hand Ivanovrsquos idea is also different from anindigenous perception in which the taiga would be homeand people would move in the environment for huntingand herding rather than recreational fishing and pickingWe suggest a clear distinction between dacha places ofindustrial workers close to their cities and remote forestdestinations of the fewer experts fishers and pickersand leisure time hunters In other words forest cabinsare no dachas because they lack the cooperative socialcomponent Other than in dacha places with forest cabinswe can also hardly find a lsquobuilding perspectiversquo Ivanovwas clear about leaving as little footprint as possible withhis cabin in the otherwise unchanged environment

Forms and orientation of dachas in the Russian north

This section illustrates the diverse practices that havealways been part of dacha life in different combinationsNakshina and Razumova (2009) introduce as motivationsfor establishing dachas in the Murmansk region economicand recreational reasons In many cases dachas are placesfor recreation as well as garden plots for subsistenceAnother important component is seasonal mobility ofthe population (see above) In the most recent cases inRussia an additional component of permanent habitationchanges significantly the meaning of dacha which thenloses its character as a refuge from industrial city life thenotion of peace of mind and recovery

The garden plot subsistence dachaThe classical form of dacha in Soviet Russia that wasimported to the north is first and foremost a garden plotin which the individual or family is free to cultivate andgrow as much as their own skills and the climate allowMoreover they enjoy the freedom to build a house onthat plot that can be anything from an extended shed forgardening tools to a full-fledged summer house that couldpossibly even developed for year-round inhabitation (seeend of article) Just as in the industrial city and verydifferent from indigenous northernersrsquo life in the north-ern dachas everything is imported from the south fromconstruction materials tools equipment and greenhousematerials to seeds and sometimes even soil By using thisimported material these people create their own importedmicrocosm on the northern permafrost as they may haveit in their own imagination that is influenced by theirpast experience from their places of origin Many dacha

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 7

people become very ambitious in creating these mirrorimages of the south in what they first perceive as a harshnorthern frontier (see Nakhshina and Razumova 2009Figs 3ndash5)

Murmansk Oblast is a northern region with a verystrong dacha movement in which the garden plot dacha isa dominant category In spite of its northern latitude theregion has a relatively mild climate and no permafrostwhich makes growing plants less problematic Moreoverthe Murmansk region has been with its post-Soviet out-migration and industrial decline in an economically moredifficult situation in comparison to west Siberia (Nuykina2011) or Yakutia This made growing onersquos own foodan economic necessity for many given the low salariesand pensions in the region There is numerical evidencefor this from Heleniakrsquos (2010) comparative researchwhich shows the far northwest and the far northeast asregions with most economic decline outmigration andnegative demographic tendencies For people in Mur-mansk region this development made it not only possiblebut in some cases necessary to work on the land inorder to get fresh vegetables and fruits It is this aspectthat is prominent in Nakshinarsquos and Razumovarsquos (2009)explanation for the evolution of what they call lsquodachaculturersquo The garden plot dachas in Murmansk Oblast aremore elaborate than in Yamal-Nenets Okrug where mostpeople are more affluent and growing conditions on thepermafrost are harsher The early history of immigrationinto the Murmansk north shows that many incomerscame from a rural agricultural background (Bolotova andStammler 2010) Not only were they not used to an urbanlife (Nakshina and Razumova 2009 418) amidst greyconcrete blocks they were also familiar with working theland According to Salimova (2011 8) in the early 1930s91 of the forced relocatees to Kirovsk were peasantsTheir expertise was used to establish a sovkhoz a Sovietstate farm on the shore of Lake Imandra to feed theindustrial workers of Kirovsk That sovkhoz lsquoindustriarsquois considered the cradle of Apatity village which later inthe 1960s would become a mineral resource extractiontown which soon outgrew Kirovsk

However this organised Soviet agricultural activityto feed industry workers of monoindustrial cities in thenorth is very different from dacha subsistence plotswhich were not foreseen in the development plans forindustrial cities (Bolotova 2012)

The main economic rationale for the evolution ofdachas in the Arctic was the idea of additional foodsupply in times of defitsit lack of supply Towards theend of the Soviet period more and more food itemswere in defitsit Moreover dacha people emphasisedthe notion of freshness beyond economic considerationsFresh vegetables from onersquos own garden were the onlypossibility to get access to fresh plant-based food asimported food from the south would not be fresh by thetime it arrived in the shops In this respect the importanceof onersquos dacha plot is much more than economical asfreshness is not something that money can buy Fresh

local food is also known to be a source of place-basedidentification of people as Weiss (2011) has shown wellbeyond the Arctic in rural USA In the Russian northlocal fresh dacha food is a source of great pride

As the example quoted above from Yakutsk illus-trates the notion of dacha used as a place to intensivelywork (intensivnoe osvoenie) and open up the land canbe interpreted as non-indigenous incomers enacting theirrelations to the environment as Nakhshina and Razu-mova (2009) and Bolotova (2012) show In addition tothat since these dacha owners are all Soviet industrialmigrants to the Arctic or their descendants there isan obvious parallel in the approach to dacha osvoeniewith the official Soviet idea of osvoenie that meant theconquest of nature adding meaning and usefulness tootherwise empty and senseless space

It was not until the 1980s and perestroika that north-ern industrial settlers started seeing dachas as places at-taching them to their northern places of residence ratherthan to their southern places of origin The possibilityto establish onersquos own place outside of the city waslike a return back to the earth for people with roots inthe arable south after a long break living in concretehousing blocks It was the return to a situation in whichowners could enact their agricultural engagement withthe land that had been identity-forming for many of theirancestors

The comparably soft climate and absence of per-mafrost soils definitely makes cultivation easier than inSiberia as well as construction Engaging with the north-ern land on an individual basis through building dachasand growing food there became a realistic alternative toleaving the north to some dacha in the south every year

On the other hand the example of Yakutsk showsthat garden-plot dachas are also possible and popular onpermafrost While dachas have a long history in Yakutskfor the intelligentsia and the party elites (see above)it was in the 1960s and 1970s that Yakutsk becamean administrative centre for diamond and gold miningIncoming workers established dachas as garden plotsWith the short but hot and humid summer cultivatingfruits and vegetables became widespread Water melonshoney melons and other non-northern plants successfullygrown on those dachas are a source of particular prideYakutsk suffered from economic decline too albeit lessthan the Murmansk region Shortage and lack of moneyto buy food even when it was for sale made people in bothplaces focus more on growing their food on their dachasThis is also because of the widespread collapse of Rus-sian agriculture that made the north entirely dependenton imported food or subsistence production As a resultpastures and agricultural land was abandoned In Yakutsksome of that land is now occupied by dacha plots (Budaev2013)

In both Murmansk and Yakutsk one might think thatthe importance of garden plot dachas would decreaseas people become more affluent and the supply systemfor imported food is stable However while several

8 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

informants have mentioned that their children and grand-children are no longer motivated to help on the dachaplot the reputation of local food has become muchstronger reflecting a worldwide trend well summarisedby Holt and Amilien (2007) This is why even north ofthe Arctic Circle there is a continued demand for peopleworking the land above the permafrost and apparentlymany of those who do not have their own dacha plots arehappy to pay a higher price for food produced by localfarms

Recreational dachasIn northwest Siberiarsquos gas cities the idea of dacha placesand individualrsquonaya zastroika territories covered by in-dividual construction was still somewhat alien and un-suitable for the harsh climate when our fieldwork startedamong the city dwellers in 2007 The idea of dachas wasinspired by the Soviet idea of garden subsistence plotsin central Russia Recreational dachas even pre-dated theSoviet Union and were then taken on by intelligentsiaand party elites in the north early on for example inYakutsk Arctic industrial cities however were seen asplaces to work not to live which is why there was nodacha construction planned there

After the Soviet Union and the post-perestroika crisissome people have become rather affluent and can affordto keep a dacha just for a change from city-life Thephysical need to grow onersquos own food decreased and freshfood became available even in markets in the north Nowmore people keep a dacha exclusively for spending theirfree time without growing anything on the plot Suchdachas are appreciated as a change from the standardisedapartment block to onersquos self-built or self-planned houseMost such dachas will have a sauna (Fig 1) From shortinterviews and living on dacha places and individualhouses in Novyi Urengoy Nadym and Pangody it seemsthat people would not sacrifice their yearly summerholiday somewhere lsquoon the landrsquo (na zemle) in the southjust because they would care for their dacha plants on thepermafrost In peoplersquos narratives there the idea of livingin the here and now has become much more prominentlsquoWe donrsquot want to eat out of cans and sit on cardboardboxes anymore just to save our life for the future Wewant to live here now in the north as well as maybe onthe land (na zemle) laterrsquo (Galina Konechnaia personalcommunication 27 March 2008) Recreational dachas inindustrial cities can therefore be understood as a sign ofincomers having arrived at an understanding of the northas their place of life to which they feel attached Howeveras Khlinovskaya Rockhill (2010) and Stammler (2010)showed this does not mean that people necessarily planto live their entire life there In the emerging dachamovement of Arctic industrial cities a dacha is thereforealso seen as an investment that can bring good returns incase the owners decide to sell it and return to their placesof origin

Novyi Urengoy shall serve as an example of thismovement The city was planned as a monoindustrial gas

town initially consisting of temporary living containers(bochki) and wooden barracks in the late 1970s and laterof Soviet style concrete blocks for Gazprom workersand their support industry Individual houses and dachaswere not part of the city plan not even after the SovietUnion as Novyi Urengoyrsquos then chief architect AllaLyaskovskaya confirmed The first dachas were builttowards the end of the 1990s after planned apartmentblocks were not constructed Then people lobbied forpermission to build individual houses in the growing cityin order to have somewhere to live But all they could getwas land allocated for recreational purposes

Yuri Plotnikov was among the pioneers of the recre-ational dacha movement there the first one who built adacha house with all amenities such as water electricityheating He proudly states lsquoWhen I came up with the ideato build myself a house outside of town people in the cityadministration looked down at me and said I was crazyBut then all sorts of people wanted to do the samersquo (YuriPlotnikov personal communication 23 September 2007)When Plotnikov sold his dacha because of his move toMoscow in 2009 he got 10 times the US dollars pricethat he had invested in the early 2000s By then dacha andindividual housing had become a big movement Moreand more space was appropriated for dachas between theurban living zone and industrial zones of Novyi UrengoiThe purpose of these dachas was mainly recreational

You have to give people the possibility of spendingtheir leisure time actively My husband is totally intothat on our dacha He is a real master and loves doingeverything himself [ ] Look in the city we havehere everything in monochrome (Alla Lyaskovskayapersonal communication 28 September 2007)The first [the dachas] were only containers wherepeople would go for barbeque Then the first flowerbeds appeared then some greenhouses and peoplebuilt themselves saunas And then later also suburbancottages and some even real concrete houses Nownot only those with the big money build but also inlsquoeconomy classrsquo ndash everybody according to his wallet(Vladimir Nuykin personal communication 19 May2013)

These processes led Novyi Urengoi with a population of115000 to have approximately 10000 dacha plots ofwhich as of 2013 40 have proper houses on themwhile another 20 are just allocated but still untouchedand the remainder is used as plots without buildings

However this number does not seem to include an-other form of recreational territory in the monoindustrialcity namely garage cooperatives These are organisedsimilarly to dacha cooperatives and the male recreationalactivities on both are similar people meet there forbarbecue The garages are many menrsquos pride with elab-orate workshops where they meet and repair all kinds ofequipment such as cars engines boats snowmobiles andthe like Others specialise in their garages on building andconstructing for example furniture and a few even usetheir garage as arts and handicrafts ateliers One such case

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 9

is Viktor Seliverstov from Novyi Urengoy The formerGazprom driller from Tatarstan came in 1978 to the northat the very start of west Siberian gas development Hehad found a lot of mammoth tusks during his travels onthe gas fields and started carving figures out of themHe took that so seriously that he got deeply involved innorthern indigenous symbolism cosmology and handi-craft and developed skills to the extent that his mammothcreations are nowadays in high demand by Gazpromleadership who give them as presents to VIP guestsSeliverstov did all this in his garage where he regularlyassembles the creative intelligentsia for intellectual andphilosophical discussions

Seliverstov exemplifies how people combine creativ-ity with recreation in their life in monoindustrial citiesbe it through construction of a dacha house or carvingartworks in their garage workshops

It seems likely that the number of dachas and recre-ational garage cooperatives must be well above 10000in a place like Novyi Urengoy This is the recreationalaspect be it in a garage or a dacha that prevails inplaces such as Novyi Urengoi Nadym and Pangody morethan for example in Murmansk and Yakutsk On thewest Siberian permafrost not only is the average materialaffluence of people higher but the conditions for growingplants are also harsher However during fieldwork somepeople were also planting potatoes on their dacha plotsin Novyi Urengoi on soil that was shipped 1000s ofkilometres lsquos zemleirsquo to the north because no potatowould grow on the sandy ground on the permafrost inthat area

In more cases however the whole dimension of adacha as partial subsistence supply is missing in north-west Siberia There the intimate physical engagement ofpeople with the land is mostly through picking mush-rooms and berries Some may embark on hunting orfishing trips from their garages or dachas In this respect adacha without a garden plot the gathering of male friendsin somebodyrsquos garage at the outskirts of town or in forestcabins all have a similar recreational aspect

Gender mobility and place in dacha orientationsOne might argue that this recreational aspect of dacha lifeis highly gender-specific typical ways of men spendingtheir time off work are sitting together outdoors drinkingbeer or stronger alcoholic beverages telling stories aboutonersquos fishing and hunting adventures going together tosauna frying meat and sausages and collective relaxingof the hectic work and city life [otvesti dushu] We wouldargue that this is a stereotype with the famous kernel oftruth Surely joint drinking and sauna are more associatedwith men than women in public opinion but much ofthe fieldwork indicates that women are also often vitallyincluded in the recreational aspects of dacha as a way oflife as well as men are part of dacha as a subsistenceactivity After all it is mostly men in the north who areinvolved in ordering and bringing the soil from the souththat is needed to grow potatoes and other plants on the

permafrost That soil has to be unloaded from trucksdistributed on the dacha plot prepared for the growingseason the potatoes have to be regularly dug over andmany other activities

The main difference between a dacha with gardenplot and one for leisure time is the extent to which theformer lsquobindsrsquo their owners physically to the place in thegrowing season People who are serious about cultivatingsomething on their dacha cannot really afford to leave forextended holidays as their compatriots with pure leisure-time dachas may do The garden requires care duringthree seasons of the year at least spring summer andautumn Absences of several months that are typical fornorthern labour migrants become much more difficult toorganise with such a dacha-commitment in the northThis means that such people will spend less time in thesouth at their places of origin As a result of their practicalengagement with the northern land and their graduallsquoalienationrsquo from a distant south their attachment to thenorth increases This may seem a rather abstract conclu-sion and we agree with Khlinovskaya Rockhill (2010)that real life is not organised into those dichotomies thatwe create in our minds Northerners do not forget theirbelonging to their places of origin either nor do onlythose without northern dachas visit the south But indeedseveral informants in our project emphasised that mostlythose with a strong relation to the northern place bother tohave a garden plot dacha The evolving of dacha places istherefore both a sign of increased belonging to the northamong inhabitants as well as of uninterrupted presencethere Dacha places as garden plots are therefore moredifficult to combine with the transient livelihoods thatwere thought to be typical for industrial workers whowould spend all their summers lsquoat homersquo in the south orwork on a fly infly out working plan Recreational dachasare therefore better suited for a way of life that involvesmultiple geographic localities throughout the year

In this respect large parts of the Russian populationare migratory between their urban life in autumn winterand spring and their dacha life in summer The dachaas home for the entire summer enables people to moveback to the earth regularly This move which is a way forthe urban population to preserve their rural roots sinceurbanisation is a rather recent tendency in Russia Whilein the 1930s there were hardly any significant cities inthe Russian north 80 years later more than 80 of thepopulation lives in cities in most of the northern regionsnamely 92 in Murmansk Oblast and 83 in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug In Russia altogether 74 ofthe population lived in cities in 2010 (Russia PopulationCensus 2010) This is the background on which the dachamovement caught up in Russia

From dacha to year-round suburban villagesThe notion of the dacha as summer home adds a di-mension of mobility and seasonality to life in the north-ern industrial city Many incomers have dachas at theirplaces of origin The popularity of dacha settlements in

10 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Murmansk Oblast and west Siberia as well as Yakutskwith its longer dacha history testifies this where manypeople stay for their entire summer on their dacha Thedacha as summer home is particularly important in thenorth among all those who do not have expressed attach-ments to other places outside of the region Paradoxicallymost of the northerners who keep connections to theplaces of origin in the south do so through spending thesummer holidays there in the south although it wouldseem to make much more sense to leave the north for thewinter Thus we have seen so far that dacha places bydefinition are seasonally limited to the warmer times ofthe year The whole point of having a dacha in the northwas to have an alternative place to move to when peoplewant to be closer to the earth and have more creativefreedom in place-making than they could ever have inan Arctic socialist city with strict efficiency planning andzoning

In our three case sites of Kirovsk-Apatity (MurmanskRegion) Novyi Urengoy (Yamal) and Yakutsk (SakhaYakutia) we can see however how this clear cut un-derstanding of dacha versus city life is gradually beingblurred

The dacha as a place for summer recreation graduallygets redefined as a place for year-round inhabitationenacting onersquos freedom in individual houses closer to theland rather than apartment blocks In expanding citieslike Novyi Urengoi Surgut and Yakutsk dacha settle-ments where people used to spend time only in summergradually turn into suburban areas with individual housesfor the affluent for year-round permanent inhabitation

Maybe the time has come to depart from the idea ofhousing only in apartment blocks in our city Peoplewant to live on their own now Itrsquos good the admin-istration is considering to give plots out on the fieldfor individual construction now (Ivan Avramenkopersonal communication 17 June 2013)

There is a technological demographic-economic andsocial aspect of such developments firstly new construc-tion technologies autonomous heating septic tanks andheat insulation have made it possible for house owners toestablish permanent year-round housing on their dachaplaces Secondly the high immigration into expandingArctic cities because of extractive industries has led torising real estate prices on a now free market in thesetowns where previously all housing was owned by thestate or the single industrial company in town Theseinstitutions stopped building new apartment blocks andhouse construction became a commodity In this situationbuilding a permanent house also for winter (zimnii vari-ant) on a dacha plot becomes a possibility for peopleto solve their housing problem or improve their housingconditions This is a widespread tendency in regions suchas Sergelyakh in Yakutsk Chernorechenski in Surgut orSeveryanin in Novyi Urengoy with prices easily reachingbetween 1000 and 3000 EURm2 Thirdly individualfreedom has become more important in northern citiesPeople are not ready to sacrifice and postpone their

pursuit of a comfortable life to a future in the south Theexperience of perestroika has shown them that they cannever be sure if that will ever come This social changeunderlies the tendency of dachas becoming permanenthomes people want to live in the North in their houseshere and now and not only during the short summer

I did not succeed to look around and Irsquom 50 yearsalready I came here with 25 So what would I livemy life in some next life Maybe not Thatrsquos whyI think dachas ndash this is concretely the way forwardin Novyi Urengoi One has to live today in goodconditions and allow people in this way to realisesome of their wishes for recreation We have nowthe means to create this (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2008)

This is interesting as she had the post of lead city-planning architect in Novyi Urengoy in the early 2000sand thus witnessed herself the change of the approach tolife in the Arctic city As much as she advocated on aprofessional level centralised housing-planning as muchshe was privately beautifully describing how important itis for her and her neighbours to be close to the land ontheir dachas

This apparent contradiction comes from the substan-tial difference it makes for the organisation of city spacewhen individual year-round housing is encouraged andwhen it is not In both Novyi Urengoi and Yakutsk thisis exemplified by the presence or absence of a formaladdress A formal address starts with a transfer of thelegal category of the land from a lsquorecreational zonersquowhich is what dacha cooperative territories are legallyinto a part of the lsquohousing zonersquo of the city A city officialfrom Novyi Urengoy explains that the status of the landwill not change even though more individuals build theirhouses according to the zimnyi variant for year round useThe reason is that this would entail lsquocertain obligationsrsquoby the municipality These are for example access to mu-nicipal electricity rubbish collection street maintenancepublic transport postal and internet services schoolshealthcare police stations and all other aspects of muni-cipal services While in Yakutsk entire neighbourhoods ofdachas are being transformed into regular suburbs with allservices In some municipalities such as Novyi Urengoithere is resistance to these obligations

You canrsquot turn this city into this settlement patternabout which we talk ndash go back to the land Inprinciple how can one live and extract gas when Ihave to think where I find firewood for heating myautonomous device Let the dear gentleman replyto this question[ ] You have to create a structurewhich would supply the citizens Otherwise how willhe do it Feed wood to an oven We donrsquot have foresthere [in the tundra] (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2007)

This means that such individual permanent houseswill not have official postcodes nor streetnames andnumbers lsquoalthough within the dacha cooperatives forpeoplersquos comfort and orientation they give names for the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 11

drivewaysrsquo (Vladimir Nuykin personal communica-tion19 May 2013)

Much but not all individual year round housing innorthern industrial cities is constructed on dacha territor-ies This transforms the character of dacha places gradu-ally into a more urban atmosphere These tendenciesfrom the regions not only in the Arctic but all over Russiahave now made their way up to the Federal Russianpolitical discussion the government and parliament arein favour of adopting a law allowing people officiallyto register on their dacha places as permanent residentsIt remains unclear as of 2014 if such new permanentresidents then have to pay regular housing tax for theirdacha-houses and plots as these developments are newand this tax would be under regional or municipal controlPremier Medvedev admitted that this would legalise analready established de facto year round inhabitation ondacha plots by many people (RIA Novosti (Moscow)5 August 2013)

This process is seen by some long-time dacha inhab-itants as the disappearance of dachas (dachi izcheznut)On the other hand one can say that the spirit of dachaplaces expands to a year-round quality of life withthe recreational aspects the individual freedom in placecreation and the being close to the land included So theurban built environment gradually acquires more ruraltraits One significant consequence of this developmentis that seasonality and the rhythm of moving betweencity and dacha places on the outskirts gets lost as theborders between the two become blurred This is ex-actly the opposite of what happens in many villages inthe Russian Arctic and also the Finnish North whichturn gradually from permanent villages into summersettlements as services and social infrastructure closedown Nakhshina (2013) describes this process in herethnography of encounters between seasonal and per-manent dwellers of Kuzomenrsquo a village in Murmanskregion

We argue here that both these tendencies are intercon-nected the more people leave villages to live in citiesthe more permanent houses will be built in those cities onpreviously unbuilt territory Analysing a recent article onthe future planning of Yakutsk it became very clear howthe city will become more rural-looking within its urbanzone as it will be surrounded by a number of suburbswith individual houses that will form with the city centretogether the lsquoMini-Moscowrsquo as the authors call it (Yak-utsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013 301 9)A team of Yakutsk-based regional researchers envisagesthat by 2032 the city population will live just outside thecentre lsquoin well-equipped low-rise houses on their ownplots with not less than 1000m2 garages for 2 cars and thenecessary high quality social infrastructure in the vicinity[ ] and a journey to work of not more than 30 minutesrsquo(Yakutsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013301 9) According to that plan the territories for suchfuture suburbs will be those currently allocated for dachaplots

This shows that the move from the seasonality ofdacha places to the permanence of suburban settlementsin the Russian Arctic is a bottom-up movement that hasarisen from the individual practices of dacha-creatorsdescribed in Nakhshina and Razumovarsquos (2009) articleThis movement has now arrived in the halls of power ofmunicipal administrations that have to deal with such newrealities and the increased municipal obligations relatedto them The former Novyi Urengoy chief architect de-scribed this dilemma

Originally historically the individual house exempli-fies the Russian person What was bad in this [Soviet]period In our life here in these modern cities therewas no such concept of onersquos own house but it isnow back coming back at this very time But it wouldbe wrong now in the setting of Novyi Urengoi toallow the development of individual construction Itwould be a mistake because the city was originallynot designed for that Yes the question of individualconstruction was put to me as the chief architect veryseriously They simply put pressure on me [Allow-ing] it is a compromise (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication) 28 September 2007)

Based on statements like this we argue that the northernpopulation had realised that they cannot hope for someall-caring state to increase their living standard in Arcticcities Instead they took their own initiative and createdfaits accomplis Officials could not ignore this movementtowards the land anymore and had to take individualyear-round house planning based on dacha places intoconsideration

Life beyond industrial work in the north

What unites all types of dachas and the permanent houseson dacha plots and garage cooperatives is that theseplaces are created by people wanting to spend theirprivate life and their free time in the north This is anextension of the original idea of northern industrial city-development in which people were induced to moveexclusively for working Our informants express clearlythis tendency towards more of a lsquolifersquo dimension of theirnorthern existence Gone are the early days of northernindustrial city development in which many said theydid not bother to furnish their apartments properly haveproper dishes eat out of cans and saved everythingfor the future This Soviet approach of being tempor-arily in the Arctic described by Khlinovskaya Rockhill(2010) turns Yurchakrsquos famous book title lsquoEverythingwas forever until it was no morersquo (2005) upside downinto lsquoEverything was temporary until it became foreverrsquoThe discovery of the north by incomers and their des-cendants not only as a place of work but a place of lifenecessarily changes the intensity of residentsrsquo relations totheir built natural and social environment The evolutionof dachas and of individual permanent housing is alogical consequence of this development

12 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

We have shown that the typical dacha with a gardenplot and a summer house has a clearly seasonal characterand with few exceptions people do not spend much timethere in winter However as their presence in the northbecomes less seasonal and their involvement with thenorthern land more intensive signs of permanent livingon dacha places increase In such cases the former dachatransforms to a hybrid of summer place close to thenatural environment and permanent housing close to thecity

It is in this microcosm of their own plots wherenortherners with southern origin can enact their intensiveindividual engagement with the land using their creativeand productive potential in free decision making Weagree with Nakhshina and Razumova (2009) that dachasreflect the individual freedom and creativity of the plotowners This freedom is crucial as a counterbalance totheir work in the north that has always been a part ofa larger development project for a country-wide com-munity It is alongside the physical engagement withthe land a crucial factor characterising the particularhuman-environment relation that dacha people haveDacha owners create on their plots material expressionsof their own individual character and biography In thelife histories recorded during fieldwork in 2007ndash2010 wesee how lifelines connect southern places of origin andnorthern places that have become home They becomeintertwined in the dacha places that combine a moresouthern agricultural logic with garden plots plantsvegetables and a northern approach to nature in whichberry picking hunting and fishing as recreational andsubsistence activity are very important

We can interpret on the dacha plots these intertwinedlines through the construction materials used an aspectalso covered in the publication by Nakhshina and Razu-mova (2009) Somebody who works for example in aconcrete factory or has friends who do so is more likelyto use various leftovers or otherwise acquired items ofthat kind of production on their dachas although usuallydachas would be built of wood in a countryside villagestyle (Fig 6) Some dacha plots are very elaborate in per-fect order decorated with love for every detail whereasothers focus more on the functionality take the growingof food very seriously as they or their relatives may havedone in their places of origin in the south Or they mayjust use the dacha plot for planting flowers and as a baseto gather hunt and fish in the northern landscape sur-rounding the dachas in cases where industrial expansionhas left space for such practices This individual freedomof creating a place of onersquos own preference is somethingthat people cannot enjoy in their city There they livein apartment blocks planned and built by somebody elsefollowing a collective ideology with the goal of efficientorganisation of work and life

This combination of onersquos southern mirror image ofhome and components stemming from onersquos northern lifeand work lets the dacha appear almost as a physical ne-cessity how else could people express this other dimen-

sion of homeness and placehood that goes beyond livingfor the sake of working in an industrial city until reachingthe age of retirement Therefore dacha can become butnot always is a sign of increased attachment of onersquosnorthern place of life which was not originally thoughtfor long-term inhabitation by incomers But differentfrom the indigenous hunter or gatherer the attachmenthere is not to the natural environment with minimalfootprint but to onersquos self-created place that combineselements of onersquos southern origin the northern place ofwork and the local climate In most cases the relationshipof people to their dacha places is reciprocal It com-plements the idea of the lsquogiving environmentrsquo that weknow from hunter-gatherer societies (Bird-David 1990)in which a sentient environment offers its resources tothe hunter who shows respect and his knowledge of theplaces through appropriate behaviour (Anderson 2000)

Among northern industrial city inhabitants the self-created dacha place rewards its masterrsquos hard work withgiving back the fruits of the land even though maybeon soil especially imported from the south and put in alayer on top of the permafrost The environment is thusself-created In this respect we cannot necessarily speakof settlers getting closer to natives as is suggested forChukotka in the work of Thompson (2008)

Conclusion

This article has described the development of dachas inArctic Russian industrial cities We took the anthropolo-gical study of Arctic dacha places a step further from asingle region case study as was done previously (Naksh-ina and Razumova 2009 Nakshina 2013 Bolotova 2012)to a comparative approach We acknowledge the diversityand uniqueness of our three field sites and therefore stateahead of our general conclusions that those must not betaken as generalisations and final words but rather asinvitation for further research in this little studied field

The analysis of dacha situations in Arctic cities inthree regions (Apatity-Kirovsk Novyi Urengoy Yak-utsk) leads us to reach the following four main pointsfirstly the Arctic city dacha movement can be seen inpath-dependence to the Soviet working class dachaswhereas the pre-Soviet summer recreational house ideare-surfaces gradually after the immediate post-Sovietperiod Secondly in the Arctic dacha movement theexpression of individual creativity and intensive socialorganisation in collectives do not exclude each otherThirdly we suggest that Arctic dacha settlements andpractices are excellent cases for studying processes ofhuman agency and place creation which grant us deeperinsights in the determinants of peoplersquos relation to theland Fourthly this human agency on the land helps usto understand how urban communities in Arctic Rus-sia change their spatial practices gradually from state-induced inhabitation of compressed dense high-rise con-crete landscapes to village-resembling agglomerations ofsmaller houses close to the land As a consequence the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 13

seasonality of dacha practices gradually gives way to areintroduction of peoplersquos quality of life closer to whatthey call lsquonaturersquo on a permanent year-round basis

What do these four main concluding points tell usIndustrial northerners change the approach to their citiespeople who invest today in a dacha stop seeing them-selves as just working in the north but gradually also startliving there be it temporarily or permanent This showshow the Arctic has become a place to lead a normal lifefor immigrants and their descendants with characteristicsof a normal urban population elsewhere albeit with somespecifics related to seasons climate and permafrost

The increase in development of Arctic dachas asgarden plots arose largely out of economic necessitiesin perestroika but at the same time was a perfect matchwith a deeply Russian approach to the land namelythrough physical agricultural engagement that is focusedon refinement of nature on leaving the human footprintand on adding value The increasing popularity of recre-ational dachas we argued here alongside the blurring ofborders to permanent individual housing areas in Arcticcities is a sign of the end of the post-Soviet periodWe see here the advent of broader trends of mainstreameveryday life in the Arctic with relative affluence andlife-trajectories that are not characterised by a love for theextreme (climate conditions exceptional social fabrics)but for the normal

We have further analysed the dacha as a visual arenafor the interplay between economic and social needsof northerners in the Russian Arctic More than justenabling additional food production in difficult times thedacha is a playground for balancing the freedom of in-dividual creation of place with the deeply social desire toshare experiences with neighbours Dachas are like bookswherein we can read and experience the character pro-fessional biography material wellbeing individual lifestory social status and belonging and preferred practicesof their owners The Arctic dacha cooperative in Russiais a model of self-governance that incorporates the Sovietlegacy of the kollektif while also considering individualcreative freedom in place creation Dacha places arealso a mirror image of the changed balance between theindividual and the collective since the perestroika periodin Arctic Russia late Soviet time dachas were open andvisible while from the late 1990s onwards high fencesbecame the symbols of dachas even in the Arctic wherepeople usually emphasise that collectivity and mutualassistance are life-important

We suggest seeing these developments as a sign of theRussian Arctic becoming a less extreme and more normalplace Rather than a frontier to open up as portrayed in somany popular discourses on Arctic resources the northhas become home for the non-indigenous population thatwas induced by the state to move there While the lsquonative-ness of settlersrsquo (Thompson 2008) or their intensive ad-aptation to the northern nature (Nakshina and Razumova2009) have been emphasised before our material sug-gests that incomer dacha-peoplersquos worldview and relation

to the land in those industrial areas of the Russian north isbased largely on their southern roots and an agriculturallogic Dichotomies are always controversial but we dareto put them forward to inspire more refined analysis inthis direction We argue that industrial city-dwellers anddacha ownersrsquo footprint on the land contributes to prideand identity-building whereas among most indigenousinhabitants peoplersquos embeddedness in the surroundingenvironment with minimal footprint prevails This meansthat the future of the Russian north is one of at leasttwo different modes of dwelling and perceiving the en-vironment both of which involve very intimate relationsbetween people and the land

Acknowledgements

We thank all our friends and collaborators in Apat-ityKirovsk Novyi Urengoy Nadym Pangody and Yak-utsk for their openness and hospitality Funding is grate-fully acknowledged from the research projects BOREASMOVE-INNOCOM funded by the Finnish Academyunder the BOREAS ESF EUROCORES scheme de-cision number 118702 and from the subsequent FinnishAcademy project ORHELIA decision number 251111Moreover the project lsquoThe peoples of the north-eastof the Russian Federation choosing a new adaptivestrategy under conditions of globalisation A social-anthropological approachrsquo Yakutsk (North Eastern Fed-eral) University Russia) contributed funding for thisresearch

ReferencesAnderson D 2000 Identity and ecology in Arctic Siberia the

number one reindeer brigade Oxford Oxford UniversityPress

Bird-David N 1990 The giving environment another perspect-ive on the economic system of gatherer-hunters CurrentAnthropology 31(2) 189ndash96

Bolotova A 2005 Discourses on taiga the state geologists andnature in the Soviet Union In Bammeacute A G Getzinger andB Wieser (editors) Yearbook of the Institute for AdvancedStudies on Science Technology and Society Munich andVienna Profil 25ndash53

Bolotova A 2012 Loving and conquering nature shifting per-ceptions of the environment in the industrialised Russiannorth Europe-Asia Studies 64(4)645ndash671

Bolotova A and F Stammler 2010 How the north becamehome Attachment to place among industrial migrants inMurmansk region In Southcott C and L Huskey (editors)Migration in the circumpolar north issues and contextsEdmonton Alberta Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press(University of Alberta CCI occasional publication 64) 193ndash220

Budaev A 2013 Sovremennye Realii Yakutskogo Agropoi-asa [Modern realities of Yakutian agro-belt] YakutskEkho Stolitsy 43 2160 URL httpwwwexo-yktruarticles244857494 (accessed 24 November 2013)

Crate S 2006 Cows kin and globalization an ethnography ofsustainability Walnut Creek Alta Mira Press

Eilmsteiner-Saxinger G 2013 Auf uns ndash auf euch ndash auf Oumll undGas FernpendlerInnen in der Erdgas- und Erdoumllindustrie im

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 3

Fig 2 (Colour online) Case study sites for Arctic dachas on the background of a permafrost map

soviet geologists (Bolotova 2005) After some years ofwork people were supposed to return where they camefrom to home This is what they thought and what theSoviet state intended for them (Bolotova and Stammler2010 Stammler and Khlinovskaya 2011) After the So-viet Union collapsed it turned out that for many theoption of leaving became unreasonable and temporari-ness became permanent (Stammler 2010 Khlinovskaya-Rockhill 2010) Due to their short history we can tracethrough peoplersquos biographies how dacha construction asexpression of attachment to the north is gaining import-ance in peoplersquos life

Both during and after the Soviet Union decisionmakers are most interested in economic developmentand rationality which figure prominently in both so-viet development-planning for northern industrial cities(Bolotova 2012) as well as in post-soviet northern de-velopment scenarios focusing on fly-infly-out industrial-isation (Eilmsteiner-Saxinger 2013) In both cases peoplewere human resources and care had to be taken for themto the extent that they would do their best for work ratherthan for their needs as persons

The transient workers in monoindustrial Arctic citieswere supposed to do something completely different inthe north than the indigenous population would ever ima-gine extracting resources from under the landrsquos surfaceFor some reindeer herders even sticking a little knifeinto the ground injured the land which has spiritualdimensions

The difference is that while indigenous inhabitants ofthe north exist there because of their adaptive capacity

with their environment incomers seem to be there inspite of the harsh environment Their approach to thenorth is one of maximal footprint on the land ratherthan the minimal footprint idea of the indigenous people(Stammler 2011) We get the impression that the moreincomers to the north change the landscape the prouderthey are about their achievements be it the constructionof huge cities factories infrastructure

Such processes of changing the landscape are alsoevident in the dacha settlements at the fringes of northernmonoindustrial towns A lsquomaximal footprintrsquo approachseems to originate from a very agricultural relation ofpeople to the land Through human intervention be itthrough construction or through cultivating a field theland becomes valuable acquires meaning whereas be-fore human intervention the north is portrayed as beingempty or void of meaning for many incomers (Bolotova2005 Bolotova and Stammler 2010) Sense of belongingamong the northern population with southern originsoften evolves through the creation of a place of onersquos ownfrom an empty space During fieldwork we heard peopleguiding us through industrial cities with pride commentssuch as lsquolook 30 years ago there was nothing but ldquonakedtundrardquo here and now we established a vibrant townrsquo(Yuri Petrovich Kuznetsov personal communication12 February 2010)

The example of Yakutsk shall be used to illustrate thedifferences in which dacha express peoplersquos relations tothe land whereas most of the urban Sakha (ethnic Yakut)use summer homes for living outside and recoveringfrom the dusty dry hot urban concrete environment for

4 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Figs 3a (Colour online) 3b A typical Sakha and typical Russian dacha

incomers with roots in the south dacha becomes thearena for intensive transformation through physical work(intensivnoe osvoenie) Sometimes you can tell fromtwo neighbouring dachas those two different social andcultural worlds In one of them there is a maximum ofopen space and micro-landscape for recreation In theother one you will find plantations for vegetables withnarrow paths between the plant-rows (Figs 3a 3b) Sucha dacha figures in the Nakhshina and Razumova (2009)article as ideal for cultivation

At first glance it would be easy to argue that local andindigenous people follow in Ingoldrsquos (2000 chapter 10)terms a dwelling perspective with minimal physical intru-sion to natural shapes in the landscape whereas industrialincomers from the south have a building perspectivewhere a more physical footprint is considered betterHowever dacha practices confirm what Bolotova (2012649) has argued namely the combination of dwelling andbuilding perspective among urban northerners with rootselsewhere many of them consider their dacha plot as anarena of osvoenie of mastering of adding meaning andvalue The practice of adding such value is through build-ing be it onersquos dacha home onersquos sauna greenhouses orplantation It is material engagement in the environmentthat changes its outer appearance and makes it human-made On the other hand the practice of constructing andchanging the shape of a dacha-plot (uchastok) is verymuch a way of dwelling for the inhabitants In real lifeamong those incomer-northerners the building and dwell-ing perspectives are not as opposed as they might seemwhen reading Ingold (2000 chapter 10) By working ontheir houses on their plantations by digging the groundfor potatoes and other acts of giving their environmentadded human value these incomer-inhabitants exercisepractices of dwelling in the environment

Individual and collective agency in dacha practices

A main organising element of socialist city-space (sots-gorod) is a clear division between work and leisure

industry and lsquonaturersquo The latter acquires within thesocialist city-landscape a function as barrier for industrialpollution (Bolotova 2012 646 660) However in manycases the cities and industrial areas have expanded and inmany places dachas are at the outskirts of town and veryclose to such industrial zones be it airports mineral pro-cessing plants construction material depots or pipelinepumping stations So while lsquonaturersquo in the sotsgorod issupposed to function as a unpopulated pollution sink andgreen belt to protect the city houses from industry theexpansion of dacha places means that now these pollutionsinks and green belts are populated This shows thatdachas are part of the city environment and occupy zonesthat were for various reasons considered unfit for humanyear round inhabitation

While many incomers are attached and proud of thecity they built and live in (Bolotova and Stammler 2010Yakutsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 20139) the urban environment there did not afford them thefreedom to enact their own ideas of turning a non-place(barren land) into a place of their own Whatever physicalconstruction they did in the cities during the Sovietosvoenie was always part of a bigger project by orderof the state or an industrial company even though manyinhabitants identified with such a corporate identity

With perestroika and the increase of individualismin Russia it became possible to some extent even ne-cessary to not only work in northern industrial citiesbut also live and individually engage with the land inthe north Building dachas creating onersquos own place andgrowing food there is one possible way of doing so Thisis why many dacha settlements evolved at the outskirtsof monoindustrial towns from the grassroots sometimeseven to the surprise of the city authorities

Although still part of the city-environment and undercity-territorial administration dachas are not subject tothe same standardised functional planning of buildingsin the industrial city An important attribute of theseplaces is that they allow people to enact their own

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 5

Fig 4 (Colour online) Tik-Guba Apatity

individual creative freedom (Bolotova 2012 664) Thisplace-creation follows closely Ingoldrsquos building perspect-ive (2000 chapter 10) the idea that man changes theappearance of nature through building a house lsquocultivat-ingrsquo the land around it In dacha constructions one can seehow the Soviet building perspective of mastering natureas a collective on the one hand and individual agriculturalbuilding perspective of creating onersquos own place on theother meet at the outskirts of industrial zones Howeverindividual agency is closely regulated even on dachaspaces which are much part of the city as we shall showbelow

Alongside the deeply individual process of creatingonersquos individual place dacha creation is also a funda-mentally social process in Russia Evidence for this maybe found in the very social logic of land allocation bycity administrations for dachas a larger territory fordacha settlements is earmarked as a whole and thenseparated into individual plots of the same size typically6ndash10 lsquosotokrsquo (600ndash1000 m2) This means that the dachaneighbours live in very close vicinity to each other thehouses usually not more than 30 m apart and the plotsbordering one another with no barren land between them(Fig 4) The city authorities transfer the administrationof the plots to cooperatives of plot holders (dachnyi ko-operatif) associations that are responsible for the ordercommon infrastructure utilities and their fees peaceconflict resolution and all other issues on the dacha areathat are common for all plot holders

In late Soviet times the trade unions were re-sponsible for the allocation of land plots for dachasGood locations were given to privileged groups Thetrade union committees acted as extension arms of theSoviet administration which meant that the steeringgroups of dacha cooperatives resembled in personnelthose of committees within industrial enterprises Cor-respondingly the names of many of the early cooper-atives revealed what kind of people were its memberssuch as lsquostroitelrsquo (meaning members of a constructionenterprise) lsquogazovikrsquo (Novyi Urengoi members of gasextraction company) lsquoavtomobilistrsquo (Apatity membersof transport company) lsquovodokanalrsquo (Kirovsk membersof wastewater company) With the development of a realestate market and land having become a commoditythe membership in dacha cooperatives has become morediverse and the names would not tell much about the

Fig 5 (Colour online) Strict leadership style in a dachacooperative in Novyi Urengoi The text reads Announce-ment 15 September at 1400 is the reporting and electingmeeting of the members of the lsquoenthusiastrsquo dacha cooper-ative Also the question of connecting to the electricity grid[will be discussed] Presence of all is mandatory report tothe chairman

background of their members such as lsquoLetnye Yurtyrsquo(Novyi Urengoi) or lsquoSevernoe Sianie (Kirovsk northernlights)

While during Stalinrsquos times members had to leavethe dacha cooperative when they left their job later theycould hold on to their dacha regardless of their employ-ment and forms of social life in these cooperatives arenot as predefined as they were before In some casessuch as in Novyi Urengoi cooperatives self-organisedeven before the city authorities officially earmarked theexact area for the dacha settlement It seems that thisway of organising dacha space corresponds to the deeplysocial idea of a group of Russian people relating to theland Living close by your neighbour is not thought to bea problem unless you are enemies In fact since dachapeople actually spend a lot of time outdoors often there ismore communication with their dacha garden neighboursthan with their neighbours in their apartment blocks in thecities We want to emphasise this deeply social aspect ofdacha livelihood as this aspect is so far underrepresentedin the otherwise so richly argued publication on northerndachas by Nakshina and Razumova (2009)

As the photo shows some cooperatives have a ratherstrict leadership style (Fig 5) maybe inspired by Soviettrade union committee and Komsomol (youth organisa-tion) practices while others are more loose in style

While dacha people may lsquoescapersquo from the city toenact their individual creativity the landscape they runfrom one standardised collective (the industrial city thework environment) to another collective where theypractice social control by having to make compromisesin their freedom for the benefit of their (dacha) collect-ive The difference may be that in the industrial citydecisions about the creation of place are not made by theresidents themselves whereas in dacha settlements the

6 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Fig 6 (Colour online) Dacha built of concrete blocks inTik-Guba Apatity

members have more decision making power over howtheir assigned plot can look Rather than seeing dachasas mostly an expression of peoplersquos individuality and theindividual adaptation of southern migrants (Nakhshinaand Razumova 2009) we take their argument further byfinding a combined expression between the individualand the social dimension in the Russian northern dachaplaces which also combine the idea of the city withelements of lsquonaturersquo It is this collectivity that is the maindifference of the dacha from the idea of for example theFinnish summer cottage (Fig 6)

Cityscape and lsquowild naturersquo in peoplersquos summerhome narratives

Although Bolotova (2012 662) also considers industrialpeoplersquos activities further away from the city she con-ceives both the activities in remote forests and suburbandachas as practices in nature outside the city IndeedArctic industrial city dwellers often define lsquonaturersquo asspace outside town not regulated by the standardisedSoviet city planning In light of the tight organisation ofdacha collectives we would slightly rectify this statementas dacha is so much part of the city-environment andhuman-made engineered surroundings

As such this is very different from peoplersquos cabins inthe forest This is why Bolotova distinguishes differentlsquonaturesrsquo paraphrasing Macnaghten and Urry (1998) Forexample 81 year old Valentin Ivanov in Nadym (westSiberia) has a very different approach to the environmentfrom the dacha people He talked with pride about hisremote cabin in the forest that is far away from anyother man-made structure where he fishes and picks thegifts of nature with his wife lsquoI take the gun with meonly because of the bear He is the master of the taigabut for scaring away this is neededrsquo (Valentin Ivanovpersonal communication 1 April 2008) An importantcharacteristic of this place for him is its distance verymuch unlike a dacha locality with all the close neighbourrelations He would not call his forest cabin 100 km away

from Nadym a dacha Ivanov intimately knows that forestplace and his narratives of being there convey a mix ofadventure and meditation

The difference between these two recreational placescity-scape and lsquowildrsquo nature becomes evident when com-paring Ivanovrsquos narrative to that of the dacha-dwellerwho perceived the forest surrounding his dacha as anextension of his living room where he walks wearing hisslippers In an extended forest-living room you wouldneither have the idea of respecting other masters suchas the bear nor take a gun along for your own safetyOn the other hand Ivanovrsquos idea is also different from anindigenous perception in which the taiga would be homeand people would move in the environment for huntingand herding rather than recreational fishing and pickingWe suggest a clear distinction between dacha places ofindustrial workers close to their cities and remote forestdestinations of the fewer experts fishers and pickersand leisure time hunters In other words forest cabinsare no dachas because they lack the cooperative socialcomponent Other than in dacha places with forest cabinswe can also hardly find a lsquobuilding perspectiversquo Ivanovwas clear about leaving as little footprint as possible withhis cabin in the otherwise unchanged environment

Forms and orientation of dachas in the Russian north

This section illustrates the diverse practices that havealways been part of dacha life in different combinationsNakshina and Razumova (2009) introduce as motivationsfor establishing dachas in the Murmansk region economicand recreational reasons In many cases dachas are placesfor recreation as well as garden plots for subsistenceAnother important component is seasonal mobility ofthe population (see above) In the most recent cases inRussia an additional component of permanent habitationchanges significantly the meaning of dacha which thenloses its character as a refuge from industrial city life thenotion of peace of mind and recovery

The garden plot subsistence dachaThe classical form of dacha in Soviet Russia that wasimported to the north is first and foremost a garden plotin which the individual or family is free to cultivate andgrow as much as their own skills and the climate allowMoreover they enjoy the freedom to build a house onthat plot that can be anything from an extended shed forgardening tools to a full-fledged summer house that couldpossibly even developed for year-round inhabitation (seeend of article) Just as in the industrial city and verydifferent from indigenous northernersrsquo life in the north-ern dachas everything is imported from the south fromconstruction materials tools equipment and greenhousematerials to seeds and sometimes even soil By using thisimported material these people create their own importedmicrocosm on the northern permafrost as they may haveit in their own imagination that is influenced by theirpast experience from their places of origin Many dacha

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 7

people become very ambitious in creating these mirrorimages of the south in what they first perceive as a harshnorthern frontier (see Nakhshina and Razumova 2009Figs 3ndash5)

Murmansk Oblast is a northern region with a verystrong dacha movement in which the garden plot dacha isa dominant category In spite of its northern latitude theregion has a relatively mild climate and no permafrostwhich makes growing plants less problematic Moreoverthe Murmansk region has been with its post-Soviet out-migration and industrial decline in an economically moredifficult situation in comparison to west Siberia (Nuykina2011) or Yakutia This made growing onersquos own foodan economic necessity for many given the low salariesand pensions in the region There is numerical evidencefor this from Heleniakrsquos (2010) comparative researchwhich shows the far northwest and the far northeast asregions with most economic decline outmigration andnegative demographic tendencies For people in Mur-mansk region this development made it not only possiblebut in some cases necessary to work on the land inorder to get fresh vegetables and fruits It is this aspectthat is prominent in Nakshinarsquos and Razumovarsquos (2009)explanation for the evolution of what they call lsquodachaculturersquo The garden plot dachas in Murmansk Oblast aremore elaborate than in Yamal-Nenets Okrug where mostpeople are more affluent and growing conditions on thepermafrost are harsher The early history of immigrationinto the Murmansk north shows that many incomerscame from a rural agricultural background (Bolotova andStammler 2010) Not only were they not used to an urbanlife (Nakshina and Razumova 2009 418) amidst greyconcrete blocks they were also familiar with working theland According to Salimova (2011 8) in the early 1930s91 of the forced relocatees to Kirovsk were peasantsTheir expertise was used to establish a sovkhoz a Sovietstate farm on the shore of Lake Imandra to feed theindustrial workers of Kirovsk That sovkhoz lsquoindustriarsquois considered the cradle of Apatity village which later inthe 1960s would become a mineral resource extractiontown which soon outgrew Kirovsk

However this organised Soviet agricultural activityto feed industry workers of monoindustrial cities in thenorth is very different from dacha subsistence plotswhich were not foreseen in the development plans forindustrial cities (Bolotova 2012)

The main economic rationale for the evolution ofdachas in the Arctic was the idea of additional foodsupply in times of defitsit lack of supply Towards theend of the Soviet period more and more food itemswere in defitsit Moreover dacha people emphasisedthe notion of freshness beyond economic considerationsFresh vegetables from onersquos own garden were the onlypossibility to get access to fresh plant-based food asimported food from the south would not be fresh by thetime it arrived in the shops In this respect the importanceof onersquos dacha plot is much more than economical asfreshness is not something that money can buy Fresh

local food is also known to be a source of place-basedidentification of people as Weiss (2011) has shown wellbeyond the Arctic in rural USA In the Russian northlocal fresh dacha food is a source of great pride

As the example quoted above from Yakutsk illus-trates the notion of dacha used as a place to intensivelywork (intensivnoe osvoenie) and open up the land canbe interpreted as non-indigenous incomers enacting theirrelations to the environment as Nakhshina and Razu-mova (2009) and Bolotova (2012) show In addition tothat since these dacha owners are all Soviet industrialmigrants to the Arctic or their descendants there isan obvious parallel in the approach to dacha osvoeniewith the official Soviet idea of osvoenie that meant theconquest of nature adding meaning and usefulness tootherwise empty and senseless space

It was not until the 1980s and perestroika that north-ern industrial settlers started seeing dachas as places at-taching them to their northern places of residence ratherthan to their southern places of origin The possibilityto establish onersquos own place outside of the city waslike a return back to the earth for people with roots inthe arable south after a long break living in concretehousing blocks It was the return to a situation in whichowners could enact their agricultural engagement withthe land that had been identity-forming for many of theirancestors

The comparably soft climate and absence of per-mafrost soils definitely makes cultivation easier than inSiberia as well as construction Engaging with the north-ern land on an individual basis through building dachasand growing food there became a realistic alternative toleaving the north to some dacha in the south every year

On the other hand the example of Yakutsk showsthat garden-plot dachas are also possible and popular onpermafrost While dachas have a long history in Yakutskfor the intelligentsia and the party elites (see above)it was in the 1960s and 1970s that Yakutsk becamean administrative centre for diamond and gold miningIncoming workers established dachas as garden plotsWith the short but hot and humid summer cultivatingfruits and vegetables became widespread Water melonshoney melons and other non-northern plants successfullygrown on those dachas are a source of particular prideYakutsk suffered from economic decline too albeit lessthan the Murmansk region Shortage and lack of moneyto buy food even when it was for sale made people in bothplaces focus more on growing their food on their dachasThis is also because of the widespread collapse of Rus-sian agriculture that made the north entirely dependenton imported food or subsistence production As a resultpastures and agricultural land was abandoned In Yakutsksome of that land is now occupied by dacha plots (Budaev2013)

In both Murmansk and Yakutsk one might think thatthe importance of garden plot dachas would decreaseas people become more affluent and the supply systemfor imported food is stable However while several

8 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

informants have mentioned that their children and grand-children are no longer motivated to help on the dachaplot the reputation of local food has become muchstronger reflecting a worldwide trend well summarisedby Holt and Amilien (2007) This is why even north ofthe Arctic Circle there is a continued demand for peopleworking the land above the permafrost and apparentlymany of those who do not have their own dacha plots arehappy to pay a higher price for food produced by localfarms

Recreational dachasIn northwest Siberiarsquos gas cities the idea of dacha placesand individualrsquonaya zastroika territories covered by in-dividual construction was still somewhat alien and un-suitable for the harsh climate when our fieldwork startedamong the city dwellers in 2007 The idea of dachas wasinspired by the Soviet idea of garden subsistence plotsin central Russia Recreational dachas even pre-dated theSoviet Union and were then taken on by intelligentsiaand party elites in the north early on for example inYakutsk Arctic industrial cities however were seen asplaces to work not to live which is why there was nodacha construction planned there

After the Soviet Union and the post-perestroika crisissome people have become rather affluent and can affordto keep a dacha just for a change from city-life Thephysical need to grow onersquos own food decreased and freshfood became available even in markets in the north Nowmore people keep a dacha exclusively for spending theirfree time without growing anything on the plot Suchdachas are appreciated as a change from the standardisedapartment block to onersquos self-built or self-planned houseMost such dachas will have a sauna (Fig 1) From shortinterviews and living on dacha places and individualhouses in Novyi Urengoy Nadym and Pangody it seemsthat people would not sacrifice their yearly summerholiday somewhere lsquoon the landrsquo (na zemle) in the southjust because they would care for their dacha plants on thepermafrost In peoplersquos narratives there the idea of livingin the here and now has become much more prominentlsquoWe donrsquot want to eat out of cans and sit on cardboardboxes anymore just to save our life for the future Wewant to live here now in the north as well as maybe onthe land (na zemle) laterrsquo (Galina Konechnaia personalcommunication 27 March 2008) Recreational dachas inindustrial cities can therefore be understood as a sign ofincomers having arrived at an understanding of the northas their place of life to which they feel attached Howeveras Khlinovskaya Rockhill (2010) and Stammler (2010)showed this does not mean that people necessarily planto live their entire life there In the emerging dachamovement of Arctic industrial cities a dacha is thereforealso seen as an investment that can bring good returns incase the owners decide to sell it and return to their placesof origin

Novyi Urengoy shall serve as an example of thismovement The city was planned as a monoindustrial gas

town initially consisting of temporary living containers(bochki) and wooden barracks in the late 1970s and laterof Soviet style concrete blocks for Gazprom workersand their support industry Individual houses and dachaswere not part of the city plan not even after the SovietUnion as Novyi Urengoyrsquos then chief architect AllaLyaskovskaya confirmed The first dachas were builttowards the end of the 1990s after planned apartmentblocks were not constructed Then people lobbied forpermission to build individual houses in the growing cityin order to have somewhere to live But all they could getwas land allocated for recreational purposes

Yuri Plotnikov was among the pioneers of the recre-ational dacha movement there the first one who built adacha house with all amenities such as water electricityheating He proudly states lsquoWhen I came up with the ideato build myself a house outside of town people in the cityadministration looked down at me and said I was crazyBut then all sorts of people wanted to do the samersquo (YuriPlotnikov personal communication 23 September 2007)When Plotnikov sold his dacha because of his move toMoscow in 2009 he got 10 times the US dollars pricethat he had invested in the early 2000s By then dacha andindividual housing had become a big movement Moreand more space was appropriated for dachas between theurban living zone and industrial zones of Novyi UrengoiThe purpose of these dachas was mainly recreational

You have to give people the possibility of spendingtheir leisure time actively My husband is totally intothat on our dacha He is a real master and loves doingeverything himself [ ] Look in the city we havehere everything in monochrome (Alla Lyaskovskayapersonal communication 28 September 2007)The first [the dachas] were only containers wherepeople would go for barbeque Then the first flowerbeds appeared then some greenhouses and peoplebuilt themselves saunas And then later also suburbancottages and some even real concrete houses Nownot only those with the big money build but also inlsquoeconomy classrsquo ndash everybody according to his wallet(Vladimir Nuykin personal communication 19 May2013)

These processes led Novyi Urengoi with a population of115000 to have approximately 10000 dacha plots ofwhich as of 2013 40 have proper houses on themwhile another 20 are just allocated but still untouchedand the remainder is used as plots without buildings

However this number does not seem to include an-other form of recreational territory in the monoindustrialcity namely garage cooperatives These are organisedsimilarly to dacha cooperatives and the male recreationalactivities on both are similar people meet there forbarbecue The garages are many menrsquos pride with elab-orate workshops where they meet and repair all kinds ofequipment such as cars engines boats snowmobiles andthe like Others specialise in their garages on building andconstructing for example furniture and a few even usetheir garage as arts and handicrafts ateliers One such case

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 9

is Viktor Seliverstov from Novyi Urengoy The formerGazprom driller from Tatarstan came in 1978 to the northat the very start of west Siberian gas development Hehad found a lot of mammoth tusks during his travels onthe gas fields and started carving figures out of themHe took that so seriously that he got deeply involved innorthern indigenous symbolism cosmology and handi-craft and developed skills to the extent that his mammothcreations are nowadays in high demand by Gazpromleadership who give them as presents to VIP guestsSeliverstov did all this in his garage where he regularlyassembles the creative intelligentsia for intellectual andphilosophical discussions

Seliverstov exemplifies how people combine creativ-ity with recreation in their life in monoindustrial citiesbe it through construction of a dacha house or carvingartworks in their garage workshops

It seems likely that the number of dachas and recre-ational garage cooperatives must be well above 10000in a place like Novyi Urengoy This is the recreationalaspect be it in a garage or a dacha that prevails inplaces such as Novyi Urengoi Nadym and Pangody morethan for example in Murmansk and Yakutsk On thewest Siberian permafrost not only is the average materialaffluence of people higher but the conditions for growingplants are also harsher However during fieldwork somepeople were also planting potatoes on their dacha plotsin Novyi Urengoi on soil that was shipped 1000s ofkilometres lsquos zemleirsquo to the north because no potatowould grow on the sandy ground on the permafrost inthat area

In more cases however the whole dimension of adacha as partial subsistence supply is missing in north-west Siberia There the intimate physical engagement ofpeople with the land is mostly through picking mush-rooms and berries Some may embark on hunting orfishing trips from their garages or dachas In this respect adacha without a garden plot the gathering of male friendsin somebodyrsquos garage at the outskirts of town or in forestcabins all have a similar recreational aspect

Gender mobility and place in dacha orientationsOne might argue that this recreational aspect of dacha lifeis highly gender-specific typical ways of men spendingtheir time off work are sitting together outdoors drinkingbeer or stronger alcoholic beverages telling stories aboutonersquos fishing and hunting adventures going together tosauna frying meat and sausages and collective relaxingof the hectic work and city life [otvesti dushu] We wouldargue that this is a stereotype with the famous kernel oftruth Surely joint drinking and sauna are more associatedwith men than women in public opinion but much ofthe fieldwork indicates that women are also often vitallyincluded in the recreational aspects of dacha as a way oflife as well as men are part of dacha as a subsistenceactivity After all it is mostly men in the north who areinvolved in ordering and bringing the soil from the souththat is needed to grow potatoes and other plants on the

permafrost That soil has to be unloaded from trucksdistributed on the dacha plot prepared for the growingseason the potatoes have to be regularly dug over andmany other activities

The main difference between a dacha with gardenplot and one for leisure time is the extent to which theformer lsquobindsrsquo their owners physically to the place in thegrowing season People who are serious about cultivatingsomething on their dacha cannot really afford to leave forextended holidays as their compatriots with pure leisure-time dachas may do The garden requires care duringthree seasons of the year at least spring summer andautumn Absences of several months that are typical fornorthern labour migrants become much more difficult toorganise with such a dacha-commitment in the northThis means that such people will spend less time in thesouth at their places of origin As a result of their practicalengagement with the northern land and their graduallsquoalienationrsquo from a distant south their attachment to thenorth increases This may seem a rather abstract conclu-sion and we agree with Khlinovskaya Rockhill (2010)that real life is not organised into those dichotomies thatwe create in our minds Northerners do not forget theirbelonging to their places of origin either nor do onlythose without northern dachas visit the south But indeedseveral informants in our project emphasised that mostlythose with a strong relation to the northern place bother tohave a garden plot dacha The evolving of dacha places istherefore both a sign of increased belonging to the northamong inhabitants as well as of uninterrupted presencethere Dacha places as garden plots are therefore moredifficult to combine with the transient livelihoods thatwere thought to be typical for industrial workers whowould spend all their summers lsquoat homersquo in the south orwork on a fly infly out working plan Recreational dachasare therefore better suited for a way of life that involvesmultiple geographic localities throughout the year

In this respect large parts of the Russian populationare migratory between their urban life in autumn winterand spring and their dacha life in summer The dachaas home for the entire summer enables people to moveback to the earth regularly This move which is a way forthe urban population to preserve their rural roots sinceurbanisation is a rather recent tendency in Russia Whilein the 1930s there were hardly any significant cities inthe Russian north 80 years later more than 80 of thepopulation lives in cities in most of the northern regionsnamely 92 in Murmansk Oblast and 83 in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug In Russia altogether 74 ofthe population lived in cities in 2010 (Russia PopulationCensus 2010) This is the background on which the dachamovement caught up in Russia

From dacha to year-round suburban villagesThe notion of the dacha as summer home adds a di-mension of mobility and seasonality to life in the north-ern industrial city Many incomers have dachas at theirplaces of origin The popularity of dacha settlements in

10 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Murmansk Oblast and west Siberia as well as Yakutskwith its longer dacha history testifies this where manypeople stay for their entire summer on their dacha Thedacha as summer home is particularly important in thenorth among all those who do not have expressed attach-ments to other places outside of the region Paradoxicallymost of the northerners who keep connections to theplaces of origin in the south do so through spending thesummer holidays there in the south although it wouldseem to make much more sense to leave the north for thewinter Thus we have seen so far that dacha places bydefinition are seasonally limited to the warmer times ofthe year The whole point of having a dacha in the northwas to have an alternative place to move to when peoplewant to be closer to the earth and have more creativefreedom in place-making than they could ever have inan Arctic socialist city with strict efficiency planning andzoning

In our three case sites of Kirovsk-Apatity (MurmanskRegion) Novyi Urengoy (Yamal) and Yakutsk (SakhaYakutia) we can see however how this clear cut un-derstanding of dacha versus city life is gradually beingblurred

The dacha as a place for summer recreation graduallygets redefined as a place for year-round inhabitationenacting onersquos freedom in individual houses closer to theland rather than apartment blocks In expanding citieslike Novyi Urengoi Surgut and Yakutsk dacha settle-ments where people used to spend time only in summergradually turn into suburban areas with individual housesfor the affluent for year-round permanent inhabitation

Maybe the time has come to depart from the idea ofhousing only in apartment blocks in our city Peoplewant to live on their own now Itrsquos good the admin-istration is considering to give plots out on the fieldfor individual construction now (Ivan Avramenkopersonal communication 17 June 2013)

There is a technological demographic-economic andsocial aspect of such developments firstly new construc-tion technologies autonomous heating septic tanks andheat insulation have made it possible for house owners toestablish permanent year-round housing on their dachaplaces Secondly the high immigration into expandingArctic cities because of extractive industries has led torising real estate prices on a now free market in thesetowns where previously all housing was owned by thestate or the single industrial company in town Theseinstitutions stopped building new apartment blocks andhouse construction became a commodity In this situationbuilding a permanent house also for winter (zimnii vari-ant) on a dacha plot becomes a possibility for peopleto solve their housing problem or improve their housingconditions This is a widespread tendency in regions suchas Sergelyakh in Yakutsk Chernorechenski in Surgut orSeveryanin in Novyi Urengoy with prices easily reachingbetween 1000 and 3000 EURm2 Thirdly individualfreedom has become more important in northern citiesPeople are not ready to sacrifice and postpone their

pursuit of a comfortable life to a future in the south Theexperience of perestroika has shown them that they cannever be sure if that will ever come This social changeunderlies the tendency of dachas becoming permanenthomes people want to live in the North in their houseshere and now and not only during the short summer

I did not succeed to look around and Irsquom 50 yearsalready I came here with 25 So what would I livemy life in some next life Maybe not Thatrsquos whyI think dachas ndash this is concretely the way forwardin Novyi Urengoi One has to live today in goodconditions and allow people in this way to realisesome of their wishes for recreation We have nowthe means to create this (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2008)

This is interesting as she had the post of lead city-planning architect in Novyi Urengoy in the early 2000sand thus witnessed herself the change of the approach tolife in the Arctic city As much as she advocated on aprofessional level centralised housing-planning as muchshe was privately beautifully describing how important itis for her and her neighbours to be close to the land ontheir dachas

This apparent contradiction comes from the substan-tial difference it makes for the organisation of city spacewhen individual year-round housing is encouraged andwhen it is not In both Novyi Urengoi and Yakutsk thisis exemplified by the presence or absence of a formaladdress A formal address starts with a transfer of thelegal category of the land from a lsquorecreational zonersquowhich is what dacha cooperative territories are legallyinto a part of the lsquohousing zonersquo of the city A city officialfrom Novyi Urengoy explains that the status of the landwill not change even though more individuals build theirhouses according to the zimnyi variant for year round useThe reason is that this would entail lsquocertain obligationsrsquoby the municipality These are for example access to mu-nicipal electricity rubbish collection street maintenancepublic transport postal and internet services schoolshealthcare police stations and all other aspects of muni-cipal services While in Yakutsk entire neighbourhoods ofdachas are being transformed into regular suburbs with allservices In some municipalities such as Novyi Urengoithere is resistance to these obligations

You canrsquot turn this city into this settlement patternabout which we talk ndash go back to the land Inprinciple how can one live and extract gas when Ihave to think where I find firewood for heating myautonomous device Let the dear gentleman replyto this question[ ] You have to create a structurewhich would supply the citizens Otherwise how willhe do it Feed wood to an oven We donrsquot have foresthere [in the tundra] (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2007)

This means that such individual permanent houseswill not have official postcodes nor streetnames andnumbers lsquoalthough within the dacha cooperatives forpeoplersquos comfort and orientation they give names for the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 11

drivewaysrsquo (Vladimir Nuykin personal communica-tion19 May 2013)

Much but not all individual year round housing innorthern industrial cities is constructed on dacha territor-ies This transforms the character of dacha places gradu-ally into a more urban atmosphere These tendenciesfrom the regions not only in the Arctic but all over Russiahave now made their way up to the Federal Russianpolitical discussion the government and parliament arein favour of adopting a law allowing people officiallyto register on their dacha places as permanent residentsIt remains unclear as of 2014 if such new permanentresidents then have to pay regular housing tax for theirdacha-houses and plots as these developments are newand this tax would be under regional or municipal controlPremier Medvedev admitted that this would legalise analready established de facto year round inhabitation ondacha plots by many people (RIA Novosti (Moscow)5 August 2013)

This process is seen by some long-time dacha inhab-itants as the disappearance of dachas (dachi izcheznut)On the other hand one can say that the spirit of dachaplaces expands to a year-round quality of life withthe recreational aspects the individual freedom in placecreation and the being close to the land included So theurban built environment gradually acquires more ruraltraits One significant consequence of this developmentis that seasonality and the rhythm of moving betweencity and dacha places on the outskirts gets lost as theborders between the two become blurred This is ex-actly the opposite of what happens in many villages inthe Russian Arctic and also the Finnish North whichturn gradually from permanent villages into summersettlements as services and social infrastructure closedown Nakhshina (2013) describes this process in herethnography of encounters between seasonal and per-manent dwellers of Kuzomenrsquo a village in Murmanskregion

We argue here that both these tendencies are intercon-nected the more people leave villages to live in citiesthe more permanent houses will be built in those cities onpreviously unbuilt territory Analysing a recent article onthe future planning of Yakutsk it became very clear howthe city will become more rural-looking within its urbanzone as it will be surrounded by a number of suburbswith individual houses that will form with the city centretogether the lsquoMini-Moscowrsquo as the authors call it (Yak-utsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013 301 9)A team of Yakutsk-based regional researchers envisagesthat by 2032 the city population will live just outside thecentre lsquoin well-equipped low-rise houses on their ownplots with not less than 1000m2 garages for 2 cars and thenecessary high quality social infrastructure in the vicinity[ ] and a journey to work of not more than 30 minutesrsquo(Yakutsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013301 9) According to that plan the territories for suchfuture suburbs will be those currently allocated for dachaplots

This shows that the move from the seasonality ofdacha places to the permanence of suburban settlementsin the Russian Arctic is a bottom-up movement that hasarisen from the individual practices of dacha-creatorsdescribed in Nakhshina and Razumovarsquos (2009) articleThis movement has now arrived in the halls of power ofmunicipal administrations that have to deal with such newrealities and the increased municipal obligations relatedto them The former Novyi Urengoy chief architect de-scribed this dilemma

Originally historically the individual house exempli-fies the Russian person What was bad in this [Soviet]period In our life here in these modern cities therewas no such concept of onersquos own house but it isnow back coming back at this very time But it wouldbe wrong now in the setting of Novyi Urengoi toallow the development of individual construction Itwould be a mistake because the city was originallynot designed for that Yes the question of individualconstruction was put to me as the chief architect veryseriously They simply put pressure on me [Allow-ing] it is a compromise (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication) 28 September 2007)

Based on statements like this we argue that the northernpopulation had realised that they cannot hope for someall-caring state to increase their living standard in Arcticcities Instead they took their own initiative and createdfaits accomplis Officials could not ignore this movementtowards the land anymore and had to take individualyear-round house planning based on dacha places intoconsideration

Life beyond industrial work in the north

What unites all types of dachas and the permanent houseson dacha plots and garage cooperatives is that theseplaces are created by people wanting to spend theirprivate life and their free time in the north This is anextension of the original idea of northern industrial city-development in which people were induced to moveexclusively for working Our informants express clearlythis tendency towards more of a lsquolifersquo dimension of theirnorthern existence Gone are the early days of northernindustrial city development in which many said theydid not bother to furnish their apartments properly haveproper dishes eat out of cans and saved everythingfor the future This Soviet approach of being tempor-arily in the Arctic described by Khlinovskaya Rockhill(2010) turns Yurchakrsquos famous book title lsquoEverythingwas forever until it was no morersquo (2005) upside downinto lsquoEverything was temporary until it became foreverrsquoThe discovery of the north by incomers and their des-cendants not only as a place of work but a place of lifenecessarily changes the intensity of residentsrsquo relations totheir built natural and social environment The evolutionof dachas and of individual permanent housing is alogical consequence of this development

12 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

We have shown that the typical dacha with a gardenplot and a summer house has a clearly seasonal characterand with few exceptions people do not spend much timethere in winter However as their presence in the northbecomes less seasonal and their involvement with thenorthern land more intensive signs of permanent livingon dacha places increase In such cases the former dachatransforms to a hybrid of summer place close to thenatural environment and permanent housing close to thecity

It is in this microcosm of their own plots wherenortherners with southern origin can enact their intensiveindividual engagement with the land using their creativeand productive potential in free decision making Weagree with Nakhshina and Razumova (2009) that dachasreflect the individual freedom and creativity of the plotowners This freedom is crucial as a counterbalance totheir work in the north that has always been a part ofa larger development project for a country-wide com-munity It is alongside the physical engagement withthe land a crucial factor characterising the particularhuman-environment relation that dacha people haveDacha owners create on their plots material expressionsof their own individual character and biography In thelife histories recorded during fieldwork in 2007ndash2010 wesee how lifelines connect southern places of origin andnorthern places that have become home They becomeintertwined in the dacha places that combine a moresouthern agricultural logic with garden plots plantsvegetables and a northern approach to nature in whichberry picking hunting and fishing as recreational andsubsistence activity are very important

We can interpret on the dacha plots these intertwinedlines through the construction materials used an aspectalso covered in the publication by Nakhshina and Razu-mova (2009) Somebody who works for example in aconcrete factory or has friends who do so is more likelyto use various leftovers or otherwise acquired items ofthat kind of production on their dachas although usuallydachas would be built of wood in a countryside villagestyle (Fig 6) Some dacha plots are very elaborate in per-fect order decorated with love for every detail whereasothers focus more on the functionality take the growingof food very seriously as they or their relatives may havedone in their places of origin in the south Or they mayjust use the dacha plot for planting flowers and as a baseto gather hunt and fish in the northern landscape sur-rounding the dachas in cases where industrial expansionhas left space for such practices This individual freedomof creating a place of onersquos own preference is somethingthat people cannot enjoy in their city There they livein apartment blocks planned and built by somebody elsefollowing a collective ideology with the goal of efficientorganisation of work and life

This combination of onersquos southern mirror image ofhome and components stemming from onersquos northern lifeand work lets the dacha appear almost as a physical ne-cessity how else could people express this other dimen-

sion of homeness and placehood that goes beyond livingfor the sake of working in an industrial city until reachingthe age of retirement Therefore dacha can become butnot always is a sign of increased attachment of onersquosnorthern place of life which was not originally thoughtfor long-term inhabitation by incomers But differentfrom the indigenous hunter or gatherer the attachmenthere is not to the natural environment with minimalfootprint but to onersquos self-created place that combineselements of onersquos southern origin the northern place ofwork and the local climate In most cases the relationshipof people to their dacha places is reciprocal It com-plements the idea of the lsquogiving environmentrsquo that weknow from hunter-gatherer societies (Bird-David 1990)in which a sentient environment offers its resources tothe hunter who shows respect and his knowledge of theplaces through appropriate behaviour (Anderson 2000)

Among northern industrial city inhabitants the self-created dacha place rewards its masterrsquos hard work withgiving back the fruits of the land even though maybeon soil especially imported from the south and put in alayer on top of the permafrost The environment is thusself-created In this respect we cannot necessarily speakof settlers getting closer to natives as is suggested forChukotka in the work of Thompson (2008)

Conclusion

This article has described the development of dachas inArctic Russian industrial cities We took the anthropolo-gical study of Arctic dacha places a step further from asingle region case study as was done previously (Naksh-ina and Razumova 2009 Nakshina 2013 Bolotova 2012)to a comparative approach We acknowledge the diversityand uniqueness of our three field sites and therefore stateahead of our general conclusions that those must not betaken as generalisations and final words but rather asinvitation for further research in this little studied field

The analysis of dacha situations in Arctic cities inthree regions (Apatity-Kirovsk Novyi Urengoy Yak-utsk) leads us to reach the following four main pointsfirstly the Arctic city dacha movement can be seen inpath-dependence to the Soviet working class dachaswhereas the pre-Soviet summer recreational house ideare-surfaces gradually after the immediate post-Sovietperiod Secondly in the Arctic dacha movement theexpression of individual creativity and intensive socialorganisation in collectives do not exclude each otherThirdly we suggest that Arctic dacha settlements andpractices are excellent cases for studying processes ofhuman agency and place creation which grant us deeperinsights in the determinants of peoplersquos relation to theland Fourthly this human agency on the land helps usto understand how urban communities in Arctic Rus-sia change their spatial practices gradually from state-induced inhabitation of compressed dense high-rise con-crete landscapes to village-resembling agglomerations ofsmaller houses close to the land As a consequence the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 13

seasonality of dacha practices gradually gives way to areintroduction of peoplersquos quality of life closer to whatthey call lsquonaturersquo on a permanent year-round basis

What do these four main concluding points tell usIndustrial northerners change the approach to their citiespeople who invest today in a dacha stop seeing them-selves as just working in the north but gradually also startliving there be it temporarily or permanent This showshow the Arctic has become a place to lead a normal lifefor immigrants and their descendants with characteristicsof a normal urban population elsewhere albeit with somespecifics related to seasons climate and permafrost

The increase in development of Arctic dachas asgarden plots arose largely out of economic necessitiesin perestroika but at the same time was a perfect matchwith a deeply Russian approach to the land namelythrough physical agricultural engagement that is focusedon refinement of nature on leaving the human footprintand on adding value The increasing popularity of recre-ational dachas we argued here alongside the blurring ofborders to permanent individual housing areas in Arcticcities is a sign of the end of the post-Soviet periodWe see here the advent of broader trends of mainstreameveryday life in the Arctic with relative affluence andlife-trajectories that are not characterised by a love for theextreme (climate conditions exceptional social fabrics)but for the normal

We have further analysed the dacha as a visual arenafor the interplay between economic and social needsof northerners in the Russian Arctic More than justenabling additional food production in difficult times thedacha is a playground for balancing the freedom of in-dividual creation of place with the deeply social desire toshare experiences with neighbours Dachas are like bookswherein we can read and experience the character pro-fessional biography material wellbeing individual lifestory social status and belonging and preferred practicesof their owners The Arctic dacha cooperative in Russiais a model of self-governance that incorporates the Sovietlegacy of the kollektif while also considering individualcreative freedom in place creation Dacha places arealso a mirror image of the changed balance between theindividual and the collective since the perestroika periodin Arctic Russia late Soviet time dachas were open andvisible while from the late 1990s onwards high fencesbecame the symbols of dachas even in the Arctic wherepeople usually emphasise that collectivity and mutualassistance are life-important

We suggest seeing these developments as a sign of theRussian Arctic becoming a less extreme and more normalplace Rather than a frontier to open up as portrayed in somany popular discourses on Arctic resources the northhas become home for the non-indigenous population thatwas induced by the state to move there While the lsquonative-ness of settlersrsquo (Thompson 2008) or their intensive ad-aptation to the northern nature (Nakshina and Razumova2009) have been emphasised before our material sug-gests that incomer dacha-peoplersquos worldview and relation

to the land in those industrial areas of the Russian north isbased largely on their southern roots and an agriculturallogic Dichotomies are always controversial but we dareto put them forward to inspire more refined analysis inthis direction We argue that industrial city-dwellers anddacha ownersrsquo footprint on the land contributes to prideand identity-building whereas among most indigenousinhabitants peoplersquos embeddedness in the surroundingenvironment with minimal footprint prevails This meansthat the future of the Russian north is one of at leasttwo different modes of dwelling and perceiving the en-vironment both of which involve very intimate relationsbetween people and the land

Acknowledgements

We thank all our friends and collaborators in Apat-ityKirovsk Novyi Urengoy Nadym Pangody and Yak-utsk for their openness and hospitality Funding is grate-fully acknowledged from the research projects BOREASMOVE-INNOCOM funded by the Finnish Academyunder the BOREAS ESF EUROCORES scheme de-cision number 118702 and from the subsequent FinnishAcademy project ORHELIA decision number 251111Moreover the project lsquoThe peoples of the north-eastof the Russian Federation choosing a new adaptivestrategy under conditions of globalisation A social-anthropological approachrsquo Yakutsk (North Eastern Fed-eral) University Russia) contributed funding for thisresearch

ReferencesAnderson D 2000 Identity and ecology in Arctic Siberia the

number one reindeer brigade Oxford Oxford UniversityPress

Bird-David N 1990 The giving environment another perspect-ive on the economic system of gatherer-hunters CurrentAnthropology 31(2) 189ndash96

Bolotova A 2005 Discourses on taiga the state geologists andnature in the Soviet Union In Bammeacute A G Getzinger andB Wieser (editors) Yearbook of the Institute for AdvancedStudies on Science Technology and Society Munich andVienna Profil 25ndash53

Bolotova A 2012 Loving and conquering nature shifting per-ceptions of the environment in the industrialised Russiannorth Europe-Asia Studies 64(4)645ndash671

Bolotova A and F Stammler 2010 How the north becamehome Attachment to place among industrial migrants inMurmansk region In Southcott C and L Huskey (editors)Migration in the circumpolar north issues and contextsEdmonton Alberta Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press(University of Alberta CCI occasional publication 64) 193ndash220

Budaev A 2013 Sovremennye Realii Yakutskogo Agropoi-asa [Modern realities of Yakutian agro-belt] YakutskEkho Stolitsy 43 2160 URL httpwwwexo-yktruarticles244857494 (accessed 24 November 2013)

Crate S 2006 Cows kin and globalization an ethnography ofsustainability Walnut Creek Alta Mira Press

Eilmsteiner-Saxinger G 2013 Auf uns ndash auf euch ndash auf Oumll undGas FernpendlerInnen in der Erdgas- und Erdoumllindustrie im

4 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Figs 3a (Colour online) 3b A typical Sakha and typical Russian dacha

incomers with roots in the south dacha becomes thearena for intensive transformation through physical work(intensivnoe osvoenie) Sometimes you can tell fromtwo neighbouring dachas those two different social andcultural worlds In one of them there is a maximum ofopen space and micro-landscape for recreation In theother one you will find plantations for vegetables withnarrow paths between the plant-rows (Figs 3a 3b) Sucha dacha figures in the Nakhshina and Razumova (2009)article as ideal for cultivation

At first glance it would be easy to argue that local andindigenous people follow in Ingoldrsquos (2000 chapter 10)terms a dwelling perspective with minimal physical intru-sion to natural shapes in the landscape whereas industrialincomers from the south have a building perspectivewhere a more physical footprint is considered betterHowever dacha practices confirm what Bolotova (2012649) has argued namely the combination of dwelling andbuilding perspective among urban northerners with rootselsewhere many of them consider their dacha plot as anarena of osvoenie of mastering of adding meaning andvalue The practice of adding such value is through build-ing be it onersquos dacha home onersquos sauna greenhouses orplantation It is material engagement in the environmentthat changes its outer appearance and makes it human-made On the other hand the practice of constructing andchanging the shape of a dacha-plot (uchastok) is verymuch a way of dwelling for the inhabitants In real lifeamong those incomer-northerners the building and dwell-ing perspectives are not as opposed as they might seemwhen reading Ingold (2000 chapter 10) By working ontheir houses on their plantations by digging the groundfor potatoes and other acts of giving their environmentadded human value these incomer-inhabitants exercisepractices of dwelling in the environment

Individual and collective agency in dacha practices

A main organising element of socialist city-space (sots-gorod) is a clear division between work and leisure

industry and lsquonaturersquo The latter acquires within thesocialist city-landscape a function as barrier for industrialpollution (Bolotova 2012 646 660) However in manycases the cities and industrial areas have expanded and inmany places dachas are at the outskirts of town and veryclose to such industrial zones be it airports mineral pro-cessing plants construction material depots or pipelinepumping stations So while lsquonaturersquo in the sotsgorod issupposed to function as a unpopulated pollution sink andgreen belt to protect the city houses from industry theexpansion of dacha places means that now these pollutionsinks and green belts are populated This shows thatdachas are part of the city environment and occupy zonesthat were for various reasons considered unfit for humanyear round inhabitation

While many incomers are attached and proud of thecity they built and live in (Bolotova and Stammler 2010Yakutsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 20139) the urban environment there did not afford them thefreedom to enact their own ideas of turning a non-place(barren land) into a place of their own Whatever physicalconstruction they did in the cities during the Sovietosvoenie was always part of a bigger project by orderof the state or an industrial company even though manyinhabitants identified with such a corporate identity

With perestroika and the increase of individualismin Russia it became possible to some extent even ne-cessary to not only work in northern industrial citiesbut also live and individually engage with the land inthe north Building dachas creating onersquos own place andgrowing food there is one possible way of doing so Thisis why many dacha settlements evolved at the outskirtsof monoindustrial towns from the grassroots sometimeseven to the surprise of the city authorities

Although still part of the city-environment and undercity-territorial administration dachas are not subject tothe same standardised functional planning of buildingsin the industrial city An important attribute of theseplaces is that they allow people to enact their own

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 5

Fig 4 (Colour online) Tik-Guba Apatity

individual creative freedom (Bolotova 2012 664) Thisplace-creation follows closely Ingoldrsquos building perspect-ive (2000 chapter 10) the idea that man changes theappearance of nature through building a house lsquocultivat-ingrsquo the land around it In dacha constructions one can seehow the Soviet building perspective of mastering natureas a collective on the one hand and individual agriculturalbuilding perspective of creating onersquos own place on theother meet at the outskirts of industrial zones Howeverindividual agency is closely regulated even on dachaspaces which are much part of the city as we shall showbelow

Alongside the deeply individual process of creatingonersquos individual place dacha creation is also a funda-mentally social process in Russia Evidence for this maybe found in the very social logic of land allocation bycity administrations for dachas a larger territory fordacha settlements is earmarked as a whole and thenseparated into individual plots of the same size typically6ndash10 lsquosotokrsquo (600ndash1000 m2) This means that the dachaneighbours live in very close vicinity to each other thehouses usually not more than 30 m apart and the plotsbordering one another with no barren land between them(Fig 4) The city authorities transfer the administrationof the plots to cooperatives of plot holders (dachnyi ko-operatif) associations that are responsible for the ordercommon infrastructure utilities and their fees peaceconflict resolution and all other issues on the dacha areathat are common for all plot holders

In late Soviet times the trade unions were re-sponsible for the allocation of land plots for dachasGood locations were given to privileged groups Thetrade union committees acted as extension arms of theSoviet administration which meant that the steeringgroups of dacha cooperatives resembled in personnelthose of committees within industrial enterprises Cor-respondingly the names of many of the early cooper-atives revealed what kind of people were its memberssuch as lsquostroitelrsquo (meaning members of a constructionenterprise) lsquogazovikrsquo (Novyi Urengoi members of gasextraction company) lsquoavtomobilistrsquo (Apatity membersof transport company) lsquovodokanalrsquo (Kirovsk membersof wastewater company) With the development of a realestate market and land having become a commoditythe membership in dacha cooperatives has become morediverse and the names would not tell much about the

Fig 5 (Colour online) Strict leadership style in a dachacooperative in Novyi Urengoi The text reads Announce-ment 15 September at 1400 is the reporting and electingmeeting of the members of the lsquoenthusiastrsquo dacha cooper-ative Also the question of connecting to the electricity grid[will be discussed] Presence of all is mandatory report tothe chairman

background of their members such as lsquoLetnye Yurtyrsquo(Novyi Urengoi) or lsquoSevernoe Sianie (Kirovsk northernlights)

While during Stalinrsquos times members had to leavethe dacha cooperative when they left their job later theycould hold on to their dacha regardless of their employ-ment and forms of social life in these cooperatives arenot as predefined as they were before In some casessuch as in Novyi Urengoi cooperatives self-organisedeven before the city authorities officially earmarked theexact area for the dacha settlement It seems that thisway of organising dacha space corresponds to the deeplysocial idea of a group of Russian people relating to theland Living close by your neighbour is not thought to bea problem unless you are enemies In fact since dachapeople actually spend a lot of time outdoors often there ismore communication with their dacha garden neighboursthan with their neighbours in their apartment blocks in thecities We want to emphasise this deeply social aspect ofdacha livelihood as this aspect is so far underrepresentedin the otherwise so richly argued publication on northerndachas by Nakshina and Razumova (2009)

As the photo shows some cooperatives have a ratherstrict leadership style (Fig 5) maybe inspired by Soviettrade union committee and Komsomol (youth organisa-tion) practices while others are more loose in style

While dacha people may lsquoescapersquo from the city toenact their individual creativity the landscape they runfrom one standardised collective (the industrial city thework environment) to another collective where theypractice social control by having to make compromisesin their freedom for the benefit of their (dacha) collect-ive The difference may be that in the industrial citydecisions about the creation of place are not made by theresidents themselves whereas in dacha settlements the

6 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Fig 6 (Colour online) Dacha built of concrete blocks inTik-Guba Apatity

members have more decision making power over howtheir assigned plot can look Rather than seeing dachasas mostly an expression of peoplersquos individuality and theindividual adaptation of southern migrants (Nakhshinaand Razumova 2009) we take their argument further byfinding a combined expression between the individualand the social dimension in the Russian northern dachaplaces which also combine the idea of the city withelements of lsquonaturersquo It is this collectivity that is the maindifference of the dacha from the idea of for example theFinnish summer cottage (Fig 6)

Cityscape and lsquowild naturersquo in peoplersquos summerhome narratives

Although Bolotova (2012 662) also considers industrialpeoplersquos activities further away from the city she con-ceives both the activities in remote forests and suburbandachas as practices in nature outside the city IndeedArctic industrial city dwellers often define lsquonaturersquo asspace outside town not regulated by the standardisedSoviet city planning In light of the tight organisation ofdacha collectives we would slightly rectify this statementas dacha is so much part of the city-environment andhuman-made engineered surroundings

As such this is very different from peoplersquos cabins inthe forest This is why Bolotova distinguishes differentlsquonaturesrsquo paraphrasing Macnaghten and Urry (1998) Forexample 81 year old Valentin Ivanov in Nadym (westSiberia) has a very different approach to the environmentfrom the dacha people He talked with pride about hisremote cabin in the forest that is far away from anyother man-made structure where he fishes and picks thegifts of nature with his wife lsquoI take the gun with meonly because of the bear He is the master of the taigabut for scaring away this is neededrsquo (Valentin Ivanovpersonal communication 1 April 2008) An importantcharacteristic of this place for him is its distance verymuch unlike a dacha locality with all the close neighbourrelations He would not call his forest cabin 100 km away

from Nadym a dacha Ivanov intimately knows that forestplace and his narratives of being there convey a mix ofadventure and meditation

The difference between these two recreational placescity-scape and lsquowildrsquo nature becomes evident when com-paring Ivanovrsquos narrative to that of the dacha-dwellerwho perceived the forest surrounding his dacha as anextension of his living room where he walks wearing hisslippers In an extended forest-living room you wouldneither have the idea of respecting other masters suchas the bear nor take a gun along for your own safetyOn the other hand Ivanovrsquos idea is also different from anindigenous perception in which the taiga would be homeand people would move in the environment for huntingand herding rather than recreational fishing and pickingWe suggest a clear distinction between dacha places ofindustrial workers close to their cities and remote forestdestinations of the fewer experts fishers and pickersand leisure time hunters In other words forest cabinsare no dachas because they lack the cooperative socialcomponent Other than in dacha places with forest cabinswe can also hardly find a lsquobuilding perspectiversquo Ivanovwas clear about leaving as little footprint as possible withhis cabin in the otherwise unchanged environment

Forms and orientation of dachas in the Russian north

This section illustrates the diverse practices that havealways been part of dacha life in different combinationsNakshina and Razumova (2009) introduce as motivationsfor establishing dachas in the Murmansk region economicand recreational reasons In many cases dachas are placesfor recreation as well as garden plots for subsistenceAnother important component is seasonal mobility ofthe population (see above) In the most recent cases inRussia an additional component of permanent habitationchanges significantly the meaning of dacha which thenloses its character as a refuge from industrial city life thenotion of peace of mind and recovery

The garden plot subsistence dachaThe classical form of dacha in Soviet Russia that wasimported to the north is first and foremost a garden plotin which the individual or family is free to cultivate andgrow as much as their own skills and the climate allowMoreover they enjoy the freedom to build a house onthat plot that can be anything from an extended shed forgardening tools to a full-fledged summer house that couldpossibly even developed for year-round inhabitation (seeend of article) Just as in the industrial city and verydifferent from indigenous northernersrsquo life in the north-ern dachas everything is imported from the south fromconstruction materials tools equipment and greenhousematerials to seeds and sometimes even soil By using thisimported material these people create their own importedmicrocosm on the northern permafrost as they may haveit in their own imagination that is influenced by theirpast experience from their places of origin Many dacha

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 7

people become very ambitious in creating these mirrorimages of the south in what they first perceive as a harshnorthern frontier (see Nakhshina and Razumova 2009Figs 3ndash5)

Murmansk Oblast is a northern region with a verystrong dacha movement in which the garden plot dacha isa dominant category In spite of its northern latitude theregion has a relatively mild climate and no permafrostwhich makes growing plants less problematic Moreoverthe Murmansk region has been with its post-Soviet out-migration and industrial decline in an economically moredifficult situation in comparison to west Siberia (Nuykina2011) or Yakutia This made growing onersquos own foodan economic necessity for many given the low salariesand pensions in the region There is numerical evidencefor this from Heleniakrsquos (2010) comparative researchwhich shows the far northwest and the far northeast asregions with most economic decline outmigration andnegative demographic tendencies For people in Mur-mansk region this development made it not only possiblebut in some cases necessary to work on the land inorder to get fresh vegetables and fruits It is this aspectthat is prominent in Nakshinarsquos and Razumovarsquos (2009)explanation for the evolution of what they call lsquodachaculturersquo The garden plot dachas in Murmansk Oblast aremore elaborate than in Yamal-Nenets Okrug where mostpeople are more affluent and growing conditions on thepermafrost are harsher The early history of immigrationinto the Murmansk north shows that many incomerscame from a rural agricultural background (Bolotova andStammler 2010) Not only were they not used to an urbanlife (Nakshina and Razumova 2009 418) amidst greyconcrete blocks they were also familiar with working theland According to Salimova (2011 8) in the early 1930s91 of the forced relocatees to Kirovsk were peasantsTheir expertise was used to establish a sovkhoz a Sovietstate farm on the shore of Lake Imandra to feed theindustrial workers of Kirovsk That sovkhoz lsquoindustriarsquois considered the cradle of Apatity village which later inthe 1960s would become a mineral resource extractiontown which soon outgrew Kirovsk

However this organised Soviet agricultural activityto feed industry workers of monoindustrial cities in thenorth is very different from dacha subsistence plotswhich were not foreseen in the development plans forindustrial cities (Bolotova 2012)

The main economic rationale for the evolution ofdachas in the Arctic was the idea of additional foodsupply in times of defitsit lack of supply Towards theend of the Soviet period more and more food itemswere in defitsit Moreover dacha people emphasisedthe notion of freshness beyond economic considerationsFresh vegetables from onersquos own garden were the onlypossibility to get access to fresh plant-based food asimported food from the south would not be fresh by thetime it arrived in the shops In this respect the importanceof onersquos dacha plot is much more than economical asfreshness is not something that money can buy Fresh

local food is also known to be a source of place-basedidentification of people as Weiss (2011) has shown wellbeyond the Arctic in rural USA In the Russian northlocal fresh dacha food is a source of great pride

As the example quoted above from Yakutsk illus-trates the notion of dacha used as a place to intensivelywork (intensivnoe osvoenie) and open up the land canbe interpreted as non-indigenous incomers enacting theirrelations to the environment as Nakhshina and Razu-mova (2009) and Bolotova (2012) show In addition tothat since these dacha owners are all Soviet industrialmigrants to the Arctic or their descendants there isan obvious parallel in the approach to dacha osvoeniewith the official Soviet idea of osvoenie that meant theconquest of nature adding meaning and usefulness tootherwise empty and senseless space

It was not until the 1980s and perestroika that north-ern industrial settlers started seeing dachas as places at-taching them to their northern places of residence ratherthan to their southern places of origin The possibilityto establish onersquos own place outside of the city waslike a return back to the earth for people with roots inthe arable south after a long break living in concretehousing blocks It was the return to a situation in whichowners could enact their agricultural engagement withthe land that had been identity-forming for many of theirancestors

The comparably soft climate and absence of per-mafrost soils definitely makes cultivation easier than inSiberia as well as construction Engaging with the north-ern land on an individual basis through building dachasand growing food there became a realistic alternative toleaving the north to some dacha in the south every year

On the other hand the example of Yakutsk showsthat garden-plot dachas are also possible and popular onpermafrost While dachas have a long history in Yakutskfor the intelligentsia and the party elites (see above)it was in the 1960s and 1970s that Yakutsk becamean administrative centre for diamond and gold miningIncoming workers established dachas as garden plotsWith the short but hot and humid summer cultivatingfruits and vegetables became widespread Water melonshoney melons and other non-northern plants successfullygrown on those dachas are a source of particular prideYakutsk suffered from economic decline too albeit lessthan the Murmansk region Shortage and lack of moneyto buy food even when it was for sale made people in bothplaces focus more on growing their food on their dachasThis is also because of the widespread collapse of Rus-sian agriculture that made the north entirely dependenton imported food or subsistence production As a resultpastures and agricultural land was abandoned In Yakutsksome of that land is now occupied by dacha plots (Budaev2013)

In both Murmansk and Yakutsk one might think thatthe importance of garden plot dachas would decreaseas people become more affluent and the supply systemfor imported food is stable However while several

8 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

informants have mentioned that their children and grand-children are no longer motivated to help on the dachaplot the reputation of local food has become muchstronger reflecting a worldwide trend well summarisedby Holt and Amilien (2007) This is why even north ofthe Arctic Circle there is a continued demand for peopleworking the land above the permafrost and apparentlymany of those who do not have their own dacha plots arehappy to pay a higher price for food produced by localfarms

Recreational dachasIn northwest Siberiarsquos gas cities the idea of dacha placesand individualrsquonaya zastroika territories covered by in-dividual construction was still somewhat alien and un-suitable for the harsh climate when our fieldwork startedamong the city dwellers in 2007 The idea of dachas wasinspired by the Soviet idea of garden subsistence plotsin central Russia Recreational dachas even pre-dated theSoviet Union and were then taken on by intelligentsiaand party elites in the north early on for example inYakutsk Arctic industrial cities however were seen asplaces to work not to live which is why there was nodacha construction planned there

After the Soviet Union and the post-perestroika crisissome people have become rather affluent and can affordto keep a dacha just for a change from city-life Thephysical need to grow onersquos own food decreased and freshfood became available even in markets in the north Nowmore people keep a dacha exclusively for spending theirfree time without growing anything on the plot Suchdachas are appreciated as a change from the standardisedapartment block to onersquos self-built or self-planned houseMost such dachas will have a sauna (Fig 1) From shortinterviews and living on dacha places and individualhouses in Novyi Urengoy Nadym and Pangody it seemsthat people would not sacrifice their yearly summerholiday somewhere lsquoon the landrsquo (na zemle) in the southjust because they would care for their dacha plants on thepermafrost In peoplersquos narratives there the idea of livingin the here and now has become much more prominentlsquoWe donrsquot want to eat out of cans and sit on cardboardboxes anymore just to save our life for the future Wewant to live here now in the north as well as maybe onthe land (na zemle) laterrsquo (Galina Konechnaia personalcommunication 27 March 2008) Recreational dachas inindustrial cities can therefore be understood as a sign ofincomers having arrived at an understanding of the northas their place of life to which they feel attached Howeveras Khlinovskaya Rockhill (2010) and Stammler (2010)showed this does not mean that people necessarily planto live their entire life there In the emerging dachamovement of Arctic industrial cities a dacha is thereforealso seen as an investment that can bring good returns incase the owners decide to sell it and return to their placesof origin

Novyi Urengoy shall serve as an example of thismovement The city was planned as a monoindustrial gas

town initially consisting of temporary living containers(bochki) and wooden barracks in the late 1970s and laterof Soviet style concrete blocks for Gazprom workersand their support industry Individual houses and dachaswere not part of the city plan not even after the SovietUnion as Novyi Urengoyrsquos then chief architect AllaLyaskovskaya confirmed The first dachas were builttowards the end of the 1990s after planned apartmentblocks were not constructed Then people lobbied forpermission to build individual houses in the growing cityin order to have somewhere to live But all they could getwas land allocated for recreational purposes

Yuri Plotnikov was among the pioneers of the recre-ational dacha movement there the first one who built adacha house with all amenities such as water electricityheating He proudly states lsquoWhen I came up with the ideato build myself a house outside of town people in the cityadministration looked down at me and said I was crazyBut then all sorts of people wanted to do the samersquo (YuriPlotnikov personal communication 23 September 2007)When Plotnikov sold his dacha because of his move toMoscow in 2009 he got 10 times the US dollars pricethat he had invested in the early 2000s By then dacha andindividual housing had become a big movement Moreand more space was appropriated for dachas between theurban living zone and industrial zones of Novyi UrengoiThe purpose of these dachas was mainly recreational

You have to give people the possibility of spendingtheir leisure time actively My husband is totally intothat on our dacha He is a real master and loves doingeverything himself [ ] Look in the city we havehere everything in monochrome (Alla Lyaskovskayapersonal communication 28 September 2007)The first [the dachas] were only containers wherepeople would go for barbeque Then the first flowerbeds appeared then some greenhouses and peoplebuilt themselves saunas And then later also suburbancottages and some even real concrete houses Nownot only those with the big money build but also inlsquoeconomy classrsquo ndash everybody according to his wallet(Vladimir Nuykin personal communication 19 May2013)

These processes led Novyi Urengoi with a population of115000 to have approximately 10000 dacha plots ofwhich as of 2013 40 have proper houses on themwhile another 20 are just allocated but still untouchedand the remainder is used as plots without buildings

However this number does not seem to include an-other form of recreational territory in the monoindustrialcity namely garage cooperatives These are organisedsimilarly to dacha cooperatives and the male recreationalactivities on both are similar people meet there forbarbecue The garages are many menrsquos pride with elab-orate workshops where they meet and repair all kinds ofequipment such as cars engines boats snowmobiles andthe like Others specialise in their garages on building andconstructing for example furniture and a few even usetheir garage as arts and handicrafts ateliers One such case

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 9

is Viktor Seliverstov from Novyi Urengoy The formerGazprom driller from Tatarstan came in 1978 to the northat the very start of west Siberian gas development Hehad found a lot of mammoth tusks during his travels onthe gas fields and started carving figures out of themHe took that so seriously that he got deeply involved innorthern indigenous symbolism cosmology and handi-craft and developed skills to the extent that his mammothcreations are nowadays in high demand by Gazpromleadership who give them as presents to VIP guestsSeliverstov did all this in his garage where he regularlyassembles the creative intelligentsia for intellectual andphilosophical discussions

Seliverstov exemplifies how people combine creativ-ity with recreation in their life in monoindustrial citiesbe it through construction of a dacha house or carvingartworks in their garage workshops

It seems likely that the number of dachas and recre-ational garage cooperatives must be well above 10000in a place like Novyi Urengoy This is the recreationalaspect be it in a garage or a dacha that prevails inplaces such as Novyi Urengoi Nadym and Pangody morethan for example in Murmansk and Yakutsk On thewest Siberian permafrost not only is the average materialaffluence of people higher but the conditions for growingplants are also harsher However during fieldwork somepeople were also planting potatoes on their dacha plotsin Novyi Urengoi on soil that was shipped 1000s ofkilometres lsquos zemleirsquo to the north because no potatowould grow on the sandy ground on the permafrost inthat area

In more cases however the whole dimension of adacha as partial subsistence supply is missing in north-west Siberia There the intimate physical engagement ofpeople with the land is mostly through picking mush-rooms and berries Some may embark on hunting orfishing trips from their garages or dachas In this respect adacha without a garden plot the gathering of male friendsin somebodyrsquos garage at the outskirts of town or in forestcabins all have a similar recreational aspect

Gender mobility and place in dacha orientationsOne might argue that this recreational aspect of dacha lifeis highly gender-specific typical ways of men spendingtheir time off work are sitting together outdoors drinkingbeer or stronger alcoholic beverages telling stories aboutonersquos fishing and hunting adventures going together tosauna frying meat and sausages and collective relaxingof the hectic work and city life [otvesti dushu] We wouldargue that this is a stereotype with the famous kernel oftruth Surely joint drinking and sauna are more associatedwith men than women in public opinion but much ofthe fieldwork indicates that women are also often vitallyincluded in the recreational aspects of dacha as a way oflife as well as men are part of dacha as a subsistenceactivity After all it is mostly men in the north who areinvolved in ordering and bringing the soil from the souththat is needed to grow potatoes and other plants on the

permafrost That soil has to be unloaded from trucksdistributed on the dacha plot prepared for the growingseason the potatoes have to be regularly dug over andmany other activities

The main difference between a dacha with gardenplot and one for leisure time is the extent to which theformer lsquobindsrsquo their owners physically to the place in thegrowing season People who are serious about cultivatingsomething on their dacha cannot really afford to leave forextended holidays as their compatriots with pure leisure-time dachas may do The garden requires care duringthree seasons of the year at least spring summer andautumn Absences of several months that are typical fornorthern labour migrants become much more difficult toorganise with such a dacha-commitment in the northThis means that such people will spend less time in thesouth at their places of origin As a result of their practicalengagement with the northern land and their graduallsquoalienationrsquo from a distant south their attachment to thenorth increases This may seem a rather abstract conclu-sion and we agree with Khlinovskaya Rockhill (2010)that real life is not organised into those dichotomies thatwe create in our minds Northerners do not forget theirbelonging to their places of origin either nor do onlythose without northern dachas visit the south But indeedseveral informants in our project emphasised that mostlythose with a strong relation to the northern place bother tohave a garden plot dacha The evolving of dacha places istherefore both a sign of increased belonging to the northamong inhabitants as well as of uninterrupted presencethere Dacha places as garden plots are therefore moredifficult to combine with the transient livelihoods thatwere thought to be typical for industrial workers whowould spend all their summers lsquoat homersquo in the south orwork on a fly infly out working plan Recreational dachasare therefore better suited for a way of life that involvesmultiple geographic localities throughout the year

In this respect large parts of the Russian populationare migratory between their urban life in autumn winterand spring and their dacha life in summer The dachaas home for the entire summer enables people to moveback to the earth regularly This move which is a way forthe urban population to preserve their rural roots sinceurbanisation is a rather recent tendency in Russia Whilein the 1930s there were hardly any significant cities inthe Russian north 80 years later more than 80 of thepopulation lives in cities in most of the northern regionsnamely 92 in Murmansk Oblast and 83 in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug In Russia altogether 74 ofthe population lived in cities in 2010 (Russia PopulationCensus 2010) This is the background on which the dachamovement caught up in Russia

From dacha to year-round suburban villagesThe notion of the dacha as summer home adds a di-mension of mobility and seasonality to life in the north-ern industrial city Many incomers have dachas at theirplaces of origin The popularity of dacha settlements in

10 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Murmansk Oblast and west Siberia as well as Yakutskwith its longer dacha history testifies this where manypeople stay for their entire summer on their dacha Thedacha as summer home is particularly important in thenorth among all those who do not have expressed attach-ments to other places outside of the region Paradoxicallymost of the northerners who keep connections to theplaces of origin in the south do so through spending thesummer holidays there in the south although it wouldseem to make much more sense to leave the north for thewinter Thus we have seen so far that dacha places bydefinition are seasonally limited to the warmer times ofthe year The whole point of having a dacha in the northwas to have an alternative place to move to when peoplewant to be closer to the earth and have more creativefreedom in place-making than they could ever have inan Arctic socialist city with strict efficiency planning andzoning

In our three case sites of Kirovsk-Apatity (MurmanskRegion) Novyi Urengoy (Yamal) and Yakutsk (SakhaYakutia) we can see however how this clear cut un-derstanding of dacha versus city life is gradually beingblurred

The dacha as a place for summer recreation graduallygets redefined as a place for year-round inhabitationenacting onersquos freedom in individual houses closer to theland rather than apartment blocks In expanding citieslike Novyi Urengoi Surgut and Yakutsk dacha settle-ments where people used to spend time only in summergradually turn into suburban areas with individual housesfor the affluent for year-round permanent inhabitation

Maybe the time has come to depart from the idea ofhousing only in apartment blocks in our city Peoplewant to live on their own now Itrsquos good the admin-istration is considering to give plots out on the fieldfor individual construction now (Ivan Avramenkopersonal communication 17 June 2013)

There is a technological demographic-economic andsocial aspect of such developments firstly new construc-tion technologies autonomous heating septic tanks andheat insulation have made it possible for house owners toestablish permanent year-round housing on their dachaplaces Secondly the high immigration into expandingArctic cities because of extractive industries has led torising real estate prices on a now free market in thesetowns where previously all housing was owned by thestate or the single industrial company in town Theseinstitutions stopped building new apartment blocks andhouse construction became a commodity In this situationbuilding a permanent house also for winter (zimnii vari-ant) on a dacha plot becomes a possibility for peopleto solve their housing problem or improve their housingconditions This is a widespread tendency in regions suchas Sergelyakh in Yakutsk Chernorechenski in Surgut orSeveryanin in Novyi Urengoy with prices easily reachingbetween 1000 and 3000 EURm2 Thirdly individualfreedom has become more important in northern citiesPeople are not ready to sacrifice and postpone their

pursuit of a comfortable life to a future in the south Theexperience of perestroika has shown them that they cannever be sure if that will ever come This social changeunderlies the tendency of dachas becoming permanenthomes people want to live in the North in their houseshere and now and not only during the short summer

I did not succeed to look around and Irsquom 50 yearsalready I came here with 25 So what would I livemy life in some next life Maybe not Thatrsquos whyI think dachas ndash this is concretely the way forwardin Novyi Urengoi One has to live today in goodconditions and allow people in this way to realisesome of their wishes for recreation We have nowthe means to create this (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2008)

This is interesting as she had the post of lead city-planning architect in Novyi Urengoy in the early 2000sand thus witnessed herself the change of the approach tolife in the Arctic city As much as she advocated on aprofessional level centralised housing-planning as muchshe was privately beautifully describing how important itis for her and her neighbours to be close to the land ontheir dachas

This apparent contradiction comes from the substan-tial difference it makes for the organisation of city spacewhen individual year-round housing is encouraged andwhen it is not In both Novyi Urengoi and Yakutsk thisis exemplified by the presence or absence of a formaladdress A formal address starts with a transfer of thelegal category of the land from a lsquorecreational zonersquowhich is what dacha cooperative territories are legallyinto a part of the lsquohousing zonersquo of the city A city officialfrom Novyi Urengoy explains that the status of the landwill not change even though more individuals build theirhouses according to the zimnyi variant for year round useThe reason is that this would entail lsquocertain obligationsrsquoby the municipality These are for example access to mu-nicipal electricity rubbish collection street maintenancepublic transport postal and internet services schoolshealthcare police stations and all other aspects of muni-cipal services While in Yakutsk entire neighbourhoods ofdachas are being transformed into regular suburbs with allservices In some municipalities such as Novyi Urengoithere is resistance to these obligations

You canrsquot turn this city into this settlement patternabout which we talk ndash go back to the land Inprinciple how can one live and extract gas when Ihave to think where I find firewood for heating myautonomous device Let the dear gentleman replyto this question[ ] You have to create a structurewhich would supply the citizens Otherwise how willhe do it Feed wood to an oven We donrsquot have foresthere [in the tundra] (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2007)

This means that such individual permanent houseswill not have official postcodes nor streetnames andnumbers lsquoalthough within the dacha cooperatives forpeoplersquos comfort and orientation they give names for the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 11

drivewaysrsquo (Vladimir Nuykin personal communica-tion19 May 2013)

Much but not all individual year round housing innorthern industrial cities is constructed on dacha territor-ies This transforms the character of dacha places gradu-ally into a more urban atmosphere These tendenciesfrom the regions not only in the Arctic but all over Russiahave now made their way up to the Federal Russianpolitical discussion the government and parliament arein favour of adopting a law allowing people officiallyto register on their dacha places as permanent residentsIt remains unclear as of 2014 if such new permanentresidents then have to pay regular housing tax for theirdacha-houses and plots as these developments are newand this tax would be under regional or municipal controlPremier Medvedev admitted that this would legalise analready established de facto year round inhabitation ondacha plots by many people (RIA Novosti (Moscow)5 August 2013)

This process is seen by some long-time dacha inhab-itants as the disappearance of dachas (dachi izcheznut)On the other hand one can say that the spirit of dachaplaces expands to a year-round quality of life withthe recreational aspects the individual freedom in placecreation and the being close to the land included So theurban built environment gradually acquires more ruraltraits One significant consequence of this developmentis that seasonality and the rhythm of moving betweencity and dacha places on the outskirts gets lost as theborders between the two become blurred This is ex-actly the opposite of what happens in many villages inthe Russian Arctic and also the Finnish North whichturn gradually from permanent villages into summersettlements as services and social infrastructure closedown Nakhshina (2013) describes this process in herethnography of encounters between seasonal and per-manent dwellers of Kuzomenrsquo a village in Murmanskregion

We argue here that both these tendencies are intercon-nected the more people leave villages to live in citiesthe more permanent houses will be built in those cities onpreviously unbuilt territory Analysing a recent article onthe future planning of Yakutsk it became very clear howthe city will become more rural-looking within its urbanzone as it will be surrounded by a number of suburbswith individual houses that will form with the city centretogether the lsquoMini-Moscowrsquo as the authors call it (Yak-utsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013 301 9)A team of Yakutsk-based regional researchers envisagesthat by 2032 the city population will live just outside thecentre lsquoin well-equipped low-rise houses on their ownplots with not less than 1000m2 garages for 2 cars and thenecessary high quality social infrastructure in the vicinity[ ] and a journey to work of not more than 30 minutesrsquo(Yakutsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013301 9) According to that plan the territories for suchfuture suburbs will be those currently allocated for dachaplots

This shows that the move from the seasonality ofdacha places to the permanence of suburban settlementsin the Russian Arctic is a bottom-up movement that hasarisen from the individual practices of dacha-creatorsdescribed in Nakhshina and Razumovarsquos (2009) articleThis movement has now arrived in the halls of power ofmunicipal administrations that have to deal with such newrealities and the increased municipal obligations relatedto them The former Novyi Urengoy chief architect de-scribed this dilemma

Originally historically the individual house exempli-fies the Russian person What was bad in this [Soviet]period In our life here in these modern cities therewas no such concept of onersquos own house but it isnow back coming back at this very time But it wouldbe wrong now in the setting of Novyi Urengoi toallow the development of individual construction Itwould be a mistake because the city was originallynot designed for that Yes the question of individualconstruction was put to me as the chief architect veryseriously They simply put pressure on me [Allow-ing] it is a compromise (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication) 28 September 2007)

Based on statements like this we argue that the northernpopulation had realised that they cannot hope for someall-caring state to increase their living standard in Arcticcities Instead they took their own initiative and createdfaits accomplis Officials could not ignore this movementtowards the land anymore and had to take individualyear-round house planning based on dacha places intoconsideration

Life beyond industrial work in the north

What unites all types of dachas and the permanent houseson dacha plots and garage cooperatives is that theseplaces are created by people wanting to spend theirprivate life and their free time in the north This is anextension of the original idea of northern industrial city-development in which people were induced to moveexclusively for working Our informants express clearlythis tendency towards more of a lsquolifersquo dimension of theirnorthern existence Gone are the early days of northernindustrial city development in which many said theydid not bother to furnish their apartments properly haveproper dishes eat out of cans and saved everythingfor the future This Soviet approach of being tempor-arily in the Arctic described by Khlinovskaya Rockhill(2010) turns Yurchakrsquos famous book title lsquoEverythingwas forever until it was no morersquo (2005) upside downinto lsquoEverything was temporary until it became foreverrsquoThe discovery of the north by incomers and their des-cendants not only as a place of work but a place of lifenecessarily changes the intensity of residentsrsquo relations totheir built natural and social environment The evolutionof dachas and of individual permanent housing is alogical consequence of this development

12 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

We have shown that the typical dacha with a gardenplot and a summer house has a clearly seasonal characterand with few exceptions people do not spend much timethere in winter However as their presence in the northbecomes less seasonal and their involvement with thenorthern land more intensive signs of permanent livingon dacha places increase In such cases the former dachatransforms to a hybrid of summer place close to thenatural environment and permanent housing close to thecity

It is in this microcosm of their own plots wherenortherners with southern origin can enact their intensiveindividual engagement with the land using their creativeand productive potential in free decision making Weagree with Nakhshina and Razumova (2009) that dachasreflect the individual freedom and creativity of the plotowners This freedom is crucial as a counterbalance totheir work in the north that has always been a part ofa larger development project for a country-wide com-munity It is alongside the physical engagement withthe land a crucial factor characterising the particularhuman-environment relation that dacha people haveDacha owners create on their plots material expressionsof their own individual character and biography In thelife histories recorded during fieldwork in 2007ndash2010 wesee how lifelines connect southern places of origin andnorthern places that have become home They becomeintertwined in the dacha places that combine a moresouthern agricultural logic with garden plots plantsvegetables and a northern approach to nature in whichberry picking hunting and fishing as recreational andsubsistence activity are very important

We can interpret on the dacha plots these intertwinedlines through the construction materials used an aspectalso covered in the publication by Nakhshina and Razu-mova (2009) Somebody who works for example in aconcrete factory or has friends who do so is more likelyto use various leftovers or otherwise acquired items ofthat kind of production on their dachas although usuallydachas would be built of wood in a countryside villagestyle (Fig 6) Some dacha plots are very elaborate in per-fect order decorated with love for every detail whereasothers focus more on the functionality take the growingof food very seriously as they or their relatives may havedone in their places of origin in the south Or they mayjust use the dacha plot for planting flowers and as a baseto gather hunt and fish in the northern landscape sur-rounding the dachas in cases where industrial expansionhas left space for such practices This individual freedomof creating a place of onersquos own preference is somethingthat people cannot enjoy in their city There they livein apartment blocks planned and built by somebody elsefollowing a collective ideology with the goal of efficientorganisation of work and life

This combination of onersquos southern mirror image ofhome and components stemming from onersquos northern lifeand work lets the dacha appear almost as a physical ne-cessity how else could people express this other dimen-

sion of homeness and placehood that goes beyond livingfor the sake of working in an industrial city until reachingthe age of retirement Therefore dacha can become butnot always is a sign of increased attachment of onersquosnorthern place of life which was not originally thoughtfor long-term inhabitation by incomers But differentfrom the indigenous hunter or gatherer the attachmenthere is not to the natural environment with minimalfootprint but to onersquos self-created place that combineselements of onersquos southern origin the northern place ofwork and the local climate In most cases the relationshipof people to their dacha places is reciprocal It com-plements the idea of the lsquogiving environmentrsquo that weknow from hunter-gatherer societies (Bird-David 1990)in which a sentient environment offers its resources tothe hunter who shows respect and his knowledge of theplaces through appropriate behaviour (Anderson 2000)

Among northern industrial city inhabitants the self-created dacha place rewards its masterrsquos hard work withgiving back the fruits of the land even though maybeon soil especially imported from the south and put in alayer on top of the permafrost The environment is thusself-created In this respect we cannot necessarily speakof settlers getting closer to natives as is suggested forChukotka in the work of Thompson (2008)

Conclusion

This article has described the development of dachas inArctic Russian industrial cities We took the anthropolo-gical study of Arctic dacha places a step further from asingle region case study as was done previously (Naksh-ina and Razumova 2009 Nakshina 2013 Bolotova 2012)to a comparative approach We acknowledge the diversityand uniqueness of our three field sites and therefore stateahead of our general conclusions that those must not betaken as generalisations and final words but rather asinvitation for further research in this little studied field

The analysis of dacha situations in Arctic cities inthree regions (Apatity-Kirovsk Novyi Urengoy Yak-utsk) leads us to reach the following four main pointsfirstly the Arctic city dacha movement can be seen inpath-dependence to the Soviet working class dachaswhereas the pre-Soviet summer recreational house ideare-surfaces gradually after the immediate post-Sovietperiod Secondly in the Arctic dacha movement theexpression of individual creativity and intensive socialorganisation in collectives do not exclude each otherThirdly we suggest that Arctic dacha settlements andpractices are excellent cases for studying processes ofhuman agency and place creation which grant us deeperinsights in the determinants of peoplersquos relation to theland Fourthly this human agency on the land helps usto understand how urban communities in Arctic Rus-sia change their spatial practices gradually from state-induced inhabitation of compressed dense high-rise con-crete landscapes to village-resembling agglomerations ofsmaller houses close to the land As a consequence the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 13

seasonality of dacha practices gradually gives way to areintroduction of peoplersquos quality of life closer to whatthey call lsquonaturersquo on a permanent year-round basis

What do these four main concluding points tell usIndustrial northerners change the approach to their citiespeople who invest today in a dacha stop seeing them-selves as just working in the north but gradually also startliving there be it temporarily or permanent This showshow the Arctic has become a place to lead a normal lifefor immigrants and their descendants with characteristicsof a normal urban population elsewhere albeit with somespecifics related to seasons climate and permafrost

The increase in development of Arctic dachas asgarden plots arose largely out of economic necessitiesin perestroika but at the same time was a perfect matchwith a deeply Russian approach to the land namelythrough physical agricultural engagement that is focusedon refinement of nature on leaving the human footprintand on adding value The increasing popularity of recre-ational dachas we argued here alongside the blurring ofborders to permanent individual housing areas in Arcticcities is a sign of the end of the post-Soviet periodWe see here the advent of broader trends of mainstreameveryday life in the Arctic with relative affluence andlife-trajectories that are not characterised by a love for theextreme (climate conditions exceptional social fabrics)but for the normal

We have further analysed the dacha as a visual arenafor the interplay between economic and social needsof northerners in the Russian Arctic More than justenabling additional food production in difficult times thedacha is a playground for balancing the freedom of in-dividual creation of place with the deeply social desire toshare experiences with neighbours Dachas are like bookswherein we can read and experience the character pro-fessional biography material wellbeing individual lifestory social status and belonging and preferred practicesof their owners The Arctic dacha cooperative in Russiais a model of self-governance that incorporates the Sovietlegacy of the kollektif while also considering individualcreative freedom in place creation Dacha places arealso a mirror image of the changed balance between theindividual and the collective since the perestroika periodin Arctic Russia late Soviet time dachas were open andvisible while from the late 1990s onwards high fencesbecame the symbols of dachas even in the Arctic wherepeople usually emphasise that collectivity and mutualassistance are life-important

We suggest seeing these developments as a sign of theRussian Arctic becoming a less extreme and more normalplace Rather than a frontier to open up as portrayed in somany popular discourses on Arctic resources the northhas become home for the non-indigenous population thatwas induced by the state to move there While the lsquonative-ness of settlersrsquo (Thompson 2008) or their intensive ad-aptation to the northern nature (Nakshina and Razumova2009) have been emphasised before our material sug-gests that incomer dacha-peoplersquos worldview and relation

to the land in those industrial areas of the Russian north isbased largely on their southern roots and an agriculturallogic Dichotomies are always controversial but we dareto put them forward to inspire more refined analysis inthis direction We argue that industrial city-dwellers anddacha ownersrsquo footprint on the land contributes to prideand identity-building whereas among most indigenousinhabitants peoplersquos embeddedness in the surroundingenvironment with minimal footprint prevails This meansthat the future of the Russian north is one of at leasttwo different modes of dwelling and perceiving the en-vironment both of which involve very intimate relationsbetween people and the land

Acknowledgements

We thank all our friends and collaborators in Apat-ityKirovsk Novyi Urengoy Nadym Pangody and Yak-utsk for their openness and hospitality Funding is grate-fully acknowledged from the research projects BOREASMOVE-INNOCOM funded by the Finnish Academyunder the BOREAS ESF EUROCORES scheme de-cision number 118702 and from the subsequent FinnishAcademy project ORHELIA decision number 251111Moreover the project lsquoThe peoples of the north-eastof the Russian Federation choosing a new adaptivestrategy under conditions of globalisation A social-anthropological approachrsquo Yakutsk (North Eastern Fed-eral) University Russia) contributed funding for thisresearch

ReferencesAnderson D 2000 Identity and ecology in Arctic Siberia the

number one reindeer brigade Oxford Oxford UniversityPress

Bird-David N 1990 The giving environment another perspect-ive on the economic system of gatherer-hunters CurrentAnthropology 31(2) 189ndash96

Bolotova A 2005 Discourses on taiga the state geologists andnature in the Soviet Union In Bammeacute A G Getzinger andB Wieser (editors) Yearbook of the Institute for AdvancedStudies on Science Technology and Society Munich andVienna Profil 25ndash53

Bolotova A 2012 Loving and conquering nature shifting per-ceptions of the environment in the industrialised Russiannorth Europe-Asia Studies 64(4)645ndash671

Bolotova A and F Stammler 2010 How the north becamehome Attachment to place among industrial migrants inMurmansk region In Southcott C and L Huskey (editors)Migration in the circumpolar north issues and contextsEdmonton Alberta Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press(University of Alberta CCI occasional publication 64) 193ndash220

Budaev A 2013 Sovremennye Realii Yakutskogo Agropoi-asa [Modern realities of Yakutian agro-belt] YakutskEkho Stolitsy 43 2160 URL httpwwwexo-yktruarticles244857494 (accessed 24 November 2013)

Crate S 2006 Cows kin and globalization an ethnography ofsustainability Walnut Creek Alta Mira Press

Eilmsteiner-Saxinger G 2013 Auf uns ndash auf euch ndash auf Oumll undGas FernpendlerInnen in der Erdgas- und Erdoumllindustrie im

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 5

Fig 4 (Colour online) Tik-Guba Apatity

individual creative freedom (Bolotova 2012 664) Thisplace-creation follows closely Ingoldrsquos building perspect-ive (2000 chapter 10) the idea that man changes theappearance of nature through building a house lsquocultivat-ingrsquo the land around it In dacha constructions one can seehow the Soviet building perspective of mastering natureas a collective on the one hand and individual agriculturalbuilding perspective of creating onersquos own place on theother meet at the outskirts of industrial zones Howeverindividual agency is closely regulated even on dachaspaces which are much part of the city as we shall showbelow

Alongside the deeply individual process of creatingonersquos individual place dacha creation is also a funda-mentally social process in Russia Evidence for this maybe found in the very social logic of land allocation bycity administrations for dachas a larger territory fordacha settlements is earmarked as a whole and thenseparated into individual plots of the same size typically6ndash10 lsquosotokrsquo (600ndash1000 m2) This means that the dachaneighbours live in very close vicinity to each other thehouses usually not more than 30 m apart and the plotsbordering one another with no barren land between them(Fig 4) The city authorities transfer the administrationof the plots to cooperatives of plot holders (dachnyi ko-operatif) associations that are responsible for the ordercommon infrastructure utilities and their fees peaceconflict resolution and all other issues on the dacha areathat are common for all plot holders

In late Soviet times the trade unions were re-sponsible for the allocation of land plots for dachasGood locations were given to privileged groups Thetrade union committees acted as extension arms of theSoviet administration which meant that the steeringgroups of dacha cooperatives resembled in personnelthose of committees within industrial enterprises Cor-respondingly the names of many of the early cooper-atives revealed what kind of people were its memberssuch as lsquostroitelrsquo (meaning members of a constructionenterprise) lsquogazovikrsquo (Novyi Urengoi members of gasextraction company) lsquoavtomobilistrsquo (Apatity membersof transport company) lsquovodokanalrsquo (Kirovsk membersof wastewater company) With the development of a realestate market and land having become a commoditythe membership in dacha cooperatives has become morediverse and the names would not tell much about the

Fig 5 (Colour online) Strict leadership style in a dachacooperative in Novyi Urengoi The text reads Announce-ment 15 September at 1400 is the reporting and electingmeeting of the members of the lsquoenthusiastrsquo dacha cooper-ative Also the question of connecting to the electricity grid[will be discussed] Presence of all is mandatory report tothe chairman

background of their members such as lsquoLetnye Yurtyrsquo(Novyi Urengoi) or lsquoSevernoe Sianie (Kirovsk northernlights)

While during Stalinrsquos times members had to leavethe dacha cooperative when they left their job later theycould hold on to their dacha regardless of their employ-ment and forms of social life in these cooperatives arenot as predefined as they were before In some casessuch as in Novyi Urengoi cooperatives self-organisedeven before the city authorities officially earmarked theexact area for the dacha settlement It seems that thisway of organising dacha space corresponds to the deeplysocial idea of a group of Russian people relating to theland Living close by your neighbour is not thought to bea problem unless you are enemies In fact since dachapeople actually spend a lot of time outdoors often there ismore communication with their dacha garden neighboursthan with their neighbours in their apartment blocks in thecities We want to emphasise this deeply social aspect ofdacha livelihood as this aspect is so far underrepresentedin the otherwise so richly argued publication on northerndachas by Nakshina and Razumova (2009)

As the photo shows some cooperatives have a ratherstrict leadership style (Fig 5) maybe inspired by Soviettrade union committee and Komsomol (youth organisa-tion) practices while others are more loose in style

While dacha people may lsquoescapersquo from the city toenact their individual creativity the landscape they runfrom one standardised collective (the industrial city thework environment) to another collective where theypractice social control by having to make compromisesin their freedom for the benefit of their (dacha) collect-ive The difference may be that in the industrial citydecisions about the creation of place are not made by theresidents themselves whereas in dacha settlements the

6 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Fig 6 (Colour online) Dacha built of concrete blocks inTik-Guba Apatity

members have more decision making power over howtheir assigned plot can look Rather than seeing dachasas mostly an expression of peoplersquos individuality and theindividual adaptation of southern migrants (Nakhshinaand Razumova 2009) we take their argument further byfinding a combined expression between the individualand the social dimension in the Russian northern dachaplaces which also combine the idea of the city withelements of lsquonaturersquo It is this collectivity that is the maindifference of the dacha from the idea of for example theFinnish summer cottage (Fig 6)

Cityscape and lsquowild naturersquo in peoplersquos summerhome narratives

Although Bolotova (2012 662) also considers industrialpeoplersquos activities further away from the city she con-ceives both the activities in remote forests and suburbandachas as practices in nature outside the city IndeedArctic industrial city dwellers often define lsquonaturersquo asspace outside town not regulated by the standardisedSoviet city planning In light of the tight organisation ofdacha collectives we would slightly rectify this statementas dacha is so much part of the city-environment andhuman-made engineered surroundings

As such this is very different from peoplersquos cabins inthe forest This is why Bolotova distinguishes differentlsquonaturesrsquo paraphrasing Macnaghten and Urry (1998) Forexample 81 year old Valentin Ivanov in Nadym (westSiberia) has a very different approach to the environmentfrom the dacha people He talked with pride about hisremote cabin in the forest that is far away from anyother man-made structure where he fishes and picks thegifts of nature with his wife lsquoI take the gun with meonly because of the bear He is the master of the taigabut for scaring away this is neededrsquo (Valentin Ivanovpersonal communication 1 April 2008) An importantcharacteristic of this place for him is its distance verymuch unlike a dacha locality with all the close neighbourrelations He would not call his forest cabin 100 km away

from Nadym a dacha Ivanov intimately knows that forestplace and his narratives of being there convey a mix ofadventure and meditation

The difference between these two recreational placescity-scape and lsquowildrsquo nature becomes evident when com-paring Ivanovrsquos narrative to that of the dacha-dwellerwho perceived the forest surrounding his dacha as anextension of his living room where he walks wearing hisslippers In an extended forest-living room you wouldneither have the idea of respecting other masters suchas the bear nor take a gun along for your own safetyOn the other hand Ivanovrsquos idea is also different from anindigenous perception in which the taiga would be homeand people would move in the environment for huntingand herding rather than recreational fishing and pickingWe suggest a clear distinction between dacha places ofindustrial workers close to their cities and remote forestdestinations of the fewer experts fishers and pickersand leisure time hunters In other words forest cabinsare no dachas because they lack the cooperative socialcomponent Other than in dacha places with forest cabinswe can also hardly find a lsquobuilding perspectiversquo Ivanovwas clear about leaving as little footprint as possible withhis cabin in the otherwise unchanged environment

Forms and orientation of dachas in the Russian north

This section illustrates the diverse practices that havealways been part of dacha life in different combinationsNakshina and Razumova (2009) introduce as motivationsfor establishing dachas in the Murmansk region economicand recreational reasons In many cases dachas are placesfor recreation as well as garden plots for subsistenceAnother important component is seasonal mobility ofthe population (see above) In the most recent cases inRussia an additional component of permanent habitationchanges significantly the meaning of dacha which thenloses its character as a refuge from industrial city life thenotion of peace of mind and recovery

The garden plot subsistence dachaThe classical form of dacha in Soviet Russia that wasimported to the north is first and foremost a garden plotin which the individual or family is free to cultivate andgrow as much as their own skills and the climate allowMoreover they enjoy the freedom to build a house onthat plot that can be anything from an extended shed forgardening tools to a full-fledged summer house that couldpossibly even developed for year-round inhabitation (seeend of article) Just as in the industrial city and verydifferent from indigenous northernersrsquo life in the north-ern dachas everything is imported from the south fromconstruction materials tools equipment and greenhousematerials to seeds and sometimes even soil By using thisimported material these people create their own importedmicrocosm on the northern permafrost as they may haveit in their own imagination that is influenced by theirpast experience from their places of origin Many dacha

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 7

people become very ambitious in creating these mirrorimages of the south in what they first perceive as a harshnorthern frontier (see Nakhshina and Razumova 2009Figs 3ndash5)

Murmansk Oblast is a northern region with a verystrong dacha movement in which the garden plot dacha isa dominant category In spite of its northern latitude theregion has a relatively mild climate and no permafrostwhich makes growing plants less problematic Moreoverthe Murmansk region has been with its post-Soviet out-migration and industrial decline in an economically moredifficult situation in comparison to west Siberia (Nuykina2011) or Yakutia This made growing onersquos own foodan economic necessity for many given the low salariesand pensions in the region There is numerical evidencefor this from Heleniakrsquos (2010) comparative researchwhich shows the far northwest and the far northeast asregions with most economic decline outmigration andnegative demographic tendencies For people in Mur-mansk region this development made it not only possiblebut in some cases necessary to work on the land inorder to get fresh vegetables and fruits It is this aspectthat is prominent in Nakshinarsquos and Razumovarsquos (2009)explanation for the evolution of what they call lsquodachaculturersquo The garden plot dachas in Murmansk Oblast aremore elaborate than in Yamal-Nenets Okrug where mostpeople are more affluent and growing conditions on thepermafrost are harsher The early history of immigrationinto the Murmansk north shows that many incomerscame from a rural agricultural background (Bolotova andStammler 2010) Not only were they not used to an urbanlife (Nakshina and Razumova 2009 418) amidst greyconcrete blocks they were also familiar with working theland According to Salimova (2011 8) in the early 1930s91 of the forced relocatees to Kirovsk were peasantsTheir expertise was used to establish a sovkhoz a Sovietstate farm on the shore of Lake Imandra to feed theindustrial workers of Kirovsk That sovkhoz lsquoindustriarsquois considered the cradle of Apatity village which later inthe 1960s would become a mineral resource extractiontown which soon outgrew Kirovsk

However this organised Soviet agricultural activityto feed industry workers of monoindustrial cities in thenorth is very different from dacha subsistence plotswhich were not foreseen in the development plans forindustrial cities (Bolotova 2012)

The main economic rationale for the evolution ofdachas in the Arctic was the idea of additional foodsupply in times of defitsit lack of supply Towards theend of the Soviet period more and more food itemswere in defitsit Moreover dacha people emphasisedthe notion of freshness beyond economic considerationsFresh vegetables from onersquos own garden were the onlypossibility to get access to fresh plant-based food asimported food from the south would not be fresh by thetime it arrived in the shops In this respect the importanceof onersquos dacha plot is much more than economical asfreshness is not something that money can buy Fresh

local food is also known to be a source of place-basedidentification of people as Weiss (2011) has shown wellbeyond the Arctic in rural USA In the Russian northlocal fresh dacha food is a source of great pride

As the example quoted above from Yakutsk illus-trates the notion of dacha used as a place to intensivelywork (intensivnoe osvoenie) and open up the land canbe interpreted as non-indigenous incomers enacting theirrelations to the environment as Nakhshina and Razu-mova (2009) and Bolotova (2012) show In addition tothat since these dacha owners are all Soviet industrialmigrants to the Arctic or their descendants there isan obvious parallel in the approach to dacha osvoeniewith the official Soviet idea of osvoenie that meant theconquest of nature adding meaning and usefulness tootherwise empty and senseless space

It was not until the 1980s and perestroika that north-ern industrial settlers started seeing dachas as places at-taching them to their northern places of residence ratherthan to their southern places of origin The possibilityto establish onersquos own place outside of the city waslike a return back to the earth for people with roots inthe arable south after a long break living in concretehousing blocks It was the return to a situation in whichowners could enact their agricultural engagement withthe land that had been identity-forming for many of theirancestors

The comparably soft climate and absence of per-mafrost soils definitely makes cultivation easier than inSiberia as well as construction Engaging with the north-ern land on an individual basis through building dachasand growing food there became a realistic alternative toleaving the north to some dacha in the south every year

On the other hand the example of Yakutsk showsthat garden-plot dachas are also possible and popular onpermafrost While dachas have a long history in Yakutskfor the intelligentsia and the party elites (see above)it was in the 1960s and 1970s that Yakutsk becamean administrative centre for diamond and gold miningIncoming workers established dachas as garden plotsWith the short but hot and humid summer cultivatingfruits and vegetables became widespread Water melonshoney melons and other non-northern plants successfullygrown on those dachas are a source of particular prideYakutsk suffered from economic decline too albeit lessthan the Murmansk region Shortage and lack of moneyto buy food even when it was for sale made people in bothplaces focus more on growing their food on their dachasThis is also because of the widespread collapse of Rus-sian agriculture that made the north entirely dependenton imported food or subsistence production As a resultpastures and agricultural land was abandoned In Yakutsksome of that land is now occupied by dacha plots (Budaev2013)

In both Murmansk and Yakutsk one might think thatthe importance of garden plot dachas would decreaseas people become more affluent and the supply systemfor imported food is stable However while several

8 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

informants have mentioned that their children and grand-children are no longer motivated to help on the dachaplot the reputation of local food has become muchstronger reflecting a worldwide trend well summarisedby Holt and Amilien (2007) This is why even north ofthe Arctic Circle there is a continued demand for peopleworking the land above the permafrost and apparentlymany of those who do not have their own dacha plots arehappy to pay a higher price for food produced by localfarms

Recreational dachasIn northwest Siberiarsquos gas cities the idea of dacha placesand individualrsquonaya zastroika territories covered by in-dividual construction was still somewhat alien and un-suitable for the harsh climate when our fieldwork startedamong the city dwellers in 2007 The idea of dachas wasinspired by the Soviet idea of garden subsistence plotsin central Russia Recreational dachas even pre-dated theSoviet Union and were then taken on by intelligentsiaand party elites in the north early on for example inYakutsk Arctic industrial cities however were seen asplaces to work not to live which is why there was nodacha construction planned there

After the Soviet Union and the post-perestroika crisissome people have become rather affluent and can affordto keep a dacha just for a change from city-life Thephysical need to grow onersquos own food decreased and freshfood became available even in markets in the north Nowmore people keep a dacha exclusively for spending theirfree time without growing anything on the plot Suchdachas are appreciated as a change from the standardisedapartment block to onersquos self-built or self-planned houseMost such dachas will have a sauna (Fig 1) From shortinterviews and living on dacha places and individualhouses in Novyi Urengoy Nadym and Pangody it seemsthat people would not sacrifice their yearly summerholiday somewhere lsquoon the landrsquo (na zemle) in the southjust because they would care for their dacha plants on thepermafrost In peoplersquos narratives there the idea of livingin the here and now has become much more prominentlsquoWe donrsquot want to eat out of cans and sit on cardboardboxes anymore just to save our life for the future Wewant to live here now in the north as well as maybe onthe land (na zemle) laterrsquo (Galina Konechnaia personalcommunication 27 March 2008) Recreational dachas inindustrial cities can therefore be understood as a sign ofincomers having arrived at an understanding of the northas their place of life to which they feel attached Howeveras Khlinovskaya Rockhill (2010) and Stammler (2010)showed this does not mean that people necessarily planto live their entire life there In the emerging dachamovement of Arctic industrial cities a dacha is thereforealso seen as an investment that can bring good returns incase the owners decide to sell it and return to their placesof origin

Novyi Urengoy shall serve as an example of thismovement The city was planned as a monoindustrial gas

town initially consisting of temporary living containers(bochki) and wooden barracks in the late 1970s and laterof Soviet style concrete blocks for Gazprom workersand their support industry Individual houses and dachaswere not part of the city plan not even after the SovietUnion as Novyi Urengoyrsquos then chief architect AllaLyaskovskaya confirmed The first dachas were builttowards the end of the 1990s after planned apartmentblocks were not constructed Then people lobbied forpermission to build individual houses in the growing cityin order to have somewhere to live But all they could getwas land allocated for recreational purposes

Yuri Plotnikov was among the pioneers of the recre-ational dacha movement there the first one who built adacha house with all amenities such as water electricityheating He proudly states lsquoWhen I came up with the ideato build myself a house outside of town people in the cityadministration looked down at me and said I was crazyBut then all sorts of people wanted to do the samersquo (YuriPlotnikov personal communication 23 September 2007)When Plotnikov sold his dacha because of his move toMoscow in 2009 he got 10 times the US dollars pricethat he had invested in the early 2000s By then dacha andindividual housing had become a big movement Moreand more space was appropriated for dachas between theurban living zone and industrial zones of Novyi UrengoiThe purpose of these dachas was mainly recreational

You have to give people the possibility of spendingtheir leisure time actively My husband is totally intothat on our dacha He is a real master and loves doingeverything himself [ ] Look in the city we havehere everything in monochrome (Alla Lyaskovskayapersonal communication 28 September 2007)The first [the dachas] were only containers wherepeople would go for barbeque Then the first flowerbeds appeared then some greenhouses and peoplebuilt themselves saunas And then later also suburbancottages and some even real concrete houses Nownot only those with the big money build but also inlsquoeconomy classrsquo ndash everybody according to his wallet(Vladimir Nuykin personal communication 19 May2013)

These processes led Novyi Urengoi with a population of115000 to have approximately 10000 dacha plots ofwhich as of 2013 40 have proper houses on themwhile another 20 are just allocated but still untouchedand the remainder is used as plots without buildings

However this number does not seem to include an-other form of recreational territory in the monoindustrialcity namely garage cooperatives These are organisedsimilarly to dacha cooperatives and the male recreationalactivities on both are similar people meet there forbarbecue The garages are many menrsquos pride with elab-orate workshops where they meet and repair all kinds ofequipment such as cars engines boats snowmobiles andthe like Others specialise in their garages on building andconstructing for example furniture and a few even usetheir garage as arts and handicrafts ateliers One such case

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 9

is Viktor Seliverstov from Novyi Urengoy The formerGazprom driller from Tatarstan came in 1978 to the northat the very start of west Siberian gas development Hehad found a lot of mammoth tusks during his travels onthe gas fields and started carving figures out of themHe took that so seriously that he got deeply involved innorthern indigenous symbolism cosmology and handi-craft and developed skills to the extent that his mammothcreations are nowadays in high demand by Gazpromleadership who give them as presents to VIP guestsSeliverstov did all this in his garage where he regularlyassembles the creative intelligentsia for intellectual andphilosophical discussions

Seliverstov exemplifies how people combine creativ-ity with recreation in their life in monoindustrial citiesbe it through construction of a dacha house or carvingartworks in their garage workshops

It seems likely that the number of dachas and recre-ational garage cooperatives must be well above 10000in a place like Novyi Urengoy This is the recreationalaspect be it in a garage or a dacha that prevails inplaces such as Novyi Urengoi Nadym and Pangody morethan for example in Murmansk and Yakutsk On thewest Siberian permafrost not only is the average materialaffluence of people higher but the conditions for growingplants are also harsher However during fieldwork somepeople were also planting potatoes on their dacha plotsin Novyi Urengoi on soil that was shipped 1000s ofkilometres lsquos zemleirsquo to the north because no potatowould grow on the sandy ground on the permafrost inthat area

In more cases however the whole dimension of adacha as partial subsistence supply is missing in north-west Siberia There the intimate physical engagement ofpeople with the land is mostly through picking mush-rooms and berries Some may embark on hunting orfishing trips from their garages or dachas In this respect adacha without a garden plot the gathering of male friendsin somebodyrsquos garage at the outskirts of town or in forestcabins all have a similar recreational aspect

Gender mobility and place in dacha orientationsOne might argue that this recreational aspect of dacha lifeis highly gender-specific typical ways of men spendingtheir time off work are sitting together outdoors drinkingbeer or stronger alcoholic beverages telling stories aboutonersquos fishing and hunting adventures going together tosauna frying meat and sausages and collective relaxingof the hectic work and city life [otvesti dushu] We wouldargue that this is a stereotype with the famous kernel oftruth Surely joint drinking and sauna are more associatedwith men than women in public opinion but much ofthe fieldwork indicates that women are also often vitallyincluded in the recreational aspects of dacha as a way oflife as well as men are part of dacha as a subsistenceactivity After all it is mostly men in the north who areinvolved in ordering and bringing the soil from the souththat is needed to grow potatoes and other plants on the

permafrost That soil has to be unloaded from trucksdistributed on the dacha plot prepared for the growingseason the potatoes have to be regularly dug over andmany other activities

The main difference between a dacha with gardenplot and one for leisure time is the extent to which theformer lsquobindsrsquo their owners physically to the place in thegrowing season People who are serious about cultivatingsomething on their dacha cannot really afford to leave forextended holidays as their compatriots with pure leisure-time dachas may do The garden requires care duringthree seasons of the year at least spring summer andautumn Absences of several months that are typical fornorthern labour migrants become much more difficult toorganise with such a dacha-commitment in the northThis means that such people will spend less time in thesouth at their places of origin As a result of their practicalengagement with the northern land and their graduallsquoalienationrsquo from a distant south their attachment to thenorth increases This may seem a rather abstract conclu-sion and we agree with Khlinovskaya Rockhill (2010)that real life is not organised into those dichotomies thatwe create in our minds Northerners do not forget theirbelonging to their places of origin either nor do onlythose without northern dachas visit the south But indeedseveral informants in our project emphasised that mostlythose with a strong relation to the northern place bother tohave a garden plot dacha The evolving of dacha places istherefore both a sign of increased belonging to the northamong inhabitants as well as of uninterrupted presencethere Dacha places as garden plots are therefore moredifficult to combine with the transient livelihoods thatwere thought to be typical for industrial workers whowould spend all their summers lsquoat homersquo in the south orwork on a fly infly out working plan Recreational dachasare therefore better suited for a way of life that involvesmultiple geographic localities throughout the year

In this respect large parts of the Russian populationare migratory between their urban life in autumn winterand spring and their dacha life in summer The dachaas home for the entire summer enables people to moveback to the earth regularly This move which is a way forthe urban population to preserve their rural roots sinceurbanisation is a rather recent tendency in Russia Whilein the 1930s there were hardly any significant cities inthe Russian north 80 years later more than 80 of thepopulation lives in cities in most of the northern regionsnamely 92 in Murmansk Oblast and 83 in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug In Russia altogether 74 ofthe population lived in cities in 2010 (Russia PopulationCensus 2010) This is the background on which the dachamovement caught up in Russia

From dacha to year-round suburban villagesThe notion of the dacha as summer home adds a di-mension of mobility and seasonality to life in the north-ern industrial city Many incomers have dachas at theirplaces of origin The popularity of dacha settlements in

10 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Murmansk Oblast and west Siberia as well as Yakutskwith its longer dacha history testifies this where manypeople stay for their entire summer on their dacha Thedacha as summer home is particularly important in thenorth among all those who do not have expressed attach-ments to other places outside of the region Paradoxicallymost of the northerners who keep connections to theplaces of origin in the south do so through spending thesummer holidays there in the south although it wouldseem to make much more sense to leave the north for thewinter Thus we have seen so far that dacha places bydefinition are seasonally limited to the warmer times ofthe year The whole point of having a dacha in the northwas to have an alternative place to move to when peoplewant to be closer to the earth and have more creativefreedom in place-making than they could ever have inan Arctic socialist city with strict efficiency planning andzoning

In our three case sites of Kirovsk-Apatity (MurmanskRegion) Novyi Urengoy (Yamal) and Yakutsk (SakhaYakutia) we can see however how this clear cut un-derstanding of dacha versus city life is gradually beingblurred

The dacha as a place for summer recreation graduallygets redefined as a place for year-round inhabitationenacting onersquos freedom in individual houses closer to theland rather than apartment blocks In expanding citieslike Novyi Urengoi Surgut and Yakutsk dacha settle-ments where people used to spend time only in summergradually turn into suburban areas with individual housesfor the affluent for year-round permanent inhabitation

Maybe the time has come to depart from the idea ofhousing only in apartment blocks in our city Peoplewant to live on their own now Itrsquos good the admin-istration is considering to give plots out on the fieldfor individual construction now (Ivan Avramenkopersonal communication 17 June 2013)

There is a technological demographic-economic andsocial aspect of such developments firstly new construc-tion technologies autonomous heating septic tanks andheat insulation have made it possible for house owners toestablish permanent year-round housing on their dachaplaces Secondly the high immigration into expandingArctic cities because of extractive industries has led torising real estate prices on a now free market in thesetowns where previously all housing was owned by thestate or the single industrial company in town Theseinstitutions stopped building new apartment blocks andhouse construction became a commodity In this situationbuilding a permanent house also for winter (zimnii vari-ant) on a dacha plot becomes a possibility for peopleto solve their housing problem or improve their housingconditions This is a widespread tendency in regions suchas Sergelyakh in Yakutsk Chernorechenski in Surgut orSeveryanin in Novyi Urengoy with prices easily reachingbetween 1000 and 3000 EURm2 Thirdly individualfreedom has become more important in northern citiesPeople are not ready to sacrifice and postpone their

pursuit of a comfortable life to a future in the south Theexperience of perestroika has shown them that they cannever be sure if that will ever come This social changeunderlies the tendency of dachas becoming permanenthomes people want to live in the North in their houseshere and now and not only during the short summer

I did not succeed to look around and Irsquom 50 yearsalready I came here with 25 So what would I livemy life in some next life Maybe not Thatrsquos whyI think dachas ndash this is concretely the way forwardin Novyi Urengoi One has to live today in goodconditions and allow people in this way to realisesome of their wishes for recreation We have nowthe means to create this (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2008)

This is interesting as she had the post of lead city-planning architect in Novyi Urengoy in the early 2000sand thus witnessed herself the change of the approach tolife in the Arctic city As much as she advocated on aprofessional level centralised housing-planning as muchshe was privately beautifully describing how important itis for her and her neighbours to be close to the land ontheir dachas

This apparent contradiction comes from the substan-tial difference it makes for the organisation of city spacewhen individual year-round housing is encouraged andwhen it is not In both Novyi Urengoi and Yakutsk thisis exemplified by the presence or absence of a formaladdress A formal address starts with a transfer of thelegal category of the land from a lsquorecreational zonersquowhich is what dacha cooperative territories are legallyinto a part of the lsquohousing zonersquo of the city A city officialfrom Novyi Urengoy explains that the status of the landwill not change even though more individuals build theirhouses according to the zimnyi variant for year round useThe reason is that this would entail lsquocertain obligationsrsquoby the municipality These are for example access to mu-nicipal electricity rubbish collection street maintenancepublic transport postal and internet services schoolshealthcare police stations and all other aspects of muni-cipal services While in Yakutsk entire neighbourhoods ofdachas are being transformed into regular suburbs with allservices In some municipalities such as Novyi Urengoithere is resistance to these obligations

You canrsquot turn this city into this settlement patternabout which we talk ndash go back to the land Inprinciple how can one live and extract gas when Ihave to think where I find firewood for heating myautonomous device Let the dear gentleman replyto this question[ ] You have to create a structurewhich would supply the citizens Otherwise how willhe do it Feed wood to an oven We donrsquot have foresthere [in the tundra] (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2007)

This means that such individual permanent houseswill not have official postcodes nor streetnames andnumbers lsquoalthough within the dacha cooperatives forpeoplersquos comfort and orientation they give names for the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 11

drivewaysrsquo (Vladimir Nuykin personal communica-tion19 May 2013)

Much but not all individual year round housing innorthern industrial cities is constructed on dacha territor-ies This transforms the character of dacha places gradu-ally into a more urban atmosphere These tendenciesfrom the regions not only in the Arctic but all over Russiahave now made their way up to the Federal Russianpolitical discussion the government and parliament arein favour of adopting a law allowing people officiallyto register on their dacha places as permanent residentsIt remains unclear as of 2014 if such new permanentresidents then have to pay regular housing tax for theirdacha-houses and plots as these developments are newand this tax would be under regional or municipal controlPremier Medvedev admitted that this would legalise analready established de facto year round inhabitation ondacha plots by many people (RIA Novosti (Moscow)5 August 2013)

This process is seen by some long-time dacha inhab-itants as the disappearance of dachas (dachi izcheznut)On the other hand one can say that the spirit of dachaplaces expands to a year-round quality of life withthe recreational aspects the individual freedom in placecreation and the being close to the land included So theurban built environment gradually acquires more ruraltraits One significant consequence of this developmentis that seasonality and the rhythm of moving betweencity and dacha places on the outskirts gets lost as theborders between the two become blurred This is ex-actly the opposite of what happens in many villages inthe Russian Arctic and also the Finnish North whichturn gradually from permanent villages into summersettlements as services and social infrastructure closedown Nakhshina (2013) describes this process in herethnography of encounters between seasonal and per-manent dwellers of Kuzomenrsquo a village in Murmanskregion

We argue here that both these tendencies are intercon-nected the more people leave villages to live in citiesthe more permanent houses will be built in those cities onpreviously unbuilt territory Analysing a recent article onthe future planning of Yakutsk it became very clear howthe city will become more rural-looking within its urbanzone as it will be surrounded by a number of suburbswith individual houses that will form with the city centretogether the lsquoMini-Moscowrsquo as the authors call it (Yak-utsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013 301 9)A team of Yakutsk-based regional researchers envisagesthat by 2032 the city population will live just outside thecentre lsquoin well-equipped low-rise houses on their ownplots with not less than 1000m2 garages for 2 cars and thenecessary high quality social infrastructure in the vicinity[ ] and a journey to work of not more than 30 minutesrsquo(Yakutsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013301 9) According to that plan the territories for suchfuture suburbs will be those currently allocated for dachaplots

This shows that the move from the seasonality ofdacha places to the permanence of suburban settlementsin the Russian Arctic is a bottom-up movement that hasarisen from the individual practices of dacha-creatorsdescribed in Nakhshina and Razumovarsquos (2009) articleThis movement has now arrived in the halls of power ofmunicipal administrations that have to deal with such newrealities and the increased municipal obligations relatedto them The former Novyi Urengoy chief architect de-scribed this dilemma

Originally historically the individual house exempli-fies the Russian person What was bad in this [Soviet]period In our life here in these modern cities therewas no such concept of onersquos own house but it isnow back coming back at this very time But it wouldbe wrong now in the setting of Novyi Urengoi toallow the development of individual construction Itwould be a mistake because the city was originallynot designed for that Yes the question of individualconstruction was put to me as the chief architect veryseriously They simply put pressure on me [Allow-ing] it is a compromise (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication) 28 September 2007)

Based on statements like this we argue that the northernpopulation had realised that they cannot hope for someall-caring state to increase their living standard in Arcticcities Instead they took their own initiative and createdfaits accomplis Officials could not ignore this movementtowards the land anymore and had to take individualyear-round house planning based on dacha places intoconsideration

Life beyond industrial work in the north

What unites all types of dachas and the permanent houseson dacha plots and garage cooperatives is that theseplaces are created by people wanting to spend theirprivate life and their free time in the north This is anextension of the original idea of northern industrial city-development in which people were induced to moveexclusively for working Our informants express clearlythis tendency towards more of a lsquolifersquo dimension of theirnorthern existence Gone are the early days of northernindustrial city development in which many said theydid not bother to furnish their apartments properly haveproper dishes eat out of cans and saved everythingfor the future This Soviet approach of being tempor-arily in the Arctic described by Khlinovskaya Rockhill(2010) turns Yurchakrsquos famous book title lsquoEverythingwas forever until it was no morersquo (2005) upside downinto lsquoEverything was temporary until it became foreverrsquoThe discovery of the north by incomers and their des-cendants not only as a place of work but a place of lifenecessarily changes the intensity of residentsrsquo relations totheir built natural and social environment The evolutionof dachas and of individual permanent housing is alogical consequence of this development

12 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

We have shown that the typical dacha with a gardenplot and a summer house has a clearly seasonal characterand with few exceptions people do not spend much timethere in winter However as their presence in the northbecomes less seasonal and their involvement with thenorthern land more intensive signs of permanent livingon dacha places increase In such cases the former dachatransforms to a hybrid of summer place close to thenatural environment and permanent housing close to thecity

It is in this microcosm of their own plots wherenortherners with southern origin can enact their intensiveindividual engagement with the land using their creativeand productive potential in free decision making Weagree with Nakhshina and Razumova (2009) that dachasreflect the individual freedom and creativity of the plotowners This freedom is crucial as a counterbalance totheir work in the north that has always been a part ofa larger development project for a country-wide com-munity It is alongside the physical engagement withthe land a crucial factor characterising the particularhuman-environment relation that dacha people haveDacha owners create on their plots material expressionsof their own individual character and biography In thelife histories recorded during fieldwork in 2007ndash2010 wesee how lifelines connect southern places of origin andnorthern places that have become home They becomeintertwined in the dacha places that combine a moresouthern agricultural logic with garden plots plantsvegetables and a northern approach to nature in whichberry picking hunting and fishing as recreational andsubsistence activity are very important

We can interpret on the dacha plots these intertwinedlines through the construction materials used an aspectalso covered in the publication by Nakhshina and Razu-mova (2009) Somebody who works for example in aconcrete factory or has friends who do so is more likelyto use various leftovers or otherwise acquired items ofthat kind of production on their dachas although usuallydachas would be built of wood in a countryside villagestyle (Fig 6) Some dacha plots are very elaborate in per-fect order decorated with love for every detail whereasothers focus more on the functionality take the growingof food very seriously as they or their relatives may havedone in their places of origin in the south Or they mayjust use the dacha plot for planting flowers and as a baseto gather hunt and fish in the northern landscape sur-rounding the dachas in cases where industrial expansionhas left space for such practices This individual freedomof creating a place of onersquos own preference is somethingthat people cannot enjoy in their city There they livein apartment blocks planned and built by somebody elsefollowing a collective ideology with the goal of efficientorganisation of work and life

This combination of onersquos southern mirror image ofhome and components stemming from onersquos northern lifeand work lets the dacha appear almost as a physical ne-cessity how else could people express this other dimen-

sion of homeness and placehood that goes beyond livingfor the sake of working in an industrial city until reachingthe age of retirement Therefore dacha can become butnot always is a sign of increased attachment of onersquosnorthern place of life which was not originally thoughtfor long-term inhabitation by incomers But differentfrom the indigenous hunter or gatherer the attachmenthere is not to the natural environment with minimalfootprint but to onersquos self-created place that combineselements of onersquos southern origin the northern place ofwork and the local climate In most cases the relationshipof people to their dacha places is reciprocal It com-plements the idea of the lsquogiving environmentrsquo that weknow from hunter-gatherer societies (Bird-David 1990)in which a sentient environment offers its resources tothe hunter who shows respect and his knowledge of theplaces through appropriate behaviour (Anderson 2000)

Among northern industrial city inhabitants the self-created dacha place rewards its masterrsquos hard work withgiving back the fruits of the land even though maybeon soil especially imported from the south and put in alayer on top of the permafrost The environment is thusself-created In this respect we cannot necessarily speakof settlers getting closer to natives as is suggested forChukotka in the work of Thompson (2008)

Conclusion

This article has described the development of dachas inArctic Russian industrial cities We took the anthropolo-gical study of Arctic dacha places a step further from asingle region case study as was done previously (Naksh-ina and Razumova 2009 Nakshina 2013 Bolotova 2012)to a comparative approach We acknowledge the diversityand uniqueness of our three field sites and therefore stateahead of our general conclusions that those must not betaken as generalisations and final words but rather asinvitation for further research in this little studied field

The analysis of dacha situations in Arctic cities inthree regions (Apatity-Kirovsk Novyi Urengoy Yak-utsk) leads us to reach the following four main pointsfirstly the Arctic city dacha movement can be seen inpath-dependence to the Soviet working class dachaswhereas the pre-Soviet summer recreational house ideare-surfaces gradually after the immediate post-Sovietperiod Secondly in the Arctic dacha movement theexpression of individual creativity and intensive socialorganisation in collectives do not exclude each otherThirdly we suggest that Arctic dacha settlements andpractices are excellent cases for studying processes ofhuman agency and place creation which grant us deeperinsights in the determinants of peoplersquos relation to theland Fourthly this human agency on the land helps usto understand how urban communities in Arctic Rus-sia change their spatial practices gradually from state-induced inhabitation of compressed dense high-rise con-crete landscapes to village-resembling agglomerations ofsmaller houses close to the land As a consequence the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 13

seasonality of dacha practices gradually gives way to areintroduction of peoplersquos quality of life closer to whatthey call lsquonaturersquo on a permanent year-round basis

What do these four main concluding points tell usIndustrial northerners change the approach to their citiespeople who invest today in a dacha stop seeing them-selves as just working in the north but gradually also startliving there be it temporarily or permanent This showshow the Arctic has become a place to lead a normal lifefor immigrants and their descendants with characteristicsof a normal urban population elsewhere albeit with somespecifics related to seasons climate and permafrost

The increase in development of Arctic dachas asgarden plots arose largely out of economic necessitiesin perestroika but at the same time was a perfect matchwith a deeply Russian approach to the land namelythrough physical agricultural engagement that is focusedon refinement of nature on leaving the human footprintand on adding value The increasing popularity of recre-ational dachas we argued here alongside the blurring ofborders to permanent individual housing areas in Arcticcities is a sign of the end of the post-Soviet periodWe see here the advent of broader trends of mainstreameveryday life in the Arctic with relative affluence andlife-trajectories that are not characterised by a love for theextreme (climate conditions exceptional social fabrics)but for the normal

We have further analysed the dacha as a visual arenafor the interplay between economic and social needsof northerners in the Russian Arctic More than justenabling additional food production in difficult times thedacha is a playground for balancing the freedom of in-dividual creation of place with the deeply social desire toshare experiences with neighbours Dachas are like bookswherein we can read and experience the character pro-fessional biography material wellbeing individual lifestory social status and belonging and preferred practicesof their owners The Arctic dacha cooperative in Russiais a model of self-governance that incorporates the Sovietlegacy of the kollektif while also considering individualcreative freedom in place creation Dacha places arealso a mirror image of the changed balance between theindividual and the collective since the perestroika periodin Arctic Russia late Soviet time dachas were open andvisible while from the late 1990s onwards high fencesbecame the symbols of dachas even in the Arctic wherepeople usually emphasise that collectivity and mutualassistance are life-important

We suggest seeing these developments as a sign of theRussian Arctic becoming a less extreme and more normalplace Rather than a frontier to open up as portrayed in somany popular discourses on Arctic resources the northhas become home for the non-indigenous population thatwas induced by the state to move there While the lsquonative-ness of settlersrsquo (Thompson 2008) or their intensive ad-aptation to the northern nature (Nakshina and Razumova2009) have been emphasised before our material sug-gests that incomer dacha-peoplersquos worldview and relation

to the land in those industrial areas of the Russian north isbased largely on their southern roots and an agriculturallogic Dichotomies are always controversial but we dareto put them forward to inspire more refined analysis inthis direction We argue that industrial city-dwellers anddacha ownersrsquo footprint on the land contributes to prideand identity-building whereas among most indigenousinhabitants peoplersquos embeddedness in the surroundingenvironment with minimal footprint prevails This meansthat the future of the Russian north is one of at leasttwo different modes of dwelling and perceiving the en-vironment both of which involve very intimate relationsbetween people and the land

Acknowledgements

We thank all our friends and collaborators in Apat-ityKirovsk Novyi Urengoy Nadym Pangody and Yak-utsk for their openness and hospitality Funding is grate-fully acknowledged from the research projects BOREASMOVE-INNOCOM funded by the Finnish Academyunder the BOREAS ESF EUROCORES scheme de-cision number 118702 and from the subsequent FinnishAcademy project ORHELIA decision number 251111Moreover the project lsquoThe peoples of the north-eastof the Russian Federation choosing a new adaptivestrategy under conditions of globalisation A social-anthropological approachrsquo Yakutsk (North Eastern Fed-eral) University Russia) contributed funding for thisresearch

ReferencesAnderson D 2000 Identity and ecology in Arctic Siberia the

number one reindeer brigade Oxford Oxford UniversityPress

Bird-David N 1990 The giving environment another perspect-ive on the economic system of gatherer-hunters CurrentAnthropology 31(2) 189ndash96

Bolotova A 2005 Discourses on taiga the state geologists andnature in the Soviet Union In Bammeacute A G Getzinger andB Wieser (editors) Yearbook of the Institute for AdvancedStudies on Science Technology and Society Munich andVienna Profil 25ndash53

Bolotova A 2012 Loving and conquering nature shifting per-ceptions of the environment in the industrialised Russiannorth Europe-Asia Studies 64(4)645ndash671

Bolotova A and F Stammler 2010 How the north becamehome Attachment to place among industrial migrants inMurmansk region In Southcott C and L Huskey (editors)Migration in the circumpolar north issues and contextsEdmonton Alberta Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press(University of Alberta CCI occasional publication 64) 193ndash220

Budaev A 2013 Sovremennye Realii Yakutskogo Agropoi-asa [Modern realities of Yakutian agro-belt] YakutskEkho Stolitsy 43 2160 URL httpwwwexo-yktruarticles244857494 (accessed 24 November 2013)

Crate S 2006 Cows kin and globalization an ethnography ofsustainability Walnut Creek Alta Mira Press

Eilmsteiner-Saxinger G 2013 Auf uns ndash auf euch ndash auf Oumll undGas FernpendlerInnen in der Erdgas- und Erdoumllindustrie im

6 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Fig 6 (Colour online) Dacha built of concrete blocks inTik-Guba Apatity

members have more decision making power over howtheir assigned plot can look Rather than seeing dachasas mostly an expression of peoplersquos individuality and theindividual adaptation of southern migrants (Nakhshinaand Razumova 2009) we take their argument further byfinding a combined expression between the individualand the social dimension in the Russian northern dachaplaces which also combine the idea of the city withelements of lsquonaturersquo It is this collectivity that is the maindifference of the dacha from the idea of for example theFinnish summer cottage (Fig 6)

Cityscape and lsquowild naturersquo in peoplersquos summerhome narratives

Although Bolotova (2012 662) also considers industrialpeoplersquos activities further away from the city she con-ceives both the activities in remote forests and suburbandachas as practices in nature outside the city IndeedArctic industrial city dwellers often define lsquonaturersquo asspace outside town not regulated by the standardisedSoviet city planning In light of the tight organisation ofdacha collectives we would slightly rectify this statementas dacha is so much part of the city-environment andhuman-made engineered surroundings

As such this is very different from peoplersquos cabins inthe forest This is why Bolotova distinguishes differentlsquonaturesrsquo paraphrasing Macnaghten and Urry (1998) Forexample 81 year old Valentin Ivanov in Nadym (westSiberia) has a very different approach to the environmentfrom the dacha people He talked with pride about hisremote cabin in the forest that is far away from anyother man-made structure where he fishes and picks thegifts of nature with his wife lsquoI take the gun with meonly because of the bear He is the master of the taigabut for scaring away this is neededrsquo (Valentin Ivanovpersonal communication 1 April 2008) An importantcharacteristic of this place for him is its distance verymuch unlike a dacha locality with all the close neighbourrelations He would not call his forest cabin 100 km away

from Nadym a dacha Ivanov intimately knows that forestplace and his narratives of being there convey a mix ofadventure and meditation

The difference between these two recreational placescity-scape and lsquowildrsquo nature becomes evident when com-paring Ivanovrsquos narrative to that of the dacha-dwellerwho perceived the forest surrounding his dacha as anextension of his living room where he walks wearing hisslippers In an extended forest-living room you wouldneither have the idea of respecting other masters suchas the bear nor take a gun along for your own safetyOn the other hand Ivanovrsquos idea is also different from anindigenous perception in which the taiga would be homeand people would move in the environment for huntingand herding rather than recreational fishing and pickingWe suggest a clear distinction between dacha places ofindustrial workers close to their cities and remote forestdestinations of the fewer experts fishers and pickersand leisure time hunters In other words forest cabinsare no dachas because they lack the cooperative socialcomponent Other than in dacha places with forest cabinswe can also hardly find a lsquobuilding perspectiversquo Ivanovwas clear about leaving as little footprint as possible withhis cabin in the otherwise unchanged environment

Forms and orientation of dachas in the Russian north

This section illustrates the diverse practices that havealways been part of dacha life in different combinationsNakshina and Razumova (2009) introduce as motivationsfor establishing dachas in the Murmansk region economicand recreational reasons In many cases dachas are placesfor recreation as well as garden plots for subsistenceAnother important component is seasonal mobility ofthe population (see above) In the most recent cases inRussia an additional component of permanent habitationchanges significantly the meaning of dacha which thenloses its character as a refuge from industrial city life thenotion of peace of mind and recovery

The garden plot subsistence dachaThe classical form of dacha in Soviet Russia that wasimported to the north is first and foremost a garden plotin which the individual or family is free to cultivate andgrow as much as their own skills and the climate allowMoreover they enjoy the freedom to build a house onthat plot that can be anything from an extended shed forgardening tools to a full-fledged summer house that couldpossibly even developed for year-round inhabitation (seeend of article) Just as in the industrial city and verydifferent from indigenous northernersrsquo life in the north-ern dachas everything is imported from the south fromconstruction materials tools equipment and greenhousematerials to seeds and sometimes even soil By using thisimported material these people create their own importedmicrocosm on the northern permafrost as they may haveit in their own imagination that is influenced by theirpast experience from their places of origin Many dacha

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 7

people become very ambitious in creating these mirrorimages of the south in what they first perceive as a harshnorthern frontier (see Nakhshina and Razumova 2009Figs 3ndash5)

Murmansk Oblast is a northern region with a verystrong dacha movement in which the garden plot dacha isa dominant category In spite of its northern latitude theregion has a relatively mild climate and no permafrostwhich makes growing plants less problematic Moreoverthe Murmansk region has been with its post-Soviet out-migration and industrial decline in an economically moredifficult situation in comparison to west Siberia (Nuykina2011) or Yakutia This made growing onersquos own foodan economic necessity for many given the low salariesand pensions in the region There is numerical evidencefor this from Heleniakrsquos (2010) comparative researchwhich shows the far northwest and the far northeast asregions with most economic decline outmigration andnegative demographic tendencies For people in Mur-mansk region this development made it not only possiblebut in some cases necessary to work on the land inorder to get fresh vegetables and fruits It is this aspectthat is prominent in Nakshinarsquos and Razumovarsquos (2009)explanation for the evolution of what they call lsquodachaculturersquo The garden plot dachas in Murmansk Oblast aremore elaborate than in Yamal-Nenets Okrug where mostpeople are more affluent and growing conditions on thepermafrost are harsher The early history of immigrationinto the Murmansk north shows that many incomerscame from a rural agricultural background (Bolotova andStammler 2010) Not only were they not used to an urbanlife (Nakshina and Razumova 2009 418) amidst greyconcrete blocks they were also familiar with working theland According to Salimova (2011 8) in the early 1930s91 of the forced relocatees to Kirovsk were peasantsTheir expertise was used to establish a sovkhoz a Sovietstate farm on the shore of Lake Imandra to feed theindustrial workers of Kirovsk That sovkhoz lsquoindustriarsquois considered the cradle of Apatity village which later inthe 1960s would become a mineral resource extractiontown which soon outgrew Kirovsk

However this organised Soviet agricultural activityto feed industry workers of monoindustrial cities in thenorth is very different from dacha subsistence plotswhich were not foreseen in the development plans forindustrial cities (Bolotova 2012)

The main economic rationale for the evolution ofdachas in the Arctic was the idea of additional foodsupply in times of defitsit lack of supply Towards theend of the Soviet period more and more food itemswere in defitsit Moreover dacha people emphasisedthe notion of freshness beyond economic considerationsFresh vegetables from onersquos own garden were the onlypossibility to get access to fresh plant-based food asimported food from the south would not be fresh by thetime it arrived in the shops In this respect the importanceof onersquos dacha plot is much more than economical asfreshness is not something that money can buy Fresh

local food is also known to be a source of place-basedidentification of people as Weiss (2011) has shown wellbeyond the Arctic in rural USA In the Russian northlocal fresh dacha food is a source of great pride

As the example quoted above from Yakutsk illus-trates the notion of dacha used as a place to intensivelywork (intensivnoe osvoenie) and open up the land canbe interpreted as non-indigenous incomers enacting theirrelations to the environment as Nakhshina and Razu-mova (2009) and Bolotova (2012) show In addition tothat since these dacha owners are all Soviet industrialmigrants to the Arctic or their descendants there isan obvious parallel in the approach to dacha osvoeniewith the official Soviet idea of osvoenie that meant theconquest of nature adding meaning and usefulness tootherwise empty and senseless space

It was not until the 1980s and perestroika that north-ern industrial settlers started seeing dachas as places at-taching them to their northern places of residence ratherthan to their southern places of origin The possibilityto establish onersquos own place outside of the city waslike a return back to the earth for people with roots inthe arable south after a long break living in concretehousing blocks It was the return to a situation in whichowners could enact their agricultural engagement withthe land that had been identity-forming for many of theirancestors

The comparably soft climate and absence of per-mafrost soils definitely makes cultivation easier than inSiberia as well as construction Engaging with the north-ern land on an individual basis through building dachasand growing food there became a realistic alternative toleaving the north to some dacha in the south every year

On the other hand the example of Yakutsk showsthat garden-plot dachas are also possible and popular onpermafrost While dachas have a long history in Yakutskfor the intelligentsia and the party elites (see above)it was in the 1960s and 1970s that Yakutsk becamean administrative centre for diamond and gold miningIncoming workers established dachas as garden plotsWith the short but hot and humid summer cultivatingfruits and vegetables became widespread Water melonshoney melons and other non-northern plants successfullygrown on those dachas are a source of particular prideYakutsk suffered from economic decline too albeit lessthan the Murmansk region Shortage and lack of moneyto buy food even when it was for sale made people in bothplaces focus more on growing their food on their dachasThis is also because of the widespread collapse of Rus-sian agriculture that made the north entirely dependenton imported food or subsistence production As a resultpastures and agricultural land was abandoned In Yakutsksome of that land is now occupied by dacha plots (Budaev2013)

In both Murmansk and Yakutsk one might think thatthe importance of garden plot dachas would decreaseas people become more affluent and the supply systemfor imported food is stable However while several

8 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

informants have mentioned that their children and grand-children are no longer motivated to help on the dachaplot the reputation of local food has become muchstronger reflecting a worldwide trend well summarisedby Holt and Amilien (2007) This is why even north ofthe Arctic Circle there is a continued demand for peopleworking the land above the permafrost and apparentlymany of those who do not have their own dacha plots arehappy to pay a higher price for food produced by localfarms

Recreational dachasIn northwest Siberiarsquos gas cities the idea of dacha placesand individualrsquonaya zastroika territories covered by in-dividual construction was still somewhat alien and un-suitable for the harsh climate when our fieldwork startedamong the city dwellers in 2007 The idea of dachas wasinspired by the Soviet idea of garden subsistence plotsin central Russia Recreational dachas even pre-dated theSoviet Union and were then taken on by intelligentsiaand party elites in the north early on for example inYakutsk Arctic industrial cities however were seen asplaces to work not to live which is why there was nodacha construction planned there

After the Soviet Union and the post-perestroika crisissome people have become rather affluent and can affordto keep a dacha just for a change from city-life Thephysical need to grow onersquos own food decreased and freshfood became available even in markets in the north Nowmore people keep a dacha exclusively for spending theirfree time without growing anything on the plot Suchdachas are appreciated as a change from the standardisedapartment block to onersquos self-built or self-planned houseMost such dachas will have a sauna (Fig 1) From shortinterviews and living on dacha places and individualhouses in Novyi Urengoy Nadym and Pangody it seemsthat people would not sacrifice their yearly summerholiday somewhere lsquoon the landrsquo (na zemle) in the southjust because they would care for their dacha plants on thepermafrost In peoplersquos narratives there the idea of livingin the here and now has become much more prominentlsquoWe donrsquot want to eat out of cans and sit on cardboardboxes anymore just to save our life for the future Wewant to live here now in the north as well as maybe onthe land (na zemle) laterrsquo (Galina Konechnaia personalcommunication 27 March 2008) Recreational dachas inindustrial cities can therefore be understood as a sign ofincomers having arrived at an understanding of the northas their place of life to which they feel attached Howeveras Khlinovskaya Rockhill (2010) and Stammler (2010)showed this does not mean that people necessarily planto live their entire life there In the emerging dachamovement of Arctic industrial cities a dacha is thereforealso seen as an investment that can bring good returns incase the owners decide to sell it and return to their placesof origin

Novyi Urengoy shall serve as an example of thismovement The city was planned as a monoindustrial gas

town initially consisting of temporary living containers(bochki) and wooden barracks in the late 1970s and laterof Soviet style concrete blocks for Gazprom workersand their support industry Individual houses and dachaswere not part of the city plan not even after the SovietUnion as Novyi Urengoyrsquos then chief architect AllaLyaskovskaya confirmed The first dachas were builttowards the end of the 1990s after planned apartmentblocks were not constructed Then people lobbied forpermission to build individual houses in the growing cityin order to have somewhere to live But all they could getwas land allocated for recreational purposes

Yuri Plotnikov was among the pioneers of the recre-ational dacha movement there the first one who built adacha house with all amenities such as water electricityheating He proudly states lsquoWhen I came up with the ideato build myself a house outside of town people in the cityadministration looked down at me and said I was crazyBut then all sorts of people wanted to do the samersquo (YuriPlotnikov personal communication 23 September 2007)When Plotnikov sold his dacha because of his move toMoscow in 2009 he got 10 times the US dollars pricethat he had invested in the early 2000s By then dacha andindividual housing had become a big movement Moreand more space was appropriated for dachas between theurban living zone and industrial zones of Novyi UrengoiThe purpose of these dachas was mainly recreational

You have to give people the possibility of spendingtheir leisure time actively My husband is totally intothat on our dacha He is a real master and loves doingeverything himself [ ] Look in the city we havehere everything in monochrome (Alla Lyaskovskayapersonal communication 28 September 2007)The first [the dachas] were only containers wherepeople would go for barbeque Then the first flowerbeds appeared then some greenhouses and peoplebuilt themselves saunas And then later also suburbancottages and some even real concrete houses Nownot only those with the big money build but also inlsquoeconomy classrsquo ndash everybody according to his wallet(Vladimir Nuykin personal communication 19 May2013)

These processes led Novyi Urengoi with a population of115000 to have approximately 10000 dacha plots ofwhich as of 2013 40 have proper houses on themwhile another 20 are just allocated but still untouchedand the remainder is used as plots without buildings

However this number does not seem to include an-other form of recreational territory in the monoindustrialcity namely garage cooperatives These are organisedsimilarly to dacha cooperatives and the male recreationalactivities on both are similar people meet there forbarbecue The garages are many menrsquos pride with elab-orate workshops where they meet and repair all kinds ofequipment such as cars engines boats snowmobiles andthe like Others specialise in their garages on building andconstructing for example furniture and a few even usetheir garage as arts and handicrafts ateliers One such case

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 9

is Viktor Seliverstov from Novyi Urengoy The formerGazprom driller from Tatarstan came in 1978 to the northat the very start of west Siberian gas development Hehad found a lot of mammoth tusks during his travels onthe gas fields and started carving figures out of themHe took that so seriously that he got deeply involved innorthern indigenous symbolism cosmology and handi-craft and developed skills to the extent that his mammothcreations are nowadays in high demand by Gazpromleadership who give them as presents to VIP guestsSeliverstov did all this in his garage where he regularlyassembles the creative intelligentsia for intellectual andphilosophical discussions

Seliverstov exemplifies how people combine creativ-ity with recreation in their life in monoindustrial citiesbe it through construction of a dacha house or carvingartworks in their garage workshops

It seems likely that the number of dachas and recre-ational garage cooperatives must be well above 10000in a place like Novyi Urengoy This is the recreationalaspect be it in a garage or a dacha that prevails inplaces such as Novyi Urengoi Nadym and Pangody morethan for example in Murmansk and Yakutsk On thewest Siberian permafrost not only is the average materialaffluence of people higher but the conditions for growingplants are also harsher However during fieldwork somepeople were also planting potatoes on their dacha plotsin Novyi Urengoi on soil that was shipped 1000s ofkilometres lsquos zemleirsquo to the north because no potatowould grow on the sandy ground on the permafrost inthat area

In more cases however the whole dimension of adacha as partial subsistence supply is missing in north-west Siberia There the intimate physical engagement ofpeople with the land is mostly through picking mush-rooms and berries Some may embark on hunting orfishing trips from their garages or dachas In this respect adacha without a garden plot the gathering of male friendsin somebodyrsquos garage at the outskirts of town or in forestcabins all have a similar recreational aspect

Gender mobility and place in dacha orientationsOne might argue that this recreational aspect of dacha lifeis highly gender-specific typical ways of men spendingtheir time off work are sitting together outdoors drinkingbeer or stronger alcoholic beverages telling stories aboutonersquos fishing and hunting adventures going together tosauna frying meat and sausages and collective relaxingof the hectic work and city life [otvesti dushu] We wouldargue that this is a stereotype with the famous kernel oftruth Surely joint drinking and sauna are more associatedwith men than women in public opinion but much ofthe fieldwork indicates that women are also often vitallyincluded in the recreational aspects of dacha as a way oflife as well as men are part of dacha as a subsistenceactivity After all it is mostly men in the north who areinvolved in ordering and bringing the soil from the souththat is needed to grow potatoes and other plants on the

permafrost That soil has to be unloaded from trucksdistributed on the dacha plot prepared for the growingseason the potatoes have to be regularly dug over andmany other activities

The main difference between a dacha with gardenplot and one for leisure time is the extent to which theformer lsquobindsrsquo their owners physically to the place in thegrowing season People who are serious about cultivatingsomething on their dacha cannot really afford to leave forextended holidays as their compatriots with pure leisure-time dachas may do The garden requires care duringthree seasons of the year at least spring summer andautumn Absences of several months that are typical fornorthern labour migrants become much more difficult toorganise with such a dacha-commitment in the northThis means that such people will spend less time in thesouth at their places of origin As a result of their practicalengagement with the northern land and their graduallsquoalienationrsquo from a distant south their attachment to thenorth increases This may seem a rather abstract conclu-sion and we agree with Khlinovskaya Rockhill (2010)that real life is not organised into those dichotomies thatwe create in our minds Northerners do not forget theirbelonging to their places of origin either nor do onlythose without northern dachas visit the south But indeedseveral informants in our project emphasised that mostlythose with a strong relation to the northern place bother tohave a garden plot dacha The evolving of dacha places istherefore both a sign of increased belonging to the northamong inhabitants as well as of uninterrupted presencethere Dacha places as garden plots are therefore moredifficult to combine with the transient livelihoods thatwere thought to be typical for industrial workers whowould spend all their summers lsquoat homersquo in the south orwork on a fly infly out working plan Recreational dachasare therefore better suited for a way of life that involvesmultiple geographic localities throughout the year

In this respect large parts of the Russian populationare migratory between their urban life in autumn winterand spring and their dacha life in summer The dachaas home for the entire summer enables people to moveback to the earth regularly This move which is a way forthe urban population to preserve their rural roots sinceurbanisation is a rather recent tendency in Russia Whilein the 1930s there were hardly any significant cities inthe Russian north 80 years later more than 80 of thepopulation lives in cities in most of the northern regionsnamely 92 in Murmansk Oblast and 83 in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug In Russia altogether 74 ofthe population lived in cities in 2010 (Russia PopulationCensus 2010) This is the background on which the dachamovement caught up in Russia

From dacha to year-round suburban villagesThe notion of the dacha as summer home adds a di-mension of mobility and seasonality to life in the north-ern industrial city Many incomers have dachas at theirplaces of origin The popularity of dacha settlements in

10 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Murmansk Oblast and west Siberia as well as Yakutskwith its longer dacha history testifies this where manypeople stay for their entire summer on their dacha Thedacha as summer home is particularly important in thenorth among all those who do not have expressed attach-ments to other places outside of the region Paradoxicallymost of the northerners who keep connections to theplaces of origin in the south do so through spending thesummer holidays there in the south although it wouldseem to make much more sense to leave the north for thewinter Thus we have seen so far that dacha places bydefinition are seasonally limited to the warmer times ofthe year The whole point of having a dacha in the northwas to have an alternative place to move to when peoplewant to be closer to the earth and have more creativefreedom in place-making than they could ever have inan Arctic socialist city with strict efficiency planning andzoning

In our three case sites of Kirovsk-Apatity (MurmanskRegion) Novyi Urengoy (Yamal) and Yakutsk (SakhaYakutia) we can see however how this clear cut un-derstanding of dacha versus city life is gradually beingblurred

The dacha as a place for summer recreation graduallygets redefined as a place for year-round inhabitationenacting onersquos freedom in individual houses closer to theland rather than apartment blocks In expanding citieslike Novyi Urengoi Surgut and Yakutsk dacha settle-ments where people used to spend time only in summergradually turn into suburban areas with individual housesfor the affluent for year-round permanent inhabitation

Maybe the time has come to depart from the idea ofhousing only in apartment blocks in our city Peoplewant to live on their own now Itrsquos good the admin-istration is considering to give plots out on the fieldfor individual construction now (Ivan Avramenkopersonal communication 17 June 2013)

There is a technological demographic-economic andsocial aspect of such developments firstly new construc-tion technologies autonomous heating septic tanks andheat insulation have made it possible for house owners toestablish permanent year-round housing on their dachaplaces Secondly the high immigration into expandingArctic cities because of extractive industries has led torising real estate prices on a now free market in thesetowns where previously all housing was owned by thestate or the single industrial company in town Theseinstitutions stopped building new apartment blocks andhouse construction became a commodity In this situationbuilding a permanent house also for winter (zimnii vari-ant) on a dacha plot becomes a possibility for peopleto solve their housing problem or improve their housingconditions This is a widespread tendency in regions suchas Sergelyakh in Yakutsk Chernorechenski in Surgut orSeveryanin in Novyi Urengoy with prices easily reachingbetween 1000 and 3000 EURm2 Thirdly individualfreedom has become more important in northern citiesPeople are not ready to sacrifice and postpone their

pursuit of a comfortable life to a future in the south Theexperience of perestroika has shown them that they cannever be sure if that will ever come This social changeunderlies the tendency of dachas becoming permanenthomes people want to live in the North in their houseshere and now and not only during the short summer

I did not succeed to look around and Irsquom 50 yearsalready I came here with 25 So what would I livemy life in some next life Maybe not Thatrsquos whyI think dachas ndash this is concretely the way forwardin Novyi Urengoi One has to live today in goodconditions and allow people in this way to realisesome of their wishes for recreation We have nowthe means to create this (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2008)

This is interesting as she had the post of lead city-planning architect in Novyi Urengoy in the early 2000sand thus witnessed herself the change of the approach tolife in the Arctic city As much as she advocated on aprofessional level centralised housing-planning as muchshe was privately beautifully describing how important itis for her and her neighbours to be close to the land ontheir dachas

This apparent contradiction comes from the substan-tial difference it makes for the organisation of city spacewhen individual year-round housing is encouraged andwhen it is not In both Novyi Urengoi and Yakutsk thisis exemplified by the presence or absence of a formaladdress A formal address starts with a transfer of thelegal category of the land from a lsquorecreational zonersquowhich is what dacha cooperative territories are legallyinto a part of the lsquohousing zonersquo of the city A city officialfrom Novyi Urengoy explains that the status of the landwill not change even though more individuals build theirhouses according to the zimnyi variant for year round useThe reason is that this would entail lsquocertain obligationsrsquoby the municipality These are for example access to mu-nicipal electricity rubbish collection street maintenancepublic transport postal and internet services schoolshealthcare police stations and all other aspects of muni-cipal services While in Yakutsk entire neighbourhoods ofdachas are being transformed into regular suburbs with allservices In some municipalities such as Novyi Urengoithere is resistance to these obligations

You canrsquot turn this city into this settlement patternabout which we talk ndash go back to the land Inprinciple how can one live and extract gas when Ihave to think where I find firewood for heating myautonomous device Let the dear gentleman replyto this question[ ] You have to create a structurewhich would supply the citizens Otherwise how willhe do it Feed wood to an oven We donrsquot have foresthere [in the tundra] (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2007)

This means that such individual permanent houseswill not have official postcodes nor streetnames andnumbers lsquoalthough within the dacha cooperatives forpeoplersquos comfort and orientation they give names for the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 11

drivewaysrsquo (Vladimir Nuykin personal communica-tion19 May 2013)

Much but not all individual year round housing innorthern industrial cities is constructed on dacha territor-ies This transforms the character of dacha places gradu-ally into a more urban atmosphere These tendenciesfrom the regions not only in the Arctic but all over Russiahave now made their way up to the Federal Russianpolitical discussion the government and parliament arein favour of adopting a law allowing people officiallyto register on their dacha places as permanent residentsIt remains unclear as of 2014 if such new permanentresidents then have to pay regular housing tax for theirdacha-houses and plots as these developments are newand this tax would be under regional or municipal controlPremier Medvedev admitted that this would legalise analready established de facto year round inhabitation ondacha plots by many people (RIA Novosti (Moscow)5 August 2013)

This process is seen by some long-time dacha inhab-itants as the disappearance of dachas (dachi izcheznut)On the other hand one can say that the spirit of dachaplaces expands to a year-round quality of life withthe recreational aspects the individual freedom in placecreation and the being close to the land included So theurban built environment gradually acquires more ruraltraits One significant consequence of this developmentis that seasonality and the rhythm of moving betweencity and dacha places on the outskirts gets lost as theborders between the two become blurred This is ex-actly the opposite of what happens in many villages inthe Russian Arctic and also the Finnish North whichturn gradually from permanent villages into summersettlements as services and social infrastructure closedown Nakhshina (2013) describes this process in herethnography of encounters between seasonal and per-manent dwellers of Kuzomenrsquo a village in Murmanskregion

We argue here that both these tendencies are intercon-nected the more people leave villages to live in citiesthe more permanent houses will be built in those cities onpreviously unbuilt territory Analysing a recent article onthe future planning of Yakutsk it became very clear howthe city will become more rural-looking within its urbanzone as it will be surrounded by a number of suburbswith individual houses that will form with the city centretogether the lsquoMini-Moscowrsquo as the authors call it (Yak-utsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013 301 9)A team of Yakutsk-based regional researchers envisagesthat by 2032 the city population will live just outside thecentre lsquoin well-equipped low-rise houses on their ownplots with not less than 1000m2 garages for 2 cars and thenecessary high quality social infrastructure in the vicinity[ ] and a journey to work of not more than 30 minutesrsquo(Yakutsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013301 9) According to that plan the territories for suchfuture suburbs will be those currently allocated for dachaplots

This shows that the move from the seasonality ofdacha places to the permanence of suburban settlementsin the Russian Arctic is a bottom-up movement that hasarisen from the individual practices of dacha-creatorsdescribed in Nakhshina and Razumovarsquos (2009) articleThis movement has now arrived in the halls of power ofmunicipal administrations that have to deal with such newrealities and the increased municipal obligations relatedto them The former Novyi Urengoy chief architect de-scribed this dilemma

Originally historically the individual house exempli-fies the Russian person What was bad in this [Soviet]period In our life here in these modern cities therewas no such concept of onersquos own house but it isnow back coming back at this very time But it wouldbe wrong now in the setting of Novyi Urengoi toallow the development of individual construction Itwould be a mistake because the city was originallynot designed for that Yes the question of individualconstruction was put to me as the chief architect veryseriously They simply put pressure on me [Allow-ing] it is a compromise (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication) 28 September 2007)

Based on statements like this we argue that the northernpopulation had realised that they cannot hope for someall-caring state to increase their living standard in Arcticcities Instead they took their own initiative and createdfaits accomplis Officials could not ignore this movementtowards the land anymore and had to take individualyear-round house planning based on dacha places intoconsideration

Life beyond industrial work in the north

What unites all types of dachas and the permanent houseson dacha plots and garage cooperatives is that theseplaces are created by people wanting to spend theirprivate life and their free time in the north This is anextension of the original idea of northern industrial city-development in which people were induced to moveexclusively for working Our informants express clearlythis tendency towards more of a lsquolifersquo dimension of theirnorthern existence Gone are the early days of northernindustrial city development in which many said theydid not bother to furnish their apartments properly haveproper dishes eat out of cans and saved everythingfor the future This Soviet approach of being tempor-arily in the Arctic described by Khlinovskaya Rockhill(2010) turns Yurchakrsquos famous book title lsquoEverythingwas forever until it was no morersquo (2005) upside downinto lsquoEverything was temporary until it became foreverrsquoThe discovery of the north by incomers and their des-cendants not only as a place of work but a place of lifenecessarily changes the intensity of residentsrsquo relations totheir built natural and social environment The evolutionof dachas and of individual permanent housing is alogical consequence of this development

12 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

We have shown that the typical dacha with a gardenplot and a summer house has a clearly seasonal characterand with few exceptions people do not spend much timethere in winter However as their presence in the northbecomes less seasonal and their involvement with thenorthern land more intensive signs of permanent livingon dacha places increase In such cases the former dachatransforms to a hybrid of summer place close to thenatural environment and permanent housing close to thecity

It is in this microcosm of their own plots wherenortherners with southern origin can enact their intensiveindividual engagement with the land using their creativeand productive potential in free decision making Weagree with Nakhshina and Razumova (2009) that dachasreflect the individual freedom and creativity of the plotowners This freedom is crucial as a counterbalance totheir work in the north that has always been a part ofa larger development project for a country-wide com-munity It is alongside the physical engagement withthe land a crucial factor characterising the particularhuman-environment relation that dacha people haveDacha owners create on their plots material expressionsof their own individual character and biography In thelife histories recorded during fieldwork in 2007ndash2010 wesee how lifelines connect southern places of origin andnorthern places that have become home They becomeintertwined in the dacha places that combine a moresouthern agricultural logic with garden plots plantsvegetables and a northern approach to nature in whichberry picking hunting and fishing as recreational andsubsistence activity are very important

We can interpret on the dacha plots these intertwinedlines through the construction materials used an aspectalso covered in the publication by Nakhshina and Razu-mova (2009) Somebody who works for example in aconcrete factory or has friends who do so is more likelyto use various leftovers or otherwise acquired items ofthat kind of production on their dachas although usuallydachas would be built of wood in a countryside villagestyle (Fig 6) Some dacha plots are very elaborate in per-fect order decorated with love for every detail whereasothers focus more on the functionality take the growingof food very seriously as they or their relatives may havedone in their places of origin in the south Or they mayjust use the dacha plot for planting flowers and as a baseto gather hunt and fish in the northern landscape sur-rounding the dachas in cases where industrial expansionhas left space for such practices This individual freedomof creating a place of onersquos own preference is somethingthat people cannot enjoy in their city There they livein apartment blocks planned and built by somebody elsefollowing a collective ideology with the goal of efficientorganisation of work and life

This combination of onersquos southern mirror image ofhome and components stemming from onersquos northern lifeand work lets the dacha appear almost as a physical ne-cessity how else could people express this other dimen-

sion of homeness and placehood that goes beyond livingfor the sake of working in an industrial city until reachingthe age of retirement Therefore dacha can become butnot always is a sign of increased attachment of onersquosnorthern place of life which was not originally thoughtfor long-term inhabitation by incomers But differentfrom the indigenous hunter or gatherer the attachmenthere is not to the natural environment with minimalfootprint but to onersquos self-created place that combineselements of onersquos southern origin the northern place ofwork and the local climate In most cases the relationshipof people to their dacha places is reciprocal It com-plements the idea of the lsquogiving environmentrsquo that weknow from hunter-gatherer societies (Bird-David 1990)in which a sentient environment offers its resources tothe hunter who shows respect and his knowledge of theplaces through appropriate behaviour (Anderson 2000)

Among northern industrial city inhabitants the self-created dacha place rewards its masterrsquos hard work withgiving back the fruits of the land even though maybeon soil especially imported from the south and put in alayer on top of the permafrost The environment is thusself-created In this respect we cannot necessarily speakof settlers getting closer to natives as is suggested forChukotka in the work of Thompson (2008)

Conclusion

This article has described the development of dachas inArctic Russian industrial cities We took the anthropolo-gical study of Arctic dacha places a step further from asingle region case study as was done previously (Naksh-ina and Razumova 2009 Nakshina 2013 Bolotova 2012)to a comparative approach We acknowledge the diversityand uniqueness of our three field sites and therefore stateahead of our general conclusions that those must not betaken as generalisations and final words but rather asinvitation for further research in this little studied field

The analysis of dacha situations in Arctic cities inthree regions (Apatity-Kirovsk Novyi Urengoy Yak-utsk) leads us to reach the following four main pointsfirstly the Arctic city dacha movement can be seen inpath-dependence to the Soviet working class dachaswhereas the pre-Soviet summer recreational house ideare-surfaces gradually after the immediate post-Sovietperiod Secondly in the Arctic dacha movement theexpression of individual creativity and intensive socialorganisation in collectives do not exclude each otherThirdly we suggest that Arctic dacha settlements andpractices are excellent cases for studying processes ofhuman agency and place creation which grant us deeperinsights in the determinants of peoplersquos relation to theland Fourthly this human agency on the land helps usto understand how urban communities in Arctic Rus-sia change their spatial practices gradually from state-induced inhabitation of compressed dense high-rise con-crete landscapes to village-resembling agglomerations ofsmaller houses close to the land As a consequence the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 13

seasonality of dacha practices gradually gives way to areintroduction of peoplersquos quality of life closer to whatthey call lsquonaturersquo on a permanent year-round basis

What do these four main concluding points tell usIndustrial northerners change the approach to their citiespeople who invest today in a dacha stop seeing them-selves as just working in the north but gradually also startliving there be it temporarily or permanent This showshow the Arctic has become a place to lead a normal lifefor immigrants and their descendants with characteristicsof a normal urban population elsewhere albeit with somespecifics related to seasons climate and permafrost

The increase in development of Arctic dachas asgarden plots arose largely out of economic necessitiesin perestroika but at the same time was a perfect matchwith a deeply Russian approach to the land namelythrough physical agricultural engagement that is focusedon refinement of nature on leaving the human footprintand on adding value The increasing popularity of recre-ational dachas we argued here alongside the blurring ofborders to permanent individual housing areas in Arcticcities is a sign of the end of the post-Soviet periodWe see here the advent of broader trends of mainstreameveryday life in the Arctic with relative affluence andlife-trajectories that are not characterised by a love for theextreme (climate conditions exceptional social fabrics)but for the normal

We have further analysed the dacha as a visual arenafor the interplay between economic and social needsof northerners in the Russian Arctic More than justenabling additional food production in difficult times thedacha is a playground for balancing the freedom of in-dividual creation of place with the deeply social desire toshare experiences with neighbours Dachas are like bookswherein we can read and experience the character pro-fessional biography material wellbeing individual lifestory social status and belonging and preferred practicesof their owners The Arctic dacha cooperative in Russiais a model of self-governance that incorporates the Sovietlegacy of the kollektif while also considering individualcreative freedom in place creation Dacha places arealso a mirror image of the changed balance between theindividual and the collective since the perestroika periodin Arctic Russia late Soviet time dachas were open andvisible while from the late 1990s onwards high fencesbecame the symbols of dachas even in the Arctic wherepeople usually emphasise that collectivity and mutualassistance are life-important

We suggest seeing these developments as a sign of theRussian Arctic becoming a less extreme and more normalplace Rather than a frontier to open up as portrayed in somany popular discourses on Arctic resources the northhas become home for the non-indigenous population thatwas induced by the state to move there While the lsquonative-ness of settlersrsquo (Thompson 2008) or their intensive ad-aptation to the northern nature (Nakshina and Razumova2009) have been emphasised before our material sug-gests that incomer dacha-peoplersquos worldview and relation

to the land in those industrial areas of the Russian north isbased largely on their southern roots and an agriculturallogic Dichotomies are always controversial but we dareto put them forward to inspire more refined analysis inthis direction We argue that industrial city-dwellers anddacha ownersrsquo footprint on the land contributes to prideand identity-building whereas among most indigenousinhabitants peoplersquos embeddedness in the surroundingenvironment with minimal footprint prevails This meansthat the future of the Russian north is one of at leasttwo different modes of dwelling and perceiving the en-vironment both of which involve very intimate relationsbetween people and the land

Acknowledgements

We thank all our friends and collaborators in Apat-ityKirovsk Novyi Urengoy Nadym Pangody and Yak-utsk for their openness and hospitality Funding is grate-fully acknowledged from the research projects BOREASMOVE-INNOCOM funded by the Finnish Academyunder the BOREAS ESF EUROCORES scheme de-cision number 118702 and from the subsequent FinnishAcademy project ORHELIA decision number 251111Moreover the project lsquoThe peoples of the north-eastof the Russian Federation choosing a new adaptivestrategy under conditions of globalisation A social-anthropological approachrsquo Yakutsk (North Eastern Fed-eral) University Russia) contributed funding for thisresearch

ReferencesAnderson D 2000 Identity and ecology in Arctic Siberia the

number one reindeer brigade Oxford Oxford UniversityPress

Bird-David N 1990 The giving environment another perspect-ive on the economic system of gatherer-hunters CurrentAnthropology 31(2) 189ndash96

Bolotova A 2005 Discourses on taiga the state geologists andnature in the Soviet Union In Bammeacute A G Getzinger andB Wieser (editors) Yearbook of the Institute for AdvancedStudies on Science Technology and Society Munich andVienna Profil 25ndash53

Bolotova A 2012 Loving and conquering nature shifting per-ceptions of the environment in the industrialised Russiannorth Europe-Asia Studies 64(4)645ndash671

Bolotova A and F Stammler 2010 How the north becamehome Attachment to place among industrial migrants inMurmansk region In Southcott C and L Huskey (editors)Migration in the circumpolar north issues and contextsEdmonton Alberta Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press(University of Alberta CCI occasional publication 64) 193ndash220

Budaev A 2013 Sovremennye Realii Yakutskogo Agropoi-asa [Modern realities of Yakutian agro-belt] YakutskEkho Stolitsy 43 2160 URL httpwwwexo-yktruarticles244857494 (accessed 24 November 2013)

Crate S 2006 Cows kin and globalization an ethnography ofsustainability Walnut Creek Alta Mira Press

Eilmsteiner-Saxinger G 2013 Auf uns ndash auf euch ndash auf Oumll undGas FernpendlerInnen in der Erdgas- und Erdoumllindustrie im

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 7

people become very ambitious in creating these mirrorimages of the south in what they first perceive as a harshnorthern frontier (see Nakhshina and Razumova 2009Figs 3ndash5)

Murmansk Oblast is a northern region with a verystrong dacha movement in which the garden plot dacha isa dominant category In spite of its northern latitude theregion has a relatively mild climate and no permafrostwhich makes growing plants less problematic Moreoverthe Murmansk region has been with its post-Soviet out-migration and industrial decline in an economically moredifficult situation in comparison to west Siberia (Nuykina2011) or Yakutia This made growing onersquos own foodan economic necessity for many given the low salariesand pensions in the region There is numerical evidencefor this from Heleniakrsquos (2010) comparative researchwhich shows the far northwest and the far northeast asregions with most economic decline outmigration andnegative demographic tendencies For people in Mur-mansk region this development made it not only possiblebut in some cases necessary to work on the land inorder to get fresh vegetables and fruits It is this aspectthat is prominent in Nakshinarsquos and Razumovarsquos (2009)explanation for the evolution of what they call lsquodachaculturersquo The garden plot dachas in Murmansk Oblast aremore elaborate than in Yamal-Nenets Okrug where mostpeople are more affluent and growing conditions on thepermafrost are harsher The early history of immigrationinto the Murmansk north shows that many incomerscame from a rural agricultural background (Bolotova andStammler 2010) Not only were they not used to an urbanlife (Nakshina and Razumova 2009 418) amidst greyconcrete blocks they were also familiar with working theland According to Salimova (2011 8) in the early 1930s91 of the forced relocatees to Kirovsk were peasantsTheir expertise was used to establish a sovkhoz a Sovietstate farm on the shore of Lake Imandra to feed theindustrial workers of Kirovsk That sovkhoz lsquoindustriarsquois considered the cradle of Apatity village which later inthe 1960s would become a mineral resource extractiontown which soon outgrew Kirovsk

However this organised Soviet agricultural activityto feed industry workers of monoindustrial cities in thenorth is very different from dacha subsistence plotswhich were not foreseen in the development plans forindustrial cities (Bolotova 2012)

The main economic rationale for the evolution ofdachas in the Arctic was the idea of additional foodsupply in times of defitsit lack of supply Towards theend of the Soviet period more and more food itemswere in defitsit Moreover dacha people emphasisedthe notion of freshness beyond economic considerationsFresh vegetables from onersquos own garden were the onlypossibility to get access to fresh plant-based food asimported food from the south would not be fresh by thetime it arrived in the shops In this respect the importanceof onersquos dacha plot is much more than economical asfreshness is not something that money can buy Fresh

local food is also known to be a source of place-basedidentification of people as Weiss (2011) has shown wellbeyond the Arctic in rural USA In the Russian northlocal fresh dacha food is a source of great pride

As the example quoted above from Yakutsk illus-trates the notion of dacha used as a place to intensivelywork (intensivnoe osvoenie) and open up the land canbe interpreted as non-indigenous incomers enacting theirrelations to the environment as Nakhshina and Razu-mova (2009) and Bolotova (2012) show In addition tothat since these dacha owners are all Soviet industrialmigrants to the Arctic or their descendants there isan obvious parallel in the approach to dacha osvoeniewith the official Soviet idea of osvoenie that meant theconquest of nature adding meaning and usefulness tootherwise empty and senseless space

It was not until the 1980s and perestroika that north-ern industrial settlers started seeing dachas as places at-taching them to their northern places of residence ratherthan to their southern places of origin The possibilityto establish onersquos own place outside of the city waslike a return back to the earth for people with roots inthe arable south after a long break living in concretehousing blocks It was the return to a situation in whichowners could enact their agricultural engagement withthe land that had been identity-forming for many of theirancestors

The comparably soft climate and absence of per-mafrost soils definitely makes cultivation easier than inSiberia as well as construction Engaging with the north-ern land on an individual basis through building dachasand growing food there became a realistic alternative toleaving the north to some dacha in the south every year

On the other hand the example of Yakutsk showsthat garden-plot dachas are also possible and popular onpermafrost While dachas have a long history in Yakutskfor the intelligentsia and the party elites (see above)it was in the 1960s and 1970s that Yakutsk becamean administrative centre for diamond and gold miningIncoming workers established dachas as garden plotsWith the short but hot and humid summer cultivatingfruits and vegetables became widespread Water melonshoney melons and other non-northern plants successfullygrown on those dachas are a source of particular prideYakutsk suffered from economic decline too albeit lessthan the Murmansk region Shortage and lack of moneyto buy food even when it was for sale made people in bothplaces focus more on growing their food on their dachasThis is also because of the widespread collapse of Rus-sian agriculture that made the north entirely dependenton imported food or subsistence production As a resultpastures and agricultural land was abandoned In Yakutsksome of that land is now occupied by dacha plots (Budaev2013)

In both Murmansk and Yakutsk one might think thatthe importance of garden plot dachas would decreaseas people become more affluent and the supply systemfor imported food is stable However while several

8 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

informants have mentioned that their children and grand-children are no longer motivated to help on the dachaplot the reputation of local food has become muchstronger reflecting a worldwide trend well summarisedby Holt and Amilien (2007) This is why even north ofthe Arctic Circle there is a continued demand for peopleworking the land above the permafrost and apparentlymany of those who do not have their own dacha plots arehappy to pay a higher price for food produced by localfarms

Recreational dachasIn northwest Siberiarsquos gas cities the idea of dacha placesand individualrsquonaya zastroika territories covered by in-dividual construction was still somewhat alien and un-suitable for the harsh climate when our fieldwork startedamong the city dwellers in 2007 The idea of dachas wasinspired by the Soviet idea of garden subsistence plotsin central Russia Recreational dachas even pre-dated theSoviet Union and were then taken on by intelligentsiaand party elites in the north early on for example inYakutsk Arctic industrial cities however were seen asplaces to work not to live which is why there was nodacha construction planned there

After the Soviet Union and the post-perestroika crisissome people have become rather affluent and can affordto keep a dacha just for a change from city-life Thephysical need to grow onersquos own food decreased and freshfood became available even in markets in the north Nowmore people keep a dacha exclusively for spending theirfree time without growing anything on the plot Suchdachas are appreciated as a change from the standardisedapartment block to onersquos self-built or self-planned houseMost such dachas will have a sauna (Fig 1) From shortinterviews and living on dacha places and individualhouses in Novyi Urengoy Nadym and Pangody it seemsthat people would not sacrifice their yearly summerholiday somewhere lsquoon the landrsquo (na zemle) in the southjust because they would care for their dacha plants on thepermafrost In peoplersquos narratives there the idea of livingin the here and now has become much more prominentlsquoWe donrsquot want to eat out of cans and sit on cardboardboxes anymore just to save our life for the future Wewant to live here now in the north as well as maybe onthe land (na zemle) laterrsquo (Galina Konechnaia personalcommunication 27 March 2008) Recreational dachas inindustrial cities can therefore be understood as a sign ofincomers having arrived at an understanding of the northas their place of life to which they feel attached Howeveras Khlinovskaya Rockhill (2010) and Stammler (2010)showed this does not mean that people necessarily planto live their entire life there In the emerging dachamovement of Arctic industrial cities a dacha is thereforealso seen as an investment that can bring good returns incase the owners decide to sell it and return to their placesof origin

Novyi Urengoy shall serve as an example of thismovement The city was planned as a monoindustrial gas

town initially consisting of temporary living containers(bochki) and wooden barracks in the late 1970s and laterof Soviet style concrete blocks for Gazprom workersand their support industry Individual houses and dachaswere not part of the city plan not even after the SovietUnion as Novyi Urengoyrsquos then chief architect AllaLyaskovskaya confirmed The first dachas were builttowards the end of the 1990s after planned apartmentblocks were not constructed Then people lobbied forpermission to build individual houses in the growing cityin order to have somewhere to live But all they could getwas land allocated for recreational purposes

Yuri Plotnikov was among the pioneers of the recre-ational dacha movement there the first one who built adacha house with all amenities such as water electricityheating He proudly states lsquoWhen I came up with the ideato build myself a house outside of town people in the cityadministration looked down at me and said I was crazyBut then all sorts of people wanted to do the samersquo (YuriPlotnikov personal communication 23 September 2007)When Plotnikov sold his dacha because of his move toMoscow in 2009 he got 10 times the US dollars pricethat he had invested in the early 2000s By then dacha andindividual housing had become a big movement Moreand more space was appropriated for dachas between theurban living zone and industrial zones of Novyi UrengoiThe purpose of these dachas was mainly recreational

You have to give people the possibility of spendingtheir leisure time actively My husband is totally intothat on our dacha He is a real master and loves doingeverything himself [ ] Look in the city we havehere everything in monochrome (Alla Lyaskovskayapersonal communication 28 September 2007)The first [the dachas] were only containers wherepeople would go for barbeque Then the first flowerbeds appeared then some greenhouses and peoplebuilt themselves saunas And then later also suburbancottages and some even real concrete houses Nownot only those with the big money build but also inlsquoeconomy classrsquo ndash everybody according to his wallet(Vladimir Nuykin personal communication 19 May2013)

These processes led Novyi Urengoi with a population of115000 to have approximately 10000 dacha plots ofwhich as of 2013 40 have proper houses on themwhile another 20 are just allocated but still untouchedand the remainder is used as plots without buildings

However this number does not seem to include an-other form of recreational territory in the monoindustrialcity namely garage cooperatives These are organisedsimilarly to dacha cooperatives and the male recreationalactivities on both are similar people meet there forbarbecue The garages are many menrsquos pride with elab-orate workshops where they meet and repair all kinds ofequipment such as cars engines boats snowmobiles andthe like Others specialise in their garages on building andconstructing for example furniture and a few even usetheir garage as arts and handicrafts ateliers One such case

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 9

is Viktor Seliverstov from Novyi Urengoy The formerGazprom driller from Tatarstan came in 1978 to the northat the very start of west Siberian gas development Hehad found a lot of mammoth tusks during his travels onthe gas fields and started carving figures out of themHe took that so seriously that he got deeply involved innorthern indigenous symbolism cosmology and handi-craft and developed skills to the extent that his mammothcreations are nowadays in high demand by Gazpromleadership who give them as presents to VIP guestsSeliverstov did all this in his garage where he regularlyassembles the creative intelligentsia for intellectual andphilosophical discussions

Seliverstov exemplifies how people combine creativ-ity with recreation in their life in monoindustrial citiesbe it through construction of a dacha house or carvingartworks in their garage workshops

It seems likely that the number of dachas and recre-ational garage cooperatives must be well above 10000in a place like Novyi Urengoy This is the recreationalaspect be it in a garage or a dacha that prevails inplaces such as Novyi Urengoi Nadym and Pangody morethan for example in Murmansk and Yakutsk On thewest Siberian permafrost not only is the average materialaffluence of people higher but the conditions for growingplants are also harsher However during fieldwork somepeople were also planting potatoes on their dacha plotsin Novyi Urengoi on soil that was shipped 1000s ofkilometres lsquos zemleirsquo to the north because no potatowould grow on the sandy ground on the permafrost inthat area

In more cases however the whole dimension of adacha as partial subsistence supply is missing in north-west Siberia There the intimate physical engagement ofpeople with the land is mostly through picking mush-rooms and berries Some may embark on hunting orfishing trips from their garages or dachas In this respect adacha without a garden plot the gathering of male friendsin somebodyrsquos garage at the outskirts of town or in forestcabins all have a similar recreational aspect

Gender mobility and place in dacha orientationsOne might argue that this recreational aspect of dacha lifeis highly gender-specific typical ways of men spendingtheir time off work are sitting together outdoors drinkingbeer or stronger alcoholic beverages telling stories aboutonersquos fishing and hunting adventures going together tosauna frying meat and sausages and collective relaxingof the hectic work and city life [otvesti dushu] We wouldargue that this is a stereotype with the famous kernel oftruth Surely joint drinking and sauna are more associatedwith men than women in public opinion but much ofthe fieldwork indicates that women are also often vitallyincluded in the recreational aspects of dacha as a way oflife as well as men are part of dacha as a subsistenceactivity After all it is mostly men in the north who areinvolved in ordering and bringing the soil from the souththat is needed to grow potatoes and other plants on the

permafrost That soil has to be unloaded from trucksdistributed on the dacha plot prepared for the growingseason the potatoes have to be regularly dug over andmany other activities

The main difference between a dacha with gardenplot and one for leisure time is the extent to which theformer lsquobindsrsquo their owners physically to the place in thegrowing season People who are serious about cultivatingsomething on their dacha cannot really afford to leave forextended holidays as their compatriots with pure leisure-time dachas may do The garden requires care duringthree seasons of the year at least spring summer andautumn Absences of several months that are typical fornorthern labour migrants become much more difficult toorganise with such a dacha-commitment in the northThis means that such people will spend less time in thesouth at their places of origin As a result of their practicalengagement with the northern land and their graduallsquoalienationrsquo from a distant south their attachment to thenorth increases This may seem a rather abstract conclu-sion and we agree with Khlinovskaya Rockhill (2010)that real life is not organised into those dichotomies thatwe create in our minds Northerners do not forget theirbelonging to their places of origin either nor do onlythose without northern dachas visit the south But indeedseveral informants in our project emphasised that mostlythose with a strong relation to the northern place bother tohave a garden plot dacha The evolving of dacha places istherefore both a sign of increased belonging to the northamong inhabitants as well as of uninterrupted presencethere Dacha places as garden plots are therefore moredifficult to combine with the transient livelihoods thatwere thought to be typical for industrial workers whowould spend all their summers lsquoat homersquo in the south orwork on a fly infly out working plan Recreational dachasare therefore better suited for a way of life that involvesmultiple geographic localities throughout the year

In this respect large parts of the Russian populationare migratory between their urban life in autumn winterand spring and their dacha life in summer The dachaas home for the entire summer enables people to moveback to the earth regularly This move which is a way forthe urban population to preserve their rural roots sinceurbanisation is a rather recent tendency in Russia Whilein the 1930s there were hardly any significant cities inthe Russian north 80 years later more than 80 of thepopulation lives in cities in most of the northern regionsnamely 92 in Murmansk Oblast and 83 in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug In Russia altogether 74 ofthe population lived in cities in 2010 (Russia PopulationCensus 2010) This is the background on which the dachamovement caught up in Russia

From dacha to year-round suburban villagesThe notion of the dacha as summer home adds a di-mension of mobility and seasonality to life in the north-ern industrial city Many incomers have dachas at theirplaces of origin The popularity of dacha settlements in

10 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Murmansk Oblast and west Siberia as well as Yakutskwith its longer dacha history testifies this where manypeople stay for their entire summer on their dacha Thedacha as summer home is particularly important in thenorth among all those who do not have expressed attach-ments to other places outside of the region Paradoxicallymost of the northerners who keep connections to theplaces of origin in the south do so through spending thesummer holidays there in the south although it wouldseem to make much more sense to leave the north for thewinter Thus we have seen so far that dacha places bydefinition are seasonally limited to the warmer times ofthe year The whole point of having a dacha in the northwas to have an alternative place to move to when peoplewant to be closer to the earth and have more creativefreedom in place-making than they could ever have inan Arctic socialist city with strict efficiency planning andzoning

In our three case sites of Kirovsk-Apatity (MurmanskRegion) Novyi Urengoy (Yamal) and Yakutsk (SakhaYakutia) we can see however how this clear cut un-derstanding of dacha versus city life is gradually beingblurred

The dacha as a place for summer recreation graduallygets redefined as a place for year-round inhabitationenacting onersquos freedom in individual houses closer to theland rather than apartment blocks In expanding citieslike Novyi Urengoi Surgut and Yakutsk dacha settle-ments where people used to spend time only in summergradually turn into suburban areas with individual housesfor the affluent for year-round permanent inhabitation

Maybe the time has come to depart from the idea ofhousing only in apartment blocks in our city Peoplewant to live on their own now Itrsquos good the admin-istration is considering to give plots out on the fieldfor individual construction now (Ivan Avramenkopersonal communication 17 June 2013)

There is a technological demographic-economic andsocial aspect of such developments firstly new construc-tion technologies autonomous heating septic tanks andheat insulation have made it possible for house owners toestablish permanent year-round housing on their dachaplaces Secondly the high immigration into expandingArctic cities because of extractive industries has led torising real estate prices on a now free market in thesetowns where previously all housing was owned by thestate or the single industrial company in town Theseinstitutions stopped building new apartment blocks andhouse construction became a commodity In this situationbuilding a permanent house also for winter (zimnii vari-ant) on a dacha plot becomes a possibility for peopleto solve their housing problem or improve their housingconditions This is a widespread tendency in regions suchas Sergelyakh in Yakutsk Chernorechenski in Surgut orSeveryanin in Novyi Urengoy with prices easily reachingbetween 1000 and 3000 EURm2 Thirdly individualfreedom has become more important in northern citiesPeople are not ready to sacrifice and postpone their

pursuit of a comfortable life to a future in the south Theexperience of perestroika has shown them that they cannever be sure if that will ever come This social changeunderlies the tendency of dachas becoming permanenthomes people want to live in the North in their houseshere and now and not only during the short summer

I did not succeed to look around and Irsquom 50 yearsalready I came here with 25 So what would I livemy life in some next life Maybe not Thatrsquos whyI think dachas ndash this is concretely the way forwardin Novyi Urengoi One has to live today in goodconditions and allow people in this way to realisesome of their wishes for recreation We have nowthe means to create this (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2008)

This is interesting as she had the post of lead city-planning architect in Novyi Urengoy in the early 2000sand thus witnessed herself the change of the approach tolife in the Arctic city As much as she advocated on aprofessional level centralised housing-planning as muchshe was privately beautifully describing how important itis for her and her neighbours to be close to the land ontheir dachas

This apparent contradiction comes from the substan-tial difference it makes for the organisation of city spacewhen individual year-round housing is encouraged andwhen it is not In both Novyi Urengoi and Yakutsk thisis exemplified by the presence or absence of a formaladdress A formal address starts with a transfer of thelegal category of the land from a lsquorecreational zonersquowhich is what dacha cooperative territories are legallyinto a part of the lsquohousing zonersquo of the city A city officialfrom Novyi Urengoy explains that the status of the landwill not change even though more individuals build theirhouses according to the zimnyi variant for year round useThe reason is that this would entail lsquocertain obligationsrsquoby the municipality These are for example access to mu-nicipal electricity rubbish collection street maintenancepublic transport postal and internet services schoolshealthcare police stations and all other aspects of muni-cipal services While in Yakutsk entire neighbourhoods ofdachas are being transformed into regular suburbs with allservices In some municipalities such as Novyi Urengoithere is resistance to these obligations

You canrsquot turn this city into this settlement patternabout which we talk ndash go back to the land Inprinciple how can one live and extract gas when Ihave to think where I find firewood for heating myautonomous device Let the dear gentleman replyto this question[ ] You have to create a structurewhich would supply the citizens Otherwise how willhe do it Feed wood to an oven We donrsquot have foresthere [in the tundra] (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2007)

This means that such individual permanent houseswill not have official postcodes nor streetnames andnumbers lsquoalthough within the dacha cooperatives forpeoplersquos comfort and orientation they give names for the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 11

drivewaysrsquo (Vladimir Nuykin personal communica-tion19 May 2013)

Much but not all individual year round housing innorthern industrial cities is constructed on dacha territor-ies This transforms the character of dacha places gradu-ally into a more urban atmosphere These tendenciesfrom the regions not only in the Arctic but all over Russiahave now made their way up to the Federal Russianpolitical discussion the government and parliament arein favour of adopting a law allowing people officiallyto register on their dacha places as permanent residentsIt remains unclear as of 2014 if such new permanentresidents then have to pay regular housing tax for theirdacha-houses and plots as these developments are newand this tax would be under regional or municipal controlPremier Medvedev admitted that this would legalise analready established de facto year round inhabitation ondacha plots by many people (RIA Novosti (Moscow)5 August 2013)

This process is seen by some long-time dacha inhab-itants as the disappearance of dachas (dachi izcheznut)On the other hand one can say that the spirit of dachaplaces expands to a year-round quality of life withthe recreational aspects the individual freedom in placecreation and the being close to the land included So theurban built environment gradually acquires more ruraltraits One significant consequence of this developmentis that seasonality and the rhythm of moving betweencity and dacha places on the outskirts gets lost as theborders between the two become blurred This is ex-actly the opposite of what happens in many villages inthe Russian Arctic and also the Finnish North whichturn gradually from permanent villages into summersettlements as services and social infrastructure closedown Nakhshina (2013) describes this process in herethnography of encounters between seasonal and per-manent dwellers of Kuzomenrsquo a village in Murmanskregion

We argue here that both these tendencies are intercon-nected the more people leave villages to live in citiesthe more permanent houses will be built in those cities onpreviously unbuilt territory Analysing a recent article onthe future planning of Yakutsk it became very clear howthe city will become more rural-looking within its urbanzone as it will be surrounded by a number of suburbswith individual houses that will form with the city centretogether the lsquoMini-Moscowrsquo as the authors call it (Yak-utsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013 301 9)A team of Yakutsk-based regional researchers envisagesthat by 2032 the city population will live just outside thecentre lsquoin well-equipped low-rise houses on their ownplots with not less than 1000m2 garages for 2 cars and thenecessary high quality social infrastructure in the vicinity[ ] and a journey to work of not more than 30 minutesrsquo(Yakutsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013301 9) According to that plan the territories for suchfuture suburbs will be those currently allocated for dachaplots

This shows that the move from the seasonality ofdacha places to the permanence of suburban settlementsin the Russian Arctic is a bottom-up movement that hasarisen from the individual practices of dacha-creatorsdescribed in Nakhshina and Razumovarsquos (2009) articleThis movement has now arrived in the halls of power ofmunicipal administrations that have to deal with such newrealities and the increased municipal obligations relatedto them The former Novyi Urengoy chief architect de-scribed this dilemma

Originally historically the individual house exempli-fies the Russian person What was bad in this [Soviet]period In our life here in these modern cities therewas no such concept of onersquos own house but it isnow back coming back at this very time But it wouldbe wrong now in the setting of Novyi Urengoi toallow the development of individual construction Itwould be a mistake because the city was originallynot designed for that Yes the question of individualconstruction was put to me as the chief architect veryseriously They simply put pressure on me [Allow-ing] it is a compromise (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication) 28 September 2007)

Based on statements like this we argue that the northernpopulation had realised that they cannot hope for someall-caring state to increase their living standard in Arcticcities Instead they took their own initiative and createdfaits accomplis Officials could not ignore this movementtowards the land anymore and had to take individualyear-round house planning based on dacha places intoconsideration

Life beyond industrial work in the north

What unites all types of dachas and the permanent houseson dacha plots and garage cooperatives is that theseplaces are created by people wanting to spend theirprivate life and their free time in the north This is anextension of the original idea of northern industrial city-development in which people were induced to moveexclusively for working Our informants express clearlythis tendency towards more of a lsquolifersquo dimension of theirnorthern existence Gone are the early days of northernindustrial city development in which many said theydid not bother to furnish their apartments properly haveproper dishes eat out of cans and saved everythingfor the future This Soviet approach of being tempor-arily in the Arctic described by Khlinovskaya Rockhill(2010) turns Yurchakrsquos famous book title lsquoEverythingwas forever until it was no morersquo (2005) upside downinto lsquoEverything was temporary until it became foreverrsquoThe discovery of the north by incomers and their des-cendants not only as a place of work but a place of lifenecessarily changes the intensity of residentsrsquo relations totheir built natural and social environment The evolutionof dachas and of individual permanent housing is alogical consequence of this development

12 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

We have shown that the typical dacha with a gardenplot and a summer house has a clearly seasonal characterand with few exceptions people do not spend much timethere in winter However as their presence in the northbecomes less seasonal and their involvement with thenorthern land more intensive signs of permanent livingon dacha places increase In such cases the former dachatransforms to a hybrid of summer place close to thenatural environment and permanent housing close to thecity

It is in this microcosm of their own plots wherenortherners with southern origin can enact their intensiveindividual engagement with the land using their creativeand productive potential in free decision making Weagree with Nakhshina and Razumova (2009) that dachasreflect the individual freedom and creativity of the plotowners This freedom is crucial as a counterbalance totheir work in the north that has always been a part ofa larger development project for a country-wide com-munity It is alongside the physical engagement withthe land a crucial factor characterising the particularhuman-environment relation that dacha people haveDacha owners create on their plots material expressionsof their own individual character and biography In thelife histories recorded during fieldwork in 2007ndash2010 wesee how lifelines connect southern places of origin andnorthern places that have become home They becomeintertwined in the dacha places that combine a moresouthern agricultural logic with garden plots plantsvegetables and a northern approach to nature in whichberry picking hunting and fishing as recreational andsubsistence activity are very important

We can interpret on the dacha plots these intertwinedlines through the construction materials used an aspectalso covered in the publication by Nakhshina and Razu-mova (2009) Somebody who works for example in aconcrete factory or has friends who do so is more likelyto use various leftovers or otherwise acquired items ofthat kind of production on their dachas although usuallydachas would be built of wood in a countryside villagestyle (Fig 6) Some dacha plots are very elaborate in per-fect order decorated with love for every detail whereasothers focus more on the functionality take the growingof food very seriously as they or their relatives may havedone in their places of origin in the south Or they mayjust use the dacha plot for planting flowers and as a baseto gather hunt and fish in the northern landscape sur-rounding the dachas in cases where industrial expansionhas left space for such practices This individual freedomof creating a place of onersquos own preference is somethingthat people cannot enjoy in their city There they livein apartment blocks planned and built by somebody elsefollowing a collective ideology with the goal of efficientorganisation of work and life

This combination of onersquos southern mirror image ofhome and components stemming from onersquos northern lifeand work lets the dacha appear almost as a physical ne-cessity how else could people express this other dimen-

sion of homeness and placehood that goes beyond livingfor the sake of working in an industrial city until reachingthe age of retirement Therefore dacha can become butnot always is a sign of increased attachment of onersquosnorthern place of life which was not originally thoughtfor long-term inhabitation by incomers But differentfrom the indigenous hunter or gatherer the attachmenthere is not to the natural environment with minimalfootprint but to onersquos self-created place that combineselements of onersquos southern origin the northern place ofwork and the local climate In most cases the relationshipof people to their dacha places is reciprocal It com-plements the idea of the lsquogiving environmentrsquo that weknow from hunter-gatherer societies (Bird-David 1990)in which a sentient environment offers its resources tothe hunter who shows respect and his knowledge of theplaces through appropriate behaviour (Anderson 2000)

Among northern industrial city inhabitants the self-created dacha place rewards its masterrsquos hard work withgiving back the fruits of the land even though maybeon soil especially imported from the south and put in alayer on top of the permafrost The environment is thusself-created In this respect we cannot necessarily speakof settlers getting closer to natives as is suggested forChukotka in the work of Thompson (2008)

Conclusion

This article has described the development of dachas inArctic Russian industrial cities We took the anthropolo-gical study of Arctic dacha places a step further from asingle region case study as was done previously (Naksh-ina and Razumova 2009 Nakshina 2013 Bolotova 2012)to a comparative approach We acknowledge the diversityand uniqueness of our three field sites and therefore stateahead of our general conclusions that those must not betaken as generalisations and final words but rather asinvitation for further research in this little studied field

The analysis of dacha situations in Arctic cities inthree regions (Apatity-Kirovsk Novyi Urengoy Yak-utsk) leads us to reach the following four main pointsfirstly the Arctic city dacha movement can be seen inpath-dependence to the Soviet working class dachaswhereas the pre-Soviet summer recreational house ideare-surfaces gradually after the immediate post-Sovietperiod Secondly in the Arctic dacha movement theexpression of individual creativity and intensive socialorganisation in collectives do not exclude each otherThirdly we suggest that Arctic dacha settlements andpractices are excellent cases for studying processes ofhuman agency and place creation which grant us deeperinsights in the determinants of peoplersquos relation to theland Fourthly this human agency on the land helps usto understand how urban communities in Arctic Rus-sia change their spatial practices gradually from state-induced inhabitation of compressed dense high-rise con-crete landscapes to village-resembling agglomerations ofsmaller houses close to the land As a consequence the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 13

seasonality of dacha practices gradually gives way to areintroduction of peoplersquos quality of life closer to whatthey call lsquonaturersquo on a permanent year-round basis

What do these four main concluding points tell usIndustrial northerners change the approach to their citiespeople who invest today in a dacha stop seeing them-selves as just working in the north but gradually also startliving there be it temporarily or permanent This showshow the Arctic has become a place to lead a normal lifefor immigrants and their descendants with characteristicsof a normal urban population elsewhere albeit with somespecifics related to seasons climate and permafrost

The increase in development of Arctic dachas asgarden plots arose largely out of economic necessitiesin perestroika but at the same time was a perfect matchwith a deeply Russian approach to the land namelythrough physical agricultural engagement that is focusedon refinement of nature on leaving the human footprintand on adding value The increasing popularity of recre-ational dachas we argued here alongside the blurring ofborders to permanent individual housing areas in Arcticcities is a sign of the end of the post-Soviet periodWe see here the advent of broader trends of mainstreameveryday life in the Arctic with relative affluence andlife-trajectories that are not characterised by a love for theextreme (climate conditions exceptional social fabrics)but for the normal

We have further analysed the dacha as a visual arenafor the interplay between economic and social needsof northerners in the Russian Arctic More than justenabling additional food production in difficult times thedacha is a playground for balancing the freedom of in-dividual creation of place with the deeply social desire toshare experiences with neighbours Dachas are like bookswherein we can read and experience the character pro-fessional biography material wellbeing individual lifestory social status and belonging and preferred practicesof their owners The Arctic dacha cooperative in Russiais a model of self-governance that incorporates the Sovietlegacy of the kollektif while also considering individualcreative freedom in place creation Dacha places arealso a mirror image of the changed balance between theindividual and the collective since the perestroika periodin Arctic Russia late Soviet time dachas were open andvisible while from the late 1990s onwards high fencesbecame the symbols of dachas even in the Arctic wherepeople usually emphasise that collectivity and mutualassistance are life-important

We suggest seeing these developments as a sign of theRussian Arctic becoming a less extreme and more normalplace Rather than a frontier to open up as portrayed in somany popular discourses on Arctic resources the northhas become home for the non-indigenous population thatwas induced by the state to move there While the lsquonative-ness of settlersrsquo (Thompson 2008) or their intensive ad-aptation to the northern nature (Nakshina and Razumova2009) have been emphasised before our material sug-gests that incomer dacha-peoplersquos worldview and relation

to the land in those industrial areas of the Russian north isbased largely on their southern roots and an agriculturallogic Dichotomies are always controversial but we dareto put them forward to inspire more refined analysis inthis direction We argue that industrial city-dwellers anddacha ownersrsquo footprint on the land contributes to prideand identity-building whereas among most indigenousinhabitants peoplersquos embeddedness in the surroundingenvironment with minimal footprint prevails This meansthat the future of the Russian north is one of at leasttwo different modes of dwelling and perceiving the en-vironment both of which involve very intimate relationsbetween people and the land

Acknowledgements

We thank all our friends and collaborators in Apat-ityKirovsk Novyi Urengoy Nadym Pangody and Yak-utsk for their openness and hospitality Funding is grate-fully acknowledged from the research projects BOREASMOVE-INNOCOM funded by the Finnish Academyunder the BOREAS ESF EUROCORES scheme de-cision number 118702 and from the subsequent FinnishAcademy project ORHELIA decision number 251111Moreover the project lsquoThe peoples of the north-eastof the Russian Federation choosing a new adaptivestrategy under conditions of globalisation A social-anthropological approachrsquo Yakutsk (North Eastern Fed-eral) University Russia) contributed funding for thisresearch

ReferencesAnderson D 2000 Identity and ecology in Arctic Siberia the

number one reindeer brigade Oxford Oxford UniversityPress

Bird-David N 1990 The giving environment another perspect-ive on the economic system of gatherer-hunters CurrentAnthropology 31(2) 189ndash96

Bolotova A 2005 Discourses on taiga the state geologists andnature in the Soviet Union In Bammeacute A G Getzinger andB Wieser (editors) Yearbook of the Institute for AdvancedStudies on Science Technology and Society Munich andVienna Profil 25ndash53

Bolotova A 2012 Loving and conquering nature shifting per-ceptions of the environment in the industrialised Russiannorth Europe-Asia Studies 64(4)645ndash671

Bolotova A and F Stammler 2010 How the north becamehome Attachment to place among industrial migrants inMurmansk region In Southcott C and L Huskey (editors)Migration in the circumpolar north issues and contextsEdmonton Alberta Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press(University of Alberta CCI occasional publication 64) 193ndash220

Budaev A 2013 Sovremennye Realii Yakutskogo Agropoi-asa [Modern realities of Yakutian agro-belt] YakutskEkho Stolitsy 43 2160 URL httpwwwexo-yktruarticles244857494 (accessed 24 November 2013)

Crate S 2006 Cows kin and globalization an ethnography ofsustainability Walnut Creek Alta Mira Press

Eilmsteiner-Saxinger G 2013 Auf uns ndash auf euch ndash auf Oumll undGas FernpendlerInnen in der Erdgas- und Erdoumllindustrie im

8 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

informants have mentioned that their children and grand-children are no longer motivated to help on the dachaplot the reputation of local food has become muchstronger reflecting a worldwide trend well summarisedby Holt and Amilien (2007) This is why even north ofthe Arctic Circle there is a continued demand for peopleworking the land above the permafrost and apparentlymany of those who do not have their own dacha plots arehappy to pay a higher price for food produced by localfarms

Recreational dachasIn northwest Siberiarsquos gas cities the idea of dacha placesand individualrsquonaya zastroika territories covered by in-dividual construction was still somewhat alien and un-suitable for the harsh climate when our fieldwork startedamong the city dwellers in 2007 The idea of dachas wasinspired by the Soviet idea of garden subsistence plotsin central Russia Recreational dachas even pre-dated theSoviet Union and were then taken on by intelligentsiaand party elites in the north early on for example inYakutsk Arctic industrial cities however were seen asplaces to work not to live which is why there was nodacha construction planned there

After the Soviet Union and the post-perestroika crisissome people have become rather affluent and can affordto keep a dacha just for a change from city-life Thephysical need to grow onersquos own food decreased and freshfood became available even in markets in the north Nowmore people keep a dacha exclusively for spending theirfree time without growing anything on the plot Suchdachas are appreciated as a change from the standardisedapartment block to onersquos self-built or self-planned houseMost such dachas will have a sauna (Fig 1) From shortinterviews and living on dacha places and individualhouses in Novyi Urengoy Nadym and Pangody it seemsthat people would not sacrifice their yearly summerholiday somewhere lsquoon the landrsquo (na zemle) in the southjust because they would care for their dacha plants on thepermafrost In peoplersquos narratives there the idea of livingin the here and now has become much more prominentlsquoWe donrsquot want to eat out of cans and sit on cardboardboxes anymore just to save our life for the future Wewant to live here now in the north as well as maybe onthe land (na zemle) laterrsquo (Galina Konechnaia personalcommunication 27 March 2008) Recreational dachas inindustrial cities can therefore be understood as a sign ofincomers having arrived at an understanding of the northas their place of life to which they feel attached Howeveras Khlinovskaya Rockhill (2010) and Stammler (2010)showed this does not mean that people necessarily planto live their entire life there In the emerging dachamovement of Arctic industrial cities a dacha is thereforealso seen as an investment that can bring good returns incase the owners decide to sell it and return to their placesof origin

Novyi Urengoy shall serve as an example of thismovement The city was planned as a monoindustrial gas

town initially consisting of temporary living containers(bochki) and wooden barracks in the late 1970s and laterof Soviet style concrete blocks for Gazprom workersand their support industry Individual houses and dachaswere not part of the city plan not even after the SovietUnion as Novyi Urengoyrsquos then chief architect AllaLyaskovskaya confirmed The first dachas were builttowards the end of the 1990s after planned apartmentblocks were not constructed Then people lobbied forpermission to build individual houses in the growing cityin order to have somewhere to live But all they could getwas land allocated for recreational purposes

Yuri Plotnikov was among the pioneers of the recre-ational dacha movement there the first one who built adacha house with all amenities such as water electricityheating He proudly states lsquoWhen I came up with the ideato build myself a house outside of town people in the cityadministration looked down at me and said I was crazyBut then all sorts of people wanted to do the samersquo (YuriPlotnikov personal communication 23 September 2007)When Plotnikov sold his dacha because of his move toMoscow in 2009 he got 10 times the US dollars pricethat he had invested in the early 2000s By then dacha andindividual housing had become a big movement Moreand more space was appropriated for dachas between theurban living zone and industrial zones of Novyi UrengoiThe purpose of these dachas was mainly recreational

You have to give people the possibility of spendingtheir leisure time actively My husband is totally intothat on our dacha He is a real master and loves doingeverything himself [ ] Look in the city we havehere everything in monochrome (Alla Lyaskovskayapersonal communication 28 September 2007)The first [the dachas] were only containers wherepeople would go for barbeque Then the first flowerbeds appeared then some greenhouses and peoplebuilt themselves saunas And then later also suburbancottages and some even real concrete houses Nownot only those with the big money build but also inlsquoeconomy classrsquo ndash everybody according to his wallet(Vladimir Nuykin personal communication 19 May2013)

These processes led Novyi Urengoi with a population of115000 to have approximately 10000 dacha plots ofwhich as of 2013 40 have proper houses on themwhile another 20 are just allocated but still untouchedand the remainder is used as plots without buildings

However this number does not seem to include an-other form of recreational territory in the monoindustrialcity namely garage cooperatives These are organisedsimilarly to dacha cooperatives and the male recreationalactivities on both are similar people meet there forbarbecue The garages are many menrsquos pride with elab-orate workshops where they meet and repair all kinds ofequipment such as cars engines boats snowmobiles andthe like Others specialise in their garages on building andconstructing for example furniture and a few even usetheir garage as arts and handicrafts ateliers One such case

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 9

is Viktor Seliverstov from Novyi Urengoy The formerGazprom driller from Tatarstan came in 1978 to the northat the very start of west Siberian gas development Hehad found a lot of mammoth tusks during his travels onthe gas fields and started carving figures out of themHe took that so seriously that he got deeply involved innorthern indigenous symbolism cosmology and handi-craft and developed skills to the extent that his mammothcreations are nowadays in high demand by Gazpromleadership who give them as presents to VIP guestsSeliverstov did all this in his garage where he regularlyassembles the creative intelligentsia for intellectual andphilosophical discussions

Seliverstov exemplifies how people combine creativ-ity with recreation in their life in monoindustrial citiesbe it through construction of a dacha house or carvingartworks in their garage workshops

It seems likely that the number of dachas and recre-ational garage cooperatives must be well above 10000in a place like Novyi Urengoy This is the recreationalaspect be it in a garage or a dacha that prevails inplaces such as Novyi Urengoi Nadym and Pangody morethan for example in Murmansk and Yakutsk On thewest Siberian permafrost not only is the average materialaffluence of people higher but the conditions for growingplants are also harsher However during fieldwork somepeople were also planting potatoes on their dacha plotsin Novyi Urengoi on soil that was shipped 1000s ofkilometres lsquos zemleirsquo to the north because no potatowould grow on the sandy ground on the permafrost inthat area

In more cases however the whole dimension of adacha as partial subsistence supply is missing in north-west Siberia There the intimate physical engagement ofpeople with the land is mostly through picking mush-rooms and berries Some may embark on hunting orfishing trips from their garages or dachas In this respect adacha without a garden plot the gathering of male friendsin somebodyrsquos garage at the outskirts of town or in forestcabins all have a similar recreational aspect

Gender mobility and place in dacha orientationsOne might argue that this recreational aspect of dacha lifeis highly gender-specific typical ways of men spendingtheir time off work are sitting together outdoors drinkingbeer or stronger alcoholic beverages telling stories aboutonersquos fishing and hunting adventures going together tosauna frying meat and sausages and collective relaxingof the hectic work and city life [otvesti dushu] We wouldargue that this is a stereotype with the famous kernel oftruth Surely joint drinking and sauna are more associatedwith men than women in public opinion but much ofthe fieldwork indicates that women are also often vitallyincluded in the recreational aspects of dacha as a way oflife as well as men are part of dacha as a subsistenceactivity After all it is mostly men in the north who areinvolved in ordering and bringing the soil from the souththat is needed to grow potatoes and other plants on the

permafrost That soil has to be unloaded from trucksdistributed on the dacha plot prepared for the growingseason the potatoes have to be regularly dug over andmany other activities

The main difference between a dacha with gardenplot and one for leisure time is the extent to which theformer lsquobindsrsquo their owners physically to the place in thegrowing season People who are serious about cultivatingsomething on their dacha cannot really afford to leave forextended holidays as their compatriots with pure leisure-time dachas may do The garden requires care duringthree seasons of the year at least spring summer andautumn Absences of several months that are typical fornorthern labour migrants become much more difficult toorganise with such a dacha-commitment in the northThis means that such people will spend less time in thesouth at their places of origin As a result of their practicalengagement with the northern land and their graduallsquoalienationrsquo from a distant south their attachment to thenorth increases This may seem a rather abstract conclu-sion and we agree with Khlinovskaya Rockhill (2010)that real life is not organised into those dichotomies thatwe create in our minds Northerners do not forget theirbelonging to their places of origin either nor do onlythose without northern dachas visit the south But indeedseveral informants in our project emphasised that mostlythose with a strong relation to the northern place bother tohave a garden plot dacha The evolving of dacha places istherefore both a sign of increased belonging to the northamong inhabitants as well as of uninterrupted presencethere Dacha places as garden plots are therefore moredifficult to combine with the transient livelihoods thatwere thought to be typical for industrial workers whowould spend all their summers lsquoat homersquo in the south orwork on a fly infly out working plan Recreational dachasare therefore better suited for a way of life that involvesmultiple geographic localities throughout the year

In this respect large parts of the Russian populationare migratory between their urban life in autumn winterand spring and their dacha life in summer The dachaas home for the entire summer enables people to moveback to the earth regularly This move which is a way forthe urban population to preserve their rural roots sinceurbanisation is a rather recent tendency in Russia Whilein the 1930s there were hardly any significant cities inthe Russian north 80 years later more than 80 of thepopulation lives in cities in most of the northern regionsnamely 92 in Murmansk Oblast and 83 in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug In Russia altogether 74 ofthe population lived in cities in 2010 (Russia PopulationCensus 2010) This is the background on which the dachamovement caught up in Russia

From dacha to year-round suburban villagesThe notion of the dacha as summer home adds a di-mension of mobility and seasonality to life in the north-ern industrial city Many incomers have dachas at theirplaces of origin The popularity of dacha settlements in

10 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Murmansk Oblast and west Siberia as well as Yakutskwith its longer dacha history testifies this where manypeople stay for their entire summer on their dacha Thedacha as summer home is particularly important in thenorth among all those who do not have expressed attach-ments to other places outside of the region Paradoxicallymost of the northerners who keep connections to theplaces of origin in the south do so through spending thesummer holidays there in the south although it wouldseem to make much more sense to leave the north for thewinter Thus we have seen so far that dacha places bydefinition are seasonally limited to the warmer times ofthe year The whole point of having a dacha in the northwas to have an alternative place to move to when peoplewant to be closer to the earth and have more creativefreedom in place-making than they could ever have inan Arctic socialist city with strict efficiency planning andzoning

In our three case sites of Kirovsk-Apatity (MurmanskRegion) Novyi Urengoy (Yamal) and Yakutsk (SakhaYakutia) we can see however how this clear cut un-derstanding of dacha versus city life is gradually beingblurred

The dacha as a place for summer recreation graduallygets redefined as a place for year-round inhabitationenacting onersquos freedom in individual houses closer to theland rather than apartment blocks In expanding citieslike Novyi Urengoi Surgut and Yakutsk dacha settle-ments where people used to spend time only in summergradually turn into suburban areas with individual housesfor the affluent for year-round permanent inhabitation

Maybe the time has come to depart from the idea ofhousing only in apartment blocks in our city Peoplewant to live on their own now Itrsquos good the admin-istration is considering to give plots out on the fieldfor individual construction now (Ivan Avramenkopersonal communication 17 June 2013)

There is a technological demographic-economic andsocial aspect of such developments firstly new construc-tion technologies autonomous heating septic tanks andheat insulation have made it possible for house owners toestablish permanent year-round housing on their dachaplaces Secondly the high immigration into expandingArctic cities because of extractive industries has led torising real estate prices on a now free market in thesetowns where previously all housing was owned by thestate or the single industrial company in town Theseinstitutions stopped building new apartment blocks andhouse construction became a commodity In this situationbuilding a permanent house also for winter (zimnii vari-ant) on a dacha plot becomes a possibility for peopleto solve their housing problem or improve their housingconditions This is a widespread tendency in regions suchas Sergelyakh in Yakutsk Chernorechenski in Surgut orSeveryanin in Novyi Urengoy with prices easily reachingbetween 1000 and 3000 EURm2 Thirdly individualfreedom has become more important in northern citiesPeople are not ready to sacrifice and postpone their

pursuit of a comfortable life to a future in the south Theexperience of perestroika has shown them that they cannever be sure if that will ever come This social changeunderlies the tendency of dachas becoming permanenthomes people want to live in the North in their houseshere and now and not only during the short summer

I did not succeed to look around and Irsquom 50 yearsalready I came here with 25 So what would I livemy life in some next life Maybe not Thatrsquos whyI think dachas ndash this is concretely the way forwardin Novyi Urengoi One has to live today in goodconditions and allow people in this way to realisesome of their wishes for recreation We have nowthe means to create this (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2008)

This is interesting as she had the post of lead city-planning architect in Novyi Urengoy in the early 2000sand thus witnessed herself the change of the approach tolife in the Arctic city As much as she advocated on aprofessional level centralised housing-planning as muchshe was privately beautifully describing how important itis for her and her neighbours to be close to the land ontheir dachas

This apparent contradiction comes from the substan-tial difference it makes for the organisation of city spacewhen individual year-round housing is encouraged andwhen it is not In both Novyi Urengoi and Yakutsk thisis exemplified by the presence or absence of a formaladdress A formal address starts with a transfer of thelegal category of the land from a lsquorecreational zonersquowhich is what dacha cooperative territories are legallyinto a part of the lsquohousing zonersquo of the city A city officialfrom Novyi Urengoy explains that the status of the landwill not change even though more individuals build theirhouses according to the zimnyi variant for year round useThe reason is that this would entail lsquocertain obligationsrsquoby the municipality These are for example access to mu-nicipal electricity rubbish collection street maintenancepublic transport postal and internet services schoolshealthcare police stations and all other aspects of muni-cipal services While in Yakutsk entire neighbourhoods ofdachas are being transformed into regular suburbs with allservices In some municipalities such as Novyi Urengoithere is resistance to these obligations

You canrsquot turn this city into this settlement patternabout which we talk ndash go back to the land Inprinciple how can one live and extract gas when Ihave to think where I find firewood for heating myautonomous device Let the dear gentleman replyto this question[ ] You have to create a structurewhich would supply the citizens Otherwise how willhe do it Feed wood to an oven We donrsquot have foresthere [in the tundra] (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2007)

This means that such individual permanent houseswill not have official postcodes nor streetnames andnumbers lsquoalthough within the dacha cooperatives forpeoplersquos comfort and orientation they give names for the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 11

drivewaysrsquo (Vladimir Nuykin personal communica-tion19 May 2013)

Much but not all individual year round housing innorthern industrial cities is constructed on dacha territor-ies This transforms the character of dacha places gradu-ally into a more urban atmosphere These tendenciesfrom the regions not only in the Arctic but all over Russiahave now made their way up to the Federal Russianpolitical discussion the government and parliament arein favour of adopting a law allowing people officiallyto register on their dacha places as permanent residentsIt remains unclear as of 2014 if such new permanentresidents then have to pay regular housing tax for theirdacha-houses and plots as these developments are newand this tax would be under regional or municipal controlPremier Medvedev admitted that this would legalise analready established de facto year round inhabitation ondacha plots by many people (RIA Novosti (Moscow)5 August 2013)

This process is seen by some long-time dacha inhab-itants as the disappearance of dachas (dachi izcheznut)On the other hand one can say that the spirit of dachaplaces expands to a year-round quality of life withthe recreational aspects the individual freedom in placecreation and the being close to the land included So theurban built environment gradually acquires more ruraltraits One significant consequence of this developmentis that seasonality and the rhythm of moving betweencity and dacha places on the outskirts gets lost as theborders between the two become blurred This is ex-actly the opposite of what happens in many villages inthe Russian Arctic and also the Finnish North whichturn gradually from permanent villages into summersettlements as services and social infrastructure closedown Nakhshina (2013) describes this process in herethnography of encounters between seasonal and per-manent dwellers of Kuzomenrsquo a village in Murmanskregion

We argue here that both these tendencies are intercon-nected the more people leave villages to live in citiesthe more permanent houses will be built in those cities onpreviously unbuilt territory Analysing a recent article onthe future planning of Yakutsk it became very clear howthe city will become more rural-looking within its urbanzone as it will be surrounded by a number of suburbswith individual houses that will form with the city centretogether the lsquoMini-Moscowrsquo as the authors call it (Yak-utsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013 301 9)A team of Yakutsk-based regional researchers envisagesthat by 2032 the city population will live just outside thecentre lsquoin well-equipped low-rise houses on their ownplots with not less than 1000m2 garages for 2 cars and thenecessary high quality social infrastructure in the vicinity[ ] and a journey to work of not more than 30 minutesrsquo(Yakutsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013301 9) According to that plan the territories for suchfuture suburbs will be those currently allocated for dachaplots

This shows that the move from the seasonality ofdacha places to the permanence of suburban settlementsin the Russian Arctic is a bottom-up movement that hasarisen from the individual practices of dacha-creatorsdescribed in Nakhshina and Razumovarsquos (2009) articleThis movement has now arrived in the halls of power ofmunicipal administrations that have to deal with such newrealities and the increased municipal obligations relatedto them The former Novyi Urengoy chief architect de-scribed this dilemma

Originally historically the individual house exempli-fies the Russian person What was bad in this [Soviet]period In our life here in these modern cities therewas no such concept of onersquos own house but it isnow back coming back at this very time But it wouldbe wrong now in the setting of Novyi Urengoi toallow the development of individual construction Itwould be a mistake because the city was originallynot designed for that Yes the question of individualconstruction was put to me as the chief architect veryseriously They simply put pressure on me [Allow-ing] it is a compromise (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication) 28 September 2007)

Based on statements like this we argue that the northernpopulation had realised that they cannot hope for someall-caring state to increase their living standard in Arcticcities Instead they took their own initiative and createdfaits accomplis Officials could not ignore this movementtowards the land anymore and had to take individualyear-round house planning based on dacha places intoconsideration

Life beyond industrial work in the north

What unites all types of dachas and the permanent houseson dacha plots and garage cooperatives is that theseplaces are created by people wanting to spend theirprivate life and their free time in the north This is anextension of the original idea of northern industrial city-development in which people were induced to moveexclusively for working Our informants express clearlythis tendency towards more of a lsquolifersquo dimension of theirnorthern existence Gone are the early days of northernindustrial city development in which many said theydid not bother to furnish their apartments properly haveproper dishes eat out of cans and saved everythingfor the future This Soviet approach of being tempor-arily in the Arctic described by Khlinovskaya Rockhill(2010) turns Yurchakrsquos famous book title lsquoEverythingwas forever until it was no morersquo (2005) upside downinto lsquoEverything was temporary until it became foreverrsquoThe discovery of the north by incomers and their des-cendants not only as a place of work but a place of lifenecessarily changes the intensity of residentsrsquo relations totheir built natural and social environment The evolutionof dachas and of individual permanent housing is alogical consequence of this development

12 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

We have shown that the typical dacha with a gardenplot and a summer house has a clearly seasonal characterand with few exceptions people do not spend much timethere in winter However as their presence in the northbecomes less seasonal and their involvement with thenorthern land more intensive signs of permanent livingon dacha places increase In such cases the former dachatransforms to a hybrid of summer place close to thenatural environment and permanent housing close to thecity

It is in this microcosm of their own plots wherenortherners with southern origin can enact their intensiveindividual engagement with the land using their creativeand productive potential in free decision making Weagree with Nakhshina and Razumova (2009) that dachasreflect the individual freedom and creativity of the plotowners This freedom is crucial as a counterbalance totheir work in the north that has always been a part ofa larger development project for a country-wide com-munity It is alongside the physical engagement withthe land a crucial factor characterising the particularhuman-environment relation that dacha people haveDacha owners create on their plots material expressionsof their own individual character and biography In thelife histories recorded during fieldwork in 2007ndash2010 wesee how lifelines connect southern places of origin andnorthern places that have become home They becomeintertwined in the dacha places that combine a moresouthern agricultural logic with garden plots plantsvegetables and a northern approach to nature in whichberry picking hunting and fishing as recreational andsubsistence activity are very important

We can interpret on the dacha plots these intertwinedlines through the construction materials used an aspectalso covered in the publication by Nakhshina and Razu-mova (2009) Somebody who works for example in aconcrete factory or has friends who do so is more likelyto use various leftovers or otherwise acquired items ofthat kind of production on their dachas although usuallydachas would be built of wood in a countryside villagestyle (Fig 6) Some dacha plots are very elaborate in per-fect order decorated with love for every detail whereasothers focus more on the functionality take the growingof food very seriously as they or their relatives may havedone in their places of origin in the south Or they mayjust use the dacha plot for planting flowers and as a baseto gather hunt and fish in the northern landscape sur-rounding the dachas in cases where industrial expansionhas left space for such practices This individual freedomof creating a place of onersquos own preference is somethingthat people cannot enjoy in their city There they livein apartment blocks planned and built by somebody elsefollowing a collective ideology with the goal of efficientorganisation of work and life

This combination of onersquos southern mirror image ofhome and components stemming from onersquos northern lifeand work lets the dacha appear almost as a physical ne-cessity how else could people express this other dimen-

sion of homeness and placehood that goes beyond livingfor the sake of working in an industrial city until reachingthe age of retirement Therefore dacha can become butnot always is a sign of increased attachment of onersquosnorthern place of life which was not originally thoughtfor long-term inhabitation by incomers But differentfrom the indigenous hunter or gatherer the attachmenthere is not to the natural environment with minimalfootprint but to onersquos self-created place that combineselements of onersquos southern origin the northern place ofwork and the local climate In most cases the relationshipof people to their dacha places is reciprocal It com-plements the idea of the lsquogiving environmentrsquo that weknow from hunter-gatherer societies (Bird-David 1990)in which a sentient environment offers its resources tothe hunter who shows respect and his knowledge of theplaces through appropriate behaviour (Anderson 2000)

Among northern industrial city inhabitants the self-created dacha place rewards its masterrsquos hard work withgiving back the fruits of the land even though maybeon soil especially imported from the south and put in alayer on top of the permafrost The environment is thusself-created In this respect we cannot necessarily speakof settlers getting closer to natives as is suggested forChukotka in the work of Thompson (2008)

Conclusion

This article has described the development of dachas inArctic Russian industrial cities We took the anthropolo-gical study of Arctic dacha places a step further from asingle region case study as was done previously (Naksh-ina and Razumova 2009 Nakshina 2013 Bolotova 2012)to a comparative approach We acknowledge the diversityand uniqueness of our three field sites and therefore stateahead of our general conclusions that those must not betaken as generalisations and final words but rather asinvitation for further research in this little studied field

The analysis of dacha situations in Arctic cities inthree regions (Apatity-Kirovsk Novyi Urengoy Yak-utsk) leads us to reach the following four main pointsfirstly the Arctic city dacha movement can be seen inpath-dependence to the Soviet working class dachaswhereas the pre-Soviet summer recreational house ideare-surfaces gradually after the immediate post-Sovietperiod Secondly in the Arctic dacha movement theexpression of individual creativity and intensive socialorganisation in collectives do not exclude each otherThirdly we suggest that Arctic dacha settlements andpractices are excellent cases for studying processes ofhuman agency and place creation which grant us deeperinsights in the determinants of peoplersquos relation to theland Fourthly this human agency on the land helps usto understand how urban communities in Arctic Rus-sia change their spatial practices gradually from state-induced inhabitation of compressed dense high-rise con-crete landscapes to village-resembling agglomerations ofsmaller houses close to the land As a consequence the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 13

seasonality of dacha practices gradually gives way to areintroduction of peoplersquos quality of life closer to whatthey call lsquonaturersquo on a permanent year-round basis

What do these four main concluding points tell usIndustrial northerners change the approach to their citiespeople who invest today in a dacha stop seeing them-selves as just working in the north but gradually also startliving there be it temporarily or permanent This showshow the Arctic has become a place to lead a normal lifefor immigrants and their descendants with characteristicsof a normal urban population elsewhere albeit with somespecifics related to seasons climate and permafrost

The increase in development of Arctic dachas asgarden plots arose largely out of economic necessitiesin perestroika but at the same time was a perfect matchwith a deeply Russian approach to the land namelythrough physical agricultural engagement that is focusedon refinement of nature on leaving the human footprintand on adding value The increasing popularity of recre-ational dachas we argued here alongside the blurring ofborders to permanent individual housing areas in Arcticcities is a sign of the end of the post-Soviet periodWe see here the advent of broader trends of mainstreameveryday life in the Arctic with relative affluence andlife-trajectories that are not characterised by a love for theextreme (climate conditions exceptional social fabrics)but for the normal

We have further analysed the dacha as a visual arenafor the interplay between economic and social needsof northerners in the Russian Arctic More than justenabling additional food production in difficult times thedacha is a playground for balancing the freedom of in-dividual creation of place with the deeply social desire toshare experiences with neighbours Dachas are like bookswherein we can read and experience the character pro-fessional biography material wellbeing individual lifestory social status and belonging and preferred practicesof their owners The Arctic dacha cooperative in Russiais a model of self-governance that incorporates the Sovietlegacy of the kollektif while also considering individualcreative freedom in place creation Dacha places arealso a mirror image of the changed balance between theindividual and the collective since the perestroika periodin Arctic Russia late Soviet time dachas were open andvisible while from the late 1990s onwards high fencesbecame the symbols of dachas even in the Arctic wherepeople usually emphasise that collectivity and mutualassistance are life-important

We suggest seeing these developments as a sign of theRussian Arctic becoming a less extreme and more normalplace Rather than a frontier to open up as portrayed in somany popular discourses on Arctic resources the northhas become home for the non-indigenous population thatwas induced by the state to move there While the lsquonative-ness of settlersrsquo (Thompson 2008) or their intensive ad-aptation to the northern nature (Nakshina and Razumova2009) have been emphasised before our material sug-gests that incomer dacha-peoplersquos worldview and relation

to the land in those industrial areas of the Russian north isbased largely on their southern roots and an agriculturallogic Dichotomies are always controversial but we dareto put them forward to inspire more refined analysis inthis direction We argue that industrial city-dwellers anddacha ownersrsquo footprint on the land contributes to prideand identity-building whereas among most indigenousinhabitants peoplersquos embeddedness in the surroundingenvironment with minimal footprint prevails This meansthat the future of the Russian north is one of at leasttwo different modes of dwelling and perceiving the en-vironment both of which involve very intimate relationsbetween people and the land

Acknowledgements

We thank all our friends and collaborators in Apat-ityKirovsk Novyi Urengoy Nadym Pangody and Yak-utsk for their openness and hospitality Funding is grate-fully acknowledged from the research projects BOREASMOVE-INNOCOM funded by the Finnish Academyunder the BOREAS ESF EUROCORES scheme de-cision number 118702 and from the subsequent FinnishAcademy project ORHELIA decision number 251111Moreover the project lsquoThe peoples of the north-eastof the Russian Federation choosing a new adaptivestrategy under conditions of globalisation A social-anthropological approachrsquo Yakutsk (North Eastern Fed-eral) University Russia) contributed funding for thisresearch

ReferencesAnderson D 2000 Identity and ecology in Arctic Siberia the

number one reindeer brigade Oxford Oxford UniversityPress

Bird-David N 1990 The giving environment another perspect-ive on the economic system of gatherer-hunters CurrentAnthropology 31(2) 189ndash96

Bolotova A 2005 Discourses on taiga the state geologists andnature in the Soviet Union In Bammeacute A G Getzinger andB Wieser (editors) Yearbook of the Institute for AdvancedStudies on Science Technology and Society Munich andVienna Profil 25ndash53

Bolotova A 2012 Loving and conquering nature shifting per-ceptions of the environment in the industrialised Russiannorth Europe-Asia Studies 64(4)645ndash671

Bolotova A and F Stammler 2010 How the north becamehome Attachment to place among industrial migrants inMurmansk region In Southcott C and L Huskey (editors)Migration in the circumpolar north issues and contextsEdmonton Alberta Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press(University of Alberta CCI occasional publication 64) 193ndash220

Budaev A 2013 Sovremennye Realii Yakutskogo Agropoi-asa [Modern realities of Yakutian agro-belt] YakutskEkho Stolitsy 43 2160 URL httpwwwexo-yktruarticles244857494 (accessed 24 November 2013)

Crate S 2006 Cows kin and globalization an ethnography ofsustainability Walnut Creek Alta Mira Press

Eilmsteiner-Saxinger G 2013 Auf uns ndash auf euch ndash auf Oumll undGas FernpendlerInnen in der Erdgas- und Erdoumllindustrie im

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 9

is Viktor Seliverstov from Novyi Urengoy The formerGazprom driller from Tatarstan came in 1978 to the northat the very start of west Siberian gas development Hehad found a lot of mammoth tusks during his travels onthe gas fields and started carving figures out of themHe took that so seriously that he got deeply involved innorthern indigenous symbolism cosmology and handi-craft and developed skills to the extent that his mammothcreations are nowadays in high demand by Gazpromleadership who give them as presents to VIP guestsSeliverstov did all this in his garage where he regularlyassembles the creative intelligentsia for intellectual andphilosophical discussions

Seliverstov exemplifies how people combine creativ-ity with recreation in their life in monoindustrial citiesbe it through construction of a dacha house or carvingartworks in their garage workshops

It seems likely that the number of dachas and recre-ational garage cooperatives must be well above 10000in a place like Novyi Urengoy This is the recreationalaspect be it in a garage or a dacha that prevails inplaces such as Novyi Urengoi Nadym and Pangody morethan for example in Murmansk and Yakutsk On thewest Siberian permafrost not only is the average materialaffluence of people higher but the conditions for growingplants are also harsher However during fieldwork somepeople were also planting potatoes on their dacha plotsin Novyi Urengoi on soil that was shipped 1000s ofkilometres lsquos zemleirsquo to the north because no potatowould grow on the sandy ground on the permafrost inthat area

In more cases however the whole dimension of adacha as partial subsistence supply is missing in north-west Siberia There the intimate physical engagement ofpeople with the land is mostly through picking mush-rooms and berries Some may embark on hunting orfishing trips from their garages or dachas In this respect adacha without a garden plot the gathering of male friendsin somebodyrsquos garage at the outskirts of town or in forestcabins all have a similar recreational aspect

Gender mobility and place in dacha orientationsOne might argue that this recreational aspect of dacha lifeis highly gender-specific typical ways of men spendingtheir time off work are sitting together outdoors drinkingbeer or stronger alcoholic beverages telling stories aboutonersquos fishing and hunting adventures going together tosauna frying meat and sausages and collective relaxingof the hectic work and city life [otvesti dushu] We wouldargue that this is a stereotype with the famous kernel oftruth Surely joint drinking and sauna are more associatedwith men than women in public opinion but much ofthe fieldwork indicates that women are also often vitallyincluded in the recreational aspects of dacha as a way oflife as well as men are part of dacha as a subsistenceactivity After all it is mostly men in the north who areinvolved in ordering and bringing the soil from the souththat is needed to grow potatoes and other plants on the

permafrost That soil has to be unloaded from trucksdistributed on the dacha plot prepared for the growingseason the potatoes have to be regularly dug over andmany other activities

The main difference between a dacha with gardenplot and one for leisure time is the extent to which theformer lsquobindsrsquo their owners physically to the place in thegrowing season People who are serious about cultivatingsomething on their dacha cannot really afford to leave forextended holidays as their compatriots with pure leisure-time dachas may do The garden requires care duringthree seasons of the year at least spring summer andautumn Absences of several months that are typical fornorthern labour migrants become much more difficult toorganise with such a dacha-commitment in the northThis means that such people will spend less time in thesouth at their places of origin As a result of their practicalengagement with the northern land and their graduallsquoalienationrsquo from a distant south their attachment to thenorth increases This may seem a rather abstract conclu-sion and we agree with Khlinovskaya Rockhill (2010)that real life is not organised into those dichotomies thatwe create in our minds Northerners do not forget theirbelonging to their places of origin either nor do onlythose without northern dachas visit the south But indeedseveral informants in our project emphasised that mostlythose with a strong relation to the northern place bother tohave a garden plot dacha The evolving of dacha places istherefore both a sign of increased belonging to the northamong inhabitants as well as of uninterrupted presencethere Dacha places as garden plots are therefore moredifficult to combine with the transient livelihoods thatwere thought to be typical for industrial workers whowould spend all their summers lsquoat homersquo in the south orwork on a fly infly out working plan Recreational dachasare therefore better suited for a way of life that involvesmultiple geographic localities throughout the year

In this respect large parts of the Russian populationare migratory between their urban life in autumn winterand spring and their dacha life in summer The dachaas home for the entire summer enables people to moveback to the earth regularly This move which is a way forthe urban population to preserve their rural roots sinceurbanisation is a rather recent tendency in Russia Whilein the 1930s there were hardly any significant cities inthe Russian north 80 years later more than 80 of thepopulation lives in cities in most of the northern regionsnamely 92 in Murmansk Oblast and 83 in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug In Russia altogether 74 ofthe population lived in cities in 2010 (Russia PopulationCensus 2010) This is the background on which the dachamovement caught up in Russia

From dacha to year-round suburban villagesThe notion of the dacha as summer home adds a di-mension of mobility and seasonality to life in the north-ern industrial city Many incomers have dachas at theirplaces of origin The popularity of dacha settlements in

10 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Murmansk Oblast and west Siberia as well as Yakutskwith its longer dacha history testifies this where manypeople stay for their entire summer on their dacha Thedacha as summer home is particularly important in thenorth among all those who do not have expressed attach-ments to other places outside of the region Paradoxicallymost of the northerners who keep connections to theplaces of origin in the south do so through spending thesummer holidays there in the south although it wouldseem to make much more sense to leave the north for thewinter Thus we have seen so far that dacha places bydefinition are seasonally limited to the warmer times ofthe year The whole point of having a dacha in the northwas to have an alternative place to move to when peoplewant to be closer to the earth and have more creativefreedom in place-making than they could ever have inan Arctic socialist city with strict efficiency planning andzoning

In our three case sites of Kirovsk-Apatity (MurmanskRegion) Novyi Urengoy (Yamal) and Yakutsk (SakhaYakutia) we can see however how this clear cut un-derstanding of dacha versus city life is gradually beingblurred

The dacha as a place for summer recreation graduallygets redefined as a place for year-round inhabitationenacting onersquos freedom in individual houses closer to theland rather than apartment blocks In expanding citieslike Novyi Urengoi Surgut and Yakutsk dacha settle-ments where people used to spend time only in summergradually turn into suburban areas with individual housesfor the affluent for year-round permanent inhabitation

Maybe the time has come to depart from the idea ofhousing only in apartment blocks in our city Peoplewant to live on their own now Itrsquos good the admin-istration is considering to give plots out on the fieldfor individual construction now (Ivan Avramenkopersonal communication 17 June 2013)

There is a technological demographic-economic andsocial aspect of such developments firstly new construc-tion technologies autonomous heating septic tanks andheat insulation have made it possible for house owners toestablish permanent year-round housing on their dachaplaces Secondly the high immigration into expandingArctic cities because of extractive industries has led torising real estate prices on a now free market in thesetowns where previously all housing was owned by thestate or the single industrial company in town Theseinstitutions stopped building new apartment blocks andhouse construction became a commodity In this situationbuilding a permanent house also for winter (zimnii vari-ant) on a dacha plot becomes a possibility for peopleto solve their housing problem or improve their housingconditions This is a widespread tendency in regions suchas Sergelyakh in Yakutsk Chernorechenski in Surgut orSeveryanin in Novyi Urengoy with prices easily reachingbetween 1000 and 3000 EURm2 Thirdly individualfreedom has become more important in northern citiesPeople are not ready to sacrifice and postpone their

pursuit of a comfortable life to a future in the south Theexperience of perestroika has shown them that they cannever be sure if that will ever come This social changeunderlies the tendency of dachas becoming permanenthomes people want to live in the North in their houseshere and now and not only during the short summer

I did not succeed to look around and Irsquom 50 yearsalready I came here with 25 So what would I livemy life in some next life Maybe not Thatrsquos whyI think dachas ndash this is concretely the way forwardin Novyi Urengoi One has to live today in goodconditions and allow people in this way to realisesome of their wishes for recreation We have nowthe means to create this (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2008)

This is interesting as she had the post of lead city-planning architect in Novyi Urengoy in the early 2000sand thus witnessed herself the change of the approach tolife in the Arctic city As much as she advocated on aprofessional level centralised housing-planning as muchshe was privately beautifully describing how important itis for her and her neighbours to be close to the land ontheir dachas

This apparent contradiction comes from the substan-tial difference it makes for the organisation of city spacewhen individual year-round housing is encouraged andwhen it is not In both Novyi Urengoi and Yakutsk thisis exemplified by the presence or absence of a formaladdress A formal address starts with a transfer of thelegal category of the land from a lsquorecreational zonersquowhich is what dacha cooperative territories are legallyinto a part of the lsquohousing zonersquo of the city A city officialfrom Novyi Urengoy explains that the status of the landwill not change even though more individuals build theirhouses according to the zimnyi variant for year round useThe reason is that this would entail lsquocertain obligationsrsquoby the municipality These are for example access to mu-nicipal electricity rubbish collection street maintenancepublic transport postal and internet services schoolshealthcare police stations and all other aspects of muni-cipal services While in Yakutsk entire neighbourhoods ofdachas are being transformed into regular suburbs with allservices In some municipalities such as Novyi Urengoithere is resistance to these obligations

You canrsquot turn this city into this settlement patternabout which we talk ndash go back to the land Inprinciple how can one live and extract gas when Ihave to think where I find firewood for heating myautonomous device Let the dear gentleman replyto this question[ ] You have to create a structurewhich would supply the citizens Otherwise how willhe do it Feed wood to an oven We donrsquot have foresthere [in the tundra] (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2007)

This means that such individual permanent houseswill not have official postcodes nor streetnames andnumbers lsquoalthough within the dacha cooperatives forpeoplersquos comfort and orientation they give names for the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 11

drivewaysrsquo (Vladimir Nuykin personal communica-tion19 May 2013)

Much but not all individual year round housing innorthern industrial cities is constructed on dacha territor-ies This transforms the character of dacha places gradu-ally into a more urban atmosphere These tendenciesfrom the regions not only in the Arctic but all over Russiahave now made their way up to the Federal Russianpolitical discussion the government and parliament arein favour of adopting a law allowing people officiallyto register on their dacha places as permanent residentsIt remains unclear as of 2014 if such new permanentresidents then have to pay regular housing tax for theirdacha-houses and plots as these developments are newand this tax would be under regional or municipal controlPremier Medvedev admitted that this would legalise analready established de facto year round inhabitation ondacha plots by many people (RIA Novosti (Moscow)5 August 2013)

This process is seen by some long-time dacha inhab-itants as the disappearance of dachas (dachi izcheznut)On the other hand one can say that the spirit of dachaplaces expands to a year-round quality of life withthe recreational aspects the individual freedom in placecreation and the being close to the land included So theurban built environment gradually acquires more ruraltraits One significant consequence of this developmentis that seasonality and the rhythm of moving betweencity and dacha places on the outskirts gets lost as theborders between the two become blurred This is ex-actly the opposite of what happens in many villages inthe Russian Arctic and also the Finnish North whichturn gradually from permanent villages into summersettlements as services and social infrastructure closedown Nakhshina (2013) describes this process in herethnography of encounters between seasonal and per-manent dwellers of Kuzomenrsquo a village in Murmanskregion

We argue here that both these tendencies are intercon-nected the more people leave villages to live in citiesthe more permanent houses will be built in those cities onpreviously unbuilt territory Analysing a recent article onthe future planning of Yakutsk it became very clear howthe city will become more rural-looking within its urbanzone as it will be surrounded by a number of suburbswith individual houses that will form with the city centretogether the lsquoMini-Moscowrsquo as the authors call it (Yak-utsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013 301 9)A team of Yakutsk-based regional researchers envisagesthat by 2032 the city population will live just outside thecentre lsquoin well-equipped low-rise houses on their ownplots with not less than 1000m2 garages for 2 cars and thenecessary high quality social infrastructure in the vicinity[ ] and a journey to work of not more than 30 minutesrsquo(Yakutsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013301 9) According to that plan the territories for suchfuture suburbs will be those currently allocated for dachaplots

This shows that the move from the seasonality ofdacha places to the permanence of suburban settlementsin the Russian Arctic is a bottom-up movement that hasarisen from the individual practices of dacha-creatorsdescribed in Nakhshina and Razumovarsquos (2009) articleThis movement has now arrived in the halls of power ofmunicipal administrations that have to deal with such newrealities and the increased municipal obligations relatedto them The former Novyi Urengoy chief architect de-scribed this dilemma

Originally historically the individual house exempli-fies the Russian person What was bad in this [Soviet]period In our life here in these modern cities therewas no such concept of onersquos own house but it isnow back coming back at this very time But it wouldbe wrong now in the setting of Novyi Urengoi toallow the development of individual construction Itwould be a mistake because the city was originallynot designed for that Yes the question of individualconstruction was put to me as the chief architect veryseriously They simply put pressure on me [Allow-ing] it is a compromise (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication) 28 September 2007)

Based on statements like this we argue that the northernpopulation had realised that they cannot hope for someall-caring state to increase their living standard in Arcticcities Instead they took their own initiative and createdfaits accomplis Officials could not ignore this movementtowards the land anymore and had to take individualyear-round house planning based on dacha places intoconsideration

Life beyond industrial work in the north

What unites all types of dachas and the permanent houseson dacha plots and garage cooperatives is that theseplaces are created by people wanting to spend theirprivate life and their free time in the north This is anextension of the original idea of northern industrial city-development in which people were induced to moveexclusively for working Our informants express clearlythis tendency towards more of a lsquolifersquo dimension of theirnorthern existence Gone are the early days of northernindustrial city development in which many said theydid not bother to furnish their apartments properly haveproper dishes eat out of cans and saved everythingfor the future This Soviet approach of being tempor-arily in the Arctic described by Khlinovskaya Rockhill(2010) turns Yurchakrsquos famous book title lsquoEverythingwas forever until it was no morersquo (2005) upside downinto lsquoEverything was temporary until it became foreverrsquoThe discovery of the north by incomers and their des-cendants not only as a place of work but a place of lifenecessarily changes the intensity of residentsrsquo relations totheir built natural and social environment The evolutionof dachas and of individual permanent housing is alogical consequence of this development

12 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

We have shown that the typical dacha with a gardenplot and a summer house has a clearly seasonal characterand with few exceptions people do not spend much timethere in winter However as their presence in the northbecomes less seasonal and their involvement with thenorthern land more intensive signs of permanent livingon dacha places increase In such cases the former dachatransforms to a hybrid of summer place close to thenatural environment and permanent housing close to thecity

It is in this microcosm of their own plots wherenortherners with southern origin can enact their intensiveindividual engagement with the land using their creativeand productive potential in free decision making Weagree with Nakhshina and Razumova (2009) that dachasreflect the individual freedom and creativity of the plotowners This freedom is crucial as a counterbalance totheir work in the north that has always been a part ofa larger development project for a country-wide com-munity It is alongside the physical engagement withthe land a crucial factor characterising the particularhuman-environment relation that dacha people haveDacha owners create on their plots material expressionsof their own individual character and biography In thelife histories recorded during fieldwork in 2007ndash2010 wesee how lifelines connect southern places of origin andnorthern places that have become home They becomeintertwined in the dacha places that combine a moresouthern agricultural logic with garden plots plantsvegetables and a northern approach to nature in whichberry picking hunting and fishing as recreational andsubsistence activity are very important

We can interpret on the dacha plots these intertwinedlines through the construction materials used an aspectalso covered in the publication by Nakhshina and Razu-mova (2009) Somebody who works for example in aconcrete factory or has friends who do so is more likelyto use various leftovers or otherwise acquired items ofthat kind of production on their dachas although usuallydachas would be built of wood in a countryside villagestyle (Fig 6) Some dacha plots are very elaborate in per-fect order decorated with love for every detail whereasothers focus more on the functionality take the growingof food very seriously as they or their relatives may havedone in their places of origin in the south Or they mayjust use the dacha plot for planting flowers and as a baseto gather hunt and fish in the northern landscape sur-rounding the dachas in cases where industrial expansionhas left space for such practices This individual freedomof creating a place of onersquos own preference is somethingthat people cannot enjoy in their city There they livein apartment blocks planned and built by somebody elsefollowing a collective ideology with the goal of efficientorganisation of work and life

This combination of onersquos southern mirror image ofhome and components stemming from onersquos northern lifeand work lets the dacha appear almost as a physical ne-cessity how else could people express this other dimen-

sion of homeness and placehood that goes beyond livingfor the sake of working in an industrial city until reachingthe age of retirement Therefore dacha can become butnot always is a sign of increased attachment of onersquosnorthern place of life which was not originally thoughtfor long-term inhabitation by incomers But differentfrom the indigenous hunter or gatherer the attachmenthere is not to the natural environment with minimalfootprint but to onersquos self-created place that combineselements of onersquos southern origin the northern place ofwork and the local climate In most cases the relationshipof people to their dacha places is reciprocal It com-plements the idea of the lsquogiving environmentrsquo that weknow from hunter-gatherer societies (Bird-David 1990)in which a sentient environment offers its resources tothe hunter who shows respect and his knowledge of theplaces through appropriate behaviour (Anderson 2000)

Among northern industrial city inhabitants the self-created dacha place rewards its masterrsquos hard work withgiving back the fruits of the land even though maybeon soil especially imported from the south and put in alayer on top of the permafrost The environment is thusself-created In this respect we cannot necessarily speakof settlers getting closer to natives as is suggested forChukotka in the work of Thompson (2008)

Conclusion

This article has described the development of dachas inArctic Russian industrial cities We took the anthropolo-gical study of Arctic dacha places a step further from asingle region case study as was done previously (Naksh-ina and Razumova 2009 Nakshina 2013 Bolotova 2012)to a comparative approach We acknowledge the diversityand uniqueness of our three field sites and therefore stateahead of our general conclusions that those must not betaken as generalisations and final words but rather asinvitation for further research in this little studied field

The analysis of dacha situations in Arctic cities inthree regions (Apatity-Kirovsk Novyi Urengoy Yak-utsk) leads us to reach the following four main pointsfirstly the Arctic city dacha movement can be seen inpath-dependence to the Soviet working class dachaswhereas the pre-Soviet summer recreational house ideare-surfaces gradually after the immediate post-Sovietperiod Secondly in the Arctic dacha movement theexpression of individual creativity and intensive socialorganisation in collectives do not exclude each otherThirdly we suggest that Arctic dacha settlements andpractices are excellent cases for studying processes ofhuman agency and place creation which grant us deeperinsights in the determinants of peoplersquos relation to theland Fourthly this human agency on the land helps usto understand how urban communities in Arctic Rus-sia change their spatial practices gradually from state-induced inhabitation of compressed dense high-rise con-crete landscapes to village-resembling agglomerations ofsmaller houses close to the land As a consequence the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 13

seasonality of dacha practices gradually gives way to areintroduction of peoplersquos quality of life closer to whatthey call lsquonaturersquo on a permanent year-round basis

What do these four main concluding points tell usIndustrial northerners change the approach to their citiespeople who invest today in a dacha stop seeing them-selves as just working in the north but gradually also startliving there be it temporarily or permanent This showshow the Arctic has become a place to lead a normal lifefor immigrants and their descendants with characteristicsof a normal urban population elsewhere albeit with somespecifics related to seasons climate and permafrost

The increase in development of Arctic dachas asgarden plots arose largely out of economic necessitiesin perestroika but at the same time was a perfect matchwith a deeply Russian approach to the land namelythrough physical agricultural engagement that is focusedon refinement of nature on leaving the human footprintand on adding value The increasing popularity of recre-ational dachas we argued here alongside the blurring ofborders to permanent individual housing areas in Arcticcities is a sign of the end of the post-Soviet periodWe see here the advent of broader trends of mainstreameveryday life in the Arctic with relative affluence andlife-trajectories that are not characterised by a love for theextreme (climate conditions exceptional social fabrics)but for the normal

We have further analysed the dacha as a visual arenafor the interplay between economic and social needsof northerners in the Russian Arctic More than justenabling additional food production in difficult times thedacha is a playground for balancing the freedom of in-dividual creation of place with the deeply social desire toshare experiences with neighbours Dachas are like bookswherein we can read and experience the character pro-fessional biography material wellbeing individual lifestory social status and belonging and preferred practicesof their owners The Arctic dacha cooperative in Russiais a model of self-governance that incorporates the Sovietlegacy of the kollektif while also considering individualcreative freedom in place creation Dacha places arealso a mirror image of the changed balance between theindividual and the collective since the perestroika periodin Arctic Russia late Soviet time dachas were open andvisible while from the late 1990s onwards high fencesbecame the symbols of dachas even in the Arctic wherepeople usually emphasise that collectivity and mutualassistance are life-important

We suggest seeing these developments as a sign of theRussian Arctic becoming a less extreme and more normalplace Rather than a frontier to open up as portrayed in somany popular discourses on Arctic resources the northhas become home for the non-indigenous population thatwas induced by the state to move there While the lsquonative-ness of settlersrsquo (Thompson 2008) or their intensive ad-aptation to the northern nature (Nakshina and Razumova2009) have been emphasised before our material sug-gests that incomer dacha-peoplersquos worldview and relation

to the land in those industrial areas of the Russian north isbased largely on their southern roots and an agriculturallogic Dichotomies are always controversial but we dareto put them forward to inspire more refined analysis inthis direction We argue that industrial city-dwellers anddacha ownersrsquo footprint on the land contributes to prideand identity-building whereas among most indigenousinhabitants peoplersquos embeddedness in the surroundingenvironment with minimal footprint prevails This meansthat the future of the Russian north is one of at leasttwo different modes of dwelling and perceiving the en-vironment both of which involve very intimate relationsbetween people and the land

Acknowledgements

We thank all our friends and collaborators in Apat-ityKirovsk Novyi Urengoy Nadym Pangody and Yak-utsk for their openness and hospitality Funding is grate-fully acknowledged from the research projects BOREASMOVE-INNOCOM funded by the Finnish Academyunder the BOREAS ESF EUROCORES scheme de-cision number 118702 and from the subsequent FinnishAcademy project ORHELIA decision number 251111Moreover the project lsquoThe peoples of the north-eastof the Russian Federation choosing a new adaptivestrategy under conditions of globalisation A social-anthropological approachrsquo Yakutsk (North Eastern Fed-eral) University Russia) contributed funding for thisresearch

ReferencesAnderson D 2000 Identity and ecology in Arctic Siberia the

number one reindeer brigade Oxford Oxford UniversityPress

Bird-David N 1990 The giving environment another perspect-ive on the economic system of gatherer-hunters CurrentAnthropology 31(2) 189ndash96

Bolotova A 2005 Discourses on taiga the state geologists andnature in the Soviet Union In Bammeacute A G Getzinger andB Wieser (editors) Yearbook of the Institute for AdvancedStudies on Science Technology and Society Munich andVienna Profil 25ndash53

Bolotova A 2012 Loving and conquering nature shifting per-ceptions of the environment in the industrialised Russiannorth Europe-Asia Studies 64(4)645ndash671

Bolotova A and F Stammler 2010 How the north becamehome Attachment to place among industrial migrants inMurmansk region In Southcott C and L Huskey (editors)Migration in the circumpolar north issues and contextsEdmonton Alberta Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press(University of Alberta CCI occasional publication 64) 193ndash220

Budaev A 2013 Sovremennye Realii Yakutskogo Agropoi-asa [Modern realities of Yakutian agro-belt] YakutskEkho Stolitsy 43 2160 URL httpwwwexo-yktruarticles244857494 (accessed 24 November 2013)

Crate S 2006 Cows kin and globalization an ethnography ofsustainability Walnut Creek Alta Mira Press

Eilmsteiner-Saxinger G 2013 Auf uns ndash auf euch ndash auf Oumll undGas FernpendlerInnen in der Erdgas- und Erdoumllindustrie im

10 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Murmansk Oblast and west Siberia as well as Yakutskwith its longer dacha history testifies this where manypeople stay for their entire summer on their dacha Thedacha as summer home is particularly important in thenorth among all those who do not have expressed attach-ments to other places outside of the region Paradoxicallymost of the northerners who keep connections to theplaces of origin in the south do so through spending thesummer holidays there in the south although it wouldseem to make much more sense to leave the north for thewinter Thus we have seen so far that dacha places bydefinition are seasonally limited to the warmer times ofthe year The whole point of having a dacha in the northwas to have an alternative place to move to when peoplewant to be closer to the earth and have more creativefreedom in place-making than they could ever have inan Arctic socialist city with strict efficiency planning andzoning

In our three case sites of Kirovsk-Apatity (MurmanskRegion) Novyi Urengoy (Yamal) and Yakutsk (SakhaYakutia) we can see however how this clear cut un-derstanding of dacha versus city life is gradually beingblurred

The dacha as a place for summer recreation graduallygets redefined as a place for year-round inhabitationenacting onersquos freedom in individual houses closer to theland rather than apartment blocks In expanding citieslike Novyi Urengoi Surgut and Yakutsk dacha settle-ments where people used to spend time only in summergradually turn into suburban areas with individual housesfor the affluent for year-round permanent inhabitation

Maybe the time has come to depart from the idea ofhousing only in apartment blocks in our city Peoplewant to live on their own now Itrsquos good the admin-istration is considering to give plots out on the fieldfor individual construction now (Ivan Avramenkopersonal communication 17 June 2013)

There is a technological demographic-economic andsocial aspect of such developments firstly new construc-tion technologies autonomous heating septic tanks andheat insulation have made it possible for house owners toestablish permanent year-round housing on their dachaplaces Secondly the high immigration into expandingArctic cities because of extractive industries has led torising real estate prices on a now free market in thesetowns where previously all housing was owned by thestate or the single industrial company in town Theseinstitutions stopped building new apartment blocks andhouse construction became a commodity In this situationbuilding a permanent house also for winter (zimnii vari-ant) on a dacha plot becomes a possibility for peopleto solve their housing problem or improve their housingconditions This is a widespread tendency in regions suchas Sergelyakh in Yakutsk Chernorechenski in Surgut orSeveryanin in Novyi Urengoy with prices easily reachingbetween 1000 and 3000 EURm2 Thirdly individualfreedom has become more important in northern citiesPeople are not ready to sacrifice and postpone their

pursuit of a comfortable life to a future in the south Theexperience of perestroika has shown them that they cannever be sure if that will ever come This social changeunderlies the tendency of dachas becoming permanenthomes people want to live in the North in their houseshere and now and not only during the short summer

I did not succeed to look around and Irsquom 50 yearsalready I came here with 25 So what would I livemy life in some next life Maybe not Thatrsquos whyI think dachas ndash this is concretely the way forwardin Novyi Urengoi One has to live today in goodconditions and allow people in this way to realisesome of their wishes for recreation We have nowthe means to create this (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2008)

This is interesting as she had the post of lead city-planning architect in Novyi Urengoy in the early 2000sand thus witnessed herself the change of the approach tolife in the Arctic city As much as she advocated on aprofessional level centralised housing-planning as muchshe was privately beautifully describing how important itis for her and her neighbours to be close to the land ontheir dachas

This apparent contradiction comes from the substan-tial difference it makes for the organisation of city spacewhen individual year-round housing is encouraged andwhen it is not In both Novyi Urengoi and Yakutsk thisis exemplified by the presence or absence of a formaladdress A formal address starts with a transfer of thelegal category of the land from a lsquorecreational zonersquowhich is what dacha cooperative territories are legallyinto a part of the lsquohousing zonersquo of the city A city officialfrom Novyi Urengoy explains that the status of the landwill not change even though more individuals build theirhouses according to the zimnyi variant for year round useThe reason is that this would entail lsquocertain obligationsrsquoby the municipality These are for example access to mu-nicipal electricity rubbish collection street maintenancepublic transport postal and internet services schoolshealthcare police stations and all other aspects of muni-cipal services While in Yakutsk entire neighbourhoods ofdachas are being transformed into regular suburbs with allservices In some municipalities such as Novyi Urengoithere is resistance to these obligations

You canrsquot turn this city into this settlement patternabout which we talk ndash go back to the land Inprinciple how can one live and extract gas when Ihave to think where I find firewood for heating myautonomous device Let the dear gentleman replyto this question[ ] You have to create a structurewhich would supply the citizens Otherwise how willhe do it Feed wood to an oven We donrsquot have foresthere [in the tundra] (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication 28 September 2007)

This means that such individual permanent houseswill not have official postcodes nor streetnames andnumbers lsquoalthough within the dacha cooperatives forpeoplersquos comfort and orientation they give names for the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 11

drivewaysrsquo (Vladimir Nuykin personal communica-tion19 May 2013)

Much but not all individual year round housing innorthern industrial cities is constructed on dacha territor-ies This transforms the character of dacha places gradu-ally into a more urban atmosphere These tendenciesfrom the regions not only in the Arctic but all over Russiahave now made their way up to the Federal Russianpolitical discussion the government and parliament arein favour of adopting a law allowing people officiallyto register on their dacha places as permanent residentsIt remains unclear as of 2014 if such new permanentresidents then have to pay regular housing tax for theirdacha-houses and plots as these developments are newand this tax would be under regional or municipal controlPremier Medvedev admitted that this would legalise analready established de facto year round inhabitation ondacha plots by many people (RIA Novosti (Moscow)5 August 2013)

This process is seen by some long-time dacha inhab-itants as the disappearance of dachas (dachi izcheznut)On the other hand one can say that the spirit of dachaplaces expands to a year-round quality of life withthe recreational aspects the individual freedom in placecreation and the being close to the land included So theurban built environment gradually acquires more ruraltraits One significant consequence of this developmentis that seasonality and the rhythm of moving betweencity and dacha places on the outskirts gets lost as theborders between the two become blurred This is ex-actly the opposite of what happens in many villages inthe Russian Arctic and also the Finnish North whichturn gradually from permanent villages into summersettlements as services and social infrastructure closedown Nakhshina (2013) describes this process in herethnography of encounters between seasonal and per-manent dwellers of Kuzomenrsquo a village in Murmanskregion

We argue here that both these tendencies are intercon-nected the more people leave villages to live in citiesthe more permanent houses will be built in those cities onpreviously unbuilt territory Analysing a recent article onthe future planning of Yakutsk it became very clear howthe city will become more rural-looking within its urbanzone as it will be surrounded by a number of suburbswith individual houses that will form with the city centretogether the lsquoMini-Moscowrsquo as the authors call it (Yak-utsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013 301 9)A team of Yakutsk-based regional researchers envisagesthat by 2032 the city population will live just outside thecentre lsquoin well-equipped low-rise houses on their ownplots with not less than 1000m2 garages for 2 cars and thenecessary high quality social infrastructure in the vicinity[ ] and a journey to work of not more than 30 minutesrsquo(Yakutsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013301 9) According to that plan the territories for suchfuture suburbs will be those currently allocated for dachaplots

This shows that the move from the seasonality ofdacha places to the permanence of suburban settlementsin the Russian Arctic is a bottom-up movement that hasarisen from the individual practices of dacha-creatorsdescribed in Nakhshina and Razumovarsquos (2009) articleThis movement has now arrived in the halls of power ofmunicipal administrations that have to deal with such newrealities and the increased municipal obligations relatedto them The former Novyi Urengoy chief architect de-scribed this dilemma

Originally historically the individual house exempli-fies the Russian person What was bad in this [Soviet]period In our life here in these modern cities therewas no such concept of onersquos own house but it isnow back coming back at this very time But it wouldbe wrong now in the setting of Novyi Urengoi toallow the development of individual construction Itwould be a mistake because the city was originallynot designed for that Yes the question of individualconstruction was put to me as the chief architect veryseriously They simply put pressure on me [Allow-ing] it is a compromise (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication) 28 September 2007)

Based on statements like this we argue that the northernpopulation had realised that they cannot hope for someall-caring state to increase their living standard in Arcticcities Instead they took their own initiative and createdfaits accomplis Officials could not ignore this movementtowards the land anymore and had to take individualyear-round house planning based on dacha places intoconsideration

Life beyond industrial work in the north

What unites all types of dachas and the permanent houseson dacha plots and garage cooperatives is that theseplaces are created by people wanting to spend theirprivate life and their free time in the north This is anextension of the original idea of northern industrial city-development in which people were induced to moveexclusively for working Our informants express clearlythis tendency towards more of a lsquolifersquo dimension of theirnorthern existence Gone are the early days of northernindustrial city development in which many said theydid not bother to furnish their apartments properly haveproper dishes eat out of cans and saved everythingfor the future This Soviet approach of being tempor-arily in the Arctic described by Khlinovskaya Rockhill(2010) turns Yurchakrsquos famous book title lsquoEverythingwas forever until it was no morersquo (2005) upside downinto lsquoEverything was temporary until it became foreverrsquoThe discovery of the north by incomers and their des-cendants not only as a place of work but a place of lifenecessarily changes the intensity of residentsrsquo relations totheir built natural and social environment The evolutionof dachas and of individual permanent housing is alogical consequence of this development

12 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

We have shown that the typical dacha with a gardenplot and a summer house has a clearly seasonal characterand with few exceptions people do not spend much timethere in winter However as their presence in the northbecomes less seasonal and their involvement with thenorthern land more intensive signs of permanent livingon dacha places increase In such cases the former dachatransforms to a hybrid of summer place close to thenatural environment and permanent housing close to thecity

It is in this microcosm of their own plots wherenortherners with southern origin can enact their intensiveindividual engagement with the land using their creativeand productive potential in free decision making Weagree with Nakhshina and Razumova (2009) that dachasreflect the individual freedom and creativity of the plotowners This freedom is crucial as a counterbalance totheir work in the north that has always been a part ofa larger development project for a country-wide com-munity It is alongside the physical engagement withthe land a crucial factor characterising the particularhuman-environment relation that dacha people haveDacha owners create on their plots material expressionsof their own individual character and biography In thelife histories recorded during fieldwork in 2007ndash2010 wesee how lifelines connect southern places of origin andnorthern places that have become home They becomeintertwined in the dacha places that combine a moresouthern agricultural logic with garden plots plantsvegetables and a northern approach to nature in whichberry picking hunting and fishing as recreational andsubsistence activity are very important

We can interpret on the dacha plots these intertwinedlines through the construction materials used an aspectalso covered in the publication by Nakhshina and Razu-mova (2009) Somebody who works for example in aconcrete factory or has friends who do so is more likelyto use various leftovers or otherwise acquired items ofthat kind of production on their dachas although usuallydachas would be built of wood in a countryside villagestyle (Fig 6) Some dacha plots are very elaborate in per-fect order decorated with love for every detail whereasothers focus more on the functionality take the growingof food very seriously as they or their relatives may havedone in their places of origin in the south Or they mayjust use the dacha plot for planting flowers and as a baseto gather hunt and fish in the northern landscape sur-rounding the dachas in cases where industrial expansionhas left space for such practices This individual freedomof creating a place of onersquos own preference is somethingthat people cannot enjoy in their city There they livein apartment blocks planned and built by somebody elsefollowing a collective ideology with the goal of efficientorganisation of work and life

This combination of onersquos southern mirror image ofhome and components stemming from onersquos northern lifeand work lets the dacha appear almost as a physical ne-cessity how else could people express this other dimen-

sion of homeness and placehood that goes beyond livingfor the sake of working in an industrial city until reachingthe age of retirement Therefore dacha can become butnot always is a sign of increased attachment of onersquosnorthern place of life which was not originally thoughtfor long-term inhabitation by incomers But differentfrom the indigenous hunter or gatherer the attachmenthere is not to the natural environment with minimalfootprint but to onersquos self-created place that combineselements of onersquos southern origin the northern place ofwork and the local climate In most cases the relationshipof people to their dacha places is reciprocal It com-plements the idea of the lsquogiving environmentrsquo that weknow from hunter-gatherer societies (Bird-David 1990)in which a sentient environment offers its resources tothe hunter who shows respect and his knowledge of theplaces through appropriate behaviour (Anderson 2000)

Among northern industrial city inhabitants the self-created dacha place rewards its masterrsquos hard work withgiving back the fruits of the land even though maybeon soil especially imported from the south and put in alayer on top of the permafrost The environment is thusself-created In this respect we cannot necessarily speakof settlers getting closer to natives as is suggested forChukotka in the work of Thompson (2008)

Conclusion

This article has described the development of dachas inArctic Russian industrial cities We took the anthropolo-gical study of Arctic dacha places a step further from asingle region case study as was done previously (Naksh-ina and Razumova 2009 Nakshina 2013 Bolotova 2012)to a comparative approach We acknowledge the diversityand uniqueness of our three field sites and therefore stateahead of our general conclusions that those must not betaken as generalisations and final words but rather asinvitation for further research in this little studied field

The analysis of dacha situations in Arctic cities inthree regions (Apatity-Kirovsk Novyi Urengoy Yak-utsk) leads us to reach the following four main pointsfirstly the Arctic city dacha movement can be seen inpath-dependence to the Soviet working class dachaswhereas the pre-Soviet summer recreational house ideare-surfaces gradually after the immediate post-Sovietperiod Secondly in the Arctic dacha movement theexpression of individual creativity and intensive socialorganisation in collectives do not exclude each otherThirdly we suggest that Arctic dacha settlements andpractices are excellent cases for studying processes ofhuman agency and place creation which grant us deeperinsights in the determinants of peoplersquos relation to theland Fourthly this human agency on the land helps usto understand how urban communities in Arctic Rus-sia change their spatial practices gradually from state-induced inhabitation of compressed dense high-rise con-crete landscapes to village-resembling agglomerations ofsmaller houses close to the land As a consequence the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 13

seasonality of dacha practices gradually gives way to areintroduction of peoplersquos quality of life closer to whatthey call lsquonaturersquo on a permanent year-round basis

What do these four main concluding points tell usIndustrial northerners change the approach to their citiespeople who invest today in a dacha stop seeing them-selves as just working in the north but gradually also startliving there be it temporarily or permanent This showshow the Arctic has become a place to lead a normal lifefor immigrants and their descendants with characteristicsof a normal urban population elsewhere albeit with somespecifics related to seasons climate and permafrost

The increase in development of Arctic dachas asgarden plots arose largely out of economic necessitiesin perestroika but at the same time was a perfect matchwith a deeply Russian approach to the land namelythrough physical agricultural engagement that is focusedon refinement of nature on leaving the human footprintand on adding value The increasing popularity of recre-ational dachas we argued here alongside the blurring ofborders to permanent individual housing areas in Arcticcities is a sign of the end of the post-Soviet periodWe see here the advent of broader trends of mainstreameveryday life in the Arctic with relative affluence andlife-trajectories that are not characterised by a love for theextreme (climate conditions exceptional social fabrics)but for the normal

We have further analysed the dacha as a visual arenafor the interplay between economic and social needsof northerners in the Russian Arctic More than justenabling additional food production in difficult times thedacha is a playground for balancing the freedom of in-dividual creation of place with the deeply social desire toshare experiences with neighbours Dachas are like bookswherein we can read and experience the character pro-fessional biography material wellbeing individual lifestory social status and belonging and preferred practicesof their owners The Arctic dacha cooperative in Russiais a model of self-governance that incorporates the Sovietlegacy of the kollektif while also considering individualcreative freedom in place creation Dacha places arealso a mirror image of the changed balance between theindividual and the collective since the perestroika periodin Arctic Russia late Soviet time dachas were open andvisible while from the late 1990s onwards high fencesbecame the symbols of dachas even in the Arctic wherepeople usually emphasise that collectivity and mutualassistance are life-important

We suggest seeing these developments as a sign of theRussian Arctic becoming a less extreme and more normalplace Rather than a frontier to open up as portrayed in somany popular discourses on Arctic resources the northhas become home for the non-indigenous population thatwas induced by the state to move there While the lsquonative-ness of settlersrsquo (Thompson 2008) or their intensive ad-aptation to the northern nature (Nakshina and Razumova2009) have been emphasised before our material sug-gests that incomer dacha-peoplersquos worldview and relation

to the land in those industrial areas of the Russian north isbased largely on their southern roots and an agriculturallogic Dichotomies are always controversial but we dareto put them forward to inspire more refined analysis inthis direction We argue that industrial city-dwellers anddacha ownersrsquo footprint on the land contributes to prideand identity-building whereas among most indigenousinhabitants peoplersquos embeddedness in the surroundingenvironment with minimal footprint prevails This meansthat the future of the Russian north is one of at leasttwo different modes of dwelling and perceiving the en-vironment both of which involve very intimate relationsbetween people and the land

Acknowledgements

We thank all our friends and collaborators in Apat-ityKirovsk Novyi Urengoy Nadym Pangody and Yak-utsk for their openness and hospitality Funding is grate-fully acknowledged from the research projects BOREASMOVE-INNOCOM funded by the Finnish Academyunder the BOREAS ESF EUROCORES scheme de-cision number 118702 and from the subsequent FinnishAcademy project ORHELIA decision number 251111Moreover the project lsquoThe peoples of the north-eastof the Russian Federation choosing a new adaptivestrategy under conditions of globalisation A social-anthropological approachrsquo Yakutsk (North Eastern Fed-eral) University Russia) contributed funding for thisresearch

ReferencesAnderson D 2000 Identity and ecology in Arctic Siberia the

number one reindeer brigade Oxford Oxford UniversityPress

Bird-David N 1990 The giving environment another perspect-ive on the economic system of gatherer-hunters CurrentAnthropology 31(2) 189ndash96

Bolotova A 2005 Discourses on taiga the state geologists andnature in the Soviet Union In Bammeacute A G Getzinger andB Wieser (editors) Yearbook of the Institute for AdvancedStudies on Science Technology and Society Munich andVienna Profil 25ndash53

Bolotova A 2012 Loving and conquering nature shifting per-ceptions of the environment in the industrialised Russiannorth Europe-Asia Studies 64(4)645ndash671

Bolotova A and F Stammler 2010 How the north becamehome Attachment to place among industrial migrants inMurmansk region In Southcott C and L Huskey (editors)Migration in the circumpolar north issues and contextsEdmonton Alberta Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press(University of Alberta CCI occasional publication 64) 193ndash220

Budaev A 2013 Sovremennye Realii Yakutskogo Agropoi-asa [Modern realities of Yakutian agro-belt] YakutskEkho Stolitsy 43 2160 URL httpwwwexo-yktruarticles244857494 (accessed 24 November 2013)

Crate S 2006 Cows kin and globalization an ethnography ofsustainability Walnut Creek Alta Mira Press

Eilmsteiner-Saxinger G 2013 Auf uns ndash auf euch ndash auf Oumll undGas FernpendlerInnen in der Erdgas- und Erdoumllindustrie im

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 11

drivewaysrsquo (Vladimir Nuykin personal communica-tion19 May 2013)

Much but not all individual year round housing innorthern industrial cities is constructed on dacha territor-ies This transforms the character of dacha places gradu-ally into a more urban atmosphere These tendenciesfrom the regions not only in the Arctic but all over Russiahave now made their way up to the Federal Russianpolitical discussion the government and parliament arein favour of adopting a law allowing people officiallyto register on their dacha places as permanent residentsIt remains unclear as of 2014 if such new permanentresidents then have to pay regular housing tax for theirdacha-houses and plots as these developments are newand this tax would be under regional or municipal controlPremier Medvedev admitted that this would legalise analready established de facto year round inhabitation ondacha plots by many people (RIA Novosti (Moscow)5 August 2013)

This process is seen by some long-time dacha inhab-itants as the disappearance of dachas (dachi izcheznut)On the other hand one can say that the spirit of dachaplaces expands to a year-round quality of life withthe recreational aspects the individual freedom in placecreation and the being close to the land included So theurban built environment gradually acquires more ruraltraits One significant consequence of this developmentis that seasonality and the rhythm of moving betweencity and dacha places on the outskirts gets lost as theborders between the two become blurred This is ex-actly the opposite of what happens in many villages inthe Russian Arctic and also the Finnish North whichturn gradually from permanent villages into summersettlements as services and social infrastructure closedown Nakhshina (2013) describes this process in herethnography of encounters between seasonal and per-manent dwellers of Kuzomenrsquo a village in Murmanskregion

We argue here that both these tendencies are intercon-nected the more people leave villages to live in citiesthe more permanent houses will be built in those cities onpreviously unbuilt territory Analysing a recent article onthe future planning of Yakutsk it became very clear howthe city will become more rural-looking within its urbanzone as it will be surrounded by a number of suburbswith individual houses that will form with the city centretogether the lsquoMini-Moscowrsquo as the authors call it (Yak-utsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013 301 9)A team of Yakutsk-based regional researchers envisagesthat by 2032 the city population will live just outside thecentre lsquoin well-equipped low-rise houses on their ownplots with not less than 1000m2 garages for 2 cars and thenecessary high quality social infrastructure in the vicinity[ ] and a journey to work of not more than 30 minutesrsquo(Yakutsk Vechernyi [Evening Yakutsk] 15 March 2013301 9) According to that plan the territories for suchfuture suburbs will be those currently allocated for dachaplots

This shows that the move from the seasonality ofdacha places to the permanence of suburban settlementsin the Russian Arctic is a bottom-up movement that hasarisen from the individual practices of dacha-creatorsdescribed in Nakhshina and Razumovarsquos (2009) articleThis movement has now arrived in the halls of power ofmunicipal administrations that have to deal with such newrealities and the increased municipal obligations relatedto them The former Novyi Urengoy chief architect de-scribed this dilemma

Originally historically the individual house exempli-fies the Russian person What was bad in this [Soviet]period In our life here in these modern cities therewas no such concept of onersquos own house but it isnow back coming back at this very time But it wouldbe wrong now in the setting of Novyi Urengoi toallow the development of individual construction Itwould be a mistake because the city was originallynot designed for that Yes the question of individualconstruction was put to me as the chief architect veryseriously They simply put pressure on me [Allow-ing] it is a compromise (Alla Lyaskovskaya personalcommunication) 28 September 2007)

Based on statements like this we argue that the northernpopulation had realised that they cannot hope for someall-caring state to increase their living standard in Arcticcities Instead they took their own initiative and createdfaits accomplis Officials could not ignore this movementtowards the land anymore and had to take individualyear-round house planning based on dacha places intoconsideration

Life beyond industrial work in the north

What unites all types of dachas and the permanent houseson dacha plots and garage cooperatives is that theseplaces are created by people wanting to spend theirprivate life and their free time in the north This is anextension of the original idea of northern industrial city-development in which people were induced to moveexclusively for working Our informants express clearlythis tendency towards more of a lsquolifersquo dimension of theirnorthern existence Gone are the early days of northernindustrial city development in which many said theydid not bother to furnish their apartments properly haveproper dishes eat out of cans and saved everythingfor the future This Soviet approach of being tempor-arily in the Arctic described by Khlinovskaya Rockhill(2010) turns Yurchakrsquos famous book title lsquoEverythingwas forever until it was no morersquo (2005) upside downinto lsquoEverything was temporary until it became foreverrsquoThe discovery of the north by incomers and their des-cendants not only as a place of work but a place of lifenecessarily changes the intensity of residentsrsquo relations totheir built natural and social environment The evolutionof dachas and of individual permanent housing is alogical consequence of this development

12 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

We have shown that the typical dacha with a gardenplot and a summer house has a clearly seasonal characterand with few exceptions people do not spend much timethere in winter However as their presence in the northbecomes less seasonal and their involvement with thenorthern land more intensive signs of permanent livingon dacha places increase In such cases the former dachatransforms to a hybrid of summer place close to thenatural environment and permanent housing close to thecity

It is in this microcosm of their own plots wherenortherners with southern origin can enact their intensiveindividual engagement with the land using their creativeand productive potential in free decision making Weagree with Nakhshina and Razumova (2009) that dachasreflect the individual freedom and creativity of the plotowners This freedom is crucial as a counterbalance totheir work in the north that has always been a part ofa larger development project for a country-wide com-munity It is alongside the physical engagement withthe land a crucial factor characterising the particularhuman-environment relation that dacha people haveDacha owners create on their plots material expressionsof their own individual character and biography In thelife histories recorded during fieldwork in 2007ndash2010 wesee how lifelines connect southern places of origin andnorthern places that have become home They becomeintertwined in the dacha places that combine a moresouthern agricultural logic with garden plots plantsvegetables and a northern approach to nature in whichberry picking hunting and fishing as recreational andsubsistence activity are very important

We can interpret on the dacha plots these intertwinedlines through the construction materials used an aspectalso covered in the publication by Nakhshina and Razu-mova (2009) Somebody who works for example in aconcrete factory or has friends who do so is more likelyto use various leftovers or otherwise acquired items ofthat kind of production on their dachas although usuallydachas would be built of wood in a countryside villagestyle (Fig 6) Some dacha plots are very elaborate in per-fect order decorated with love for every detail whereasothers focus more on the functionality take the growingof food very seriously as they or their relatives may havedone in their places of origin in the south Or they mayjust use the dacha plot for planting flowers and as a baseto gather hunt and fish in the northern landscape sur-rounding the dachas in cases where industrial expansionhas left space for such practices This individual freedomof creating a place of onersquos own preference is somethingthat people cannot enjoy in their city There they livein apartment blocks planned and built by somebody elsefollowing a collective ideology with the goal of efficientorganisation of work and life

This combination of onersquos southern mirror image ofhome and components stemming from onersquos northern lifeand work lets the dacha appear almost as a physical ne-cessity how else could people express this other dimen-

sion of homeness and placehood that goes beyond livingfor the sake of working in an industrial city until reachingthe age of retirement Therefore dacha can become butnot always is a sign of increased attachment of onersquosnorthern place of life which was not originally thoughtfor long-term inhabitation by incomers But differentfrom the indigenous hunter or gatherer the attachmenthere is not to the natural environment with minimalfootprint but to onersquos self-created place that combineselements of onersquos southern origin the northern place ofwork and the local climate In most cases the relationshipof people to their dacha places is reciprocal It com-plements the idea of the lsquogiving environmentrsquo that weknow from hunter-gatherer societies (Bird-David 1990)in which a sentient environment offers its resources tothe hunter who shows respect and his knowledge of theplaces through appropriate behaviour (Anderson 2000)

Among northern industrial city inhabitants the self-created dacha place rewards its masterrsquos hard work withgiving back the fruits of the land even though maybeon soil especially imported from the south and put in alayer on top of the permafrost The environment is thusself-created In this respect we cannot necessarily speakof settlers getting closer to natives as is suggested forChukotka in the work of Thompson (2008)

Conclusion

This article has described the development of dachas inArctic Russian industrial cities We took the anthropolo-gical study of Arctic dacha places a step further from asingle region case study as was done previously (Naksh-ina and Razumova 2009 Nakshina 2013 Bolotova 2012)to a comparative approach We acknowledge the diversityand uniqueness of our three field sites and therefore stateahead of our general conclusions that those must not betaken as generalisations and final words but rather asinvitation for further research in this little studied field

The analysis of dacha situations in Arctic cities inthree regions (Apatity-Kirovsk Novyi Urengoy Yak-utsk) leads us to reach the following four main pointsfirstly the Arctic city dacha movement can be seen inpath-dependence to the Soviet working class dachaswhereas the pre-Soviet summer recreational house ideare-surfaces gradually after the immediate post-Sovietperiod Secondly in the Arctic dacha movement theexpression of individual creativity and intensive socialorganisation in collectives do not exclude each otherThirdly we suggest that Arctic dacha settlements andpractices are excellent cases for studying processes ofhuman agency and place creation which grant us deeperinsights in the determinants of peoplersquos relation to theland Fourthly this human agency on the land helps usto understand how urban communities in Arctic Rus-sia change their spatial practices gradually from state-induced inhabitation of compressed dense high-rise con-crete landscapes to village-resembling agglomerations ofsmaller houses close to the land As a consequence the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 13

seasonality of dacha practices gradually gives way to areintroduction of peoplersquos quality of life closer to whatthey call lsquonaturersquo on a permanent year-round basis

What do these four main concluding points tell usIndustrial northerners change the approach to their citiespeople who invest today in a dacha stop seeing them-selves as just working in the north but gradually also startliving there be it temporarily or permanent This showshow the Arctic has become a place to lead a normal lifefor immigrants and their descendants with characteristicsof a normal urban population elsewhere albeit with somespecifics related to seasons climate and permafrost

The increase in development of Arctic dachas asgarden plots arose largely out of economic necessitiesin perestroika but at the same time was a perfect matchwith a deeply Russian approach to the land namelythrough physical agricultural engagement that is focusedon refinement of nature on leaving the human footprintand on adding value The increasing popularity of recre-ational dachas we argued here alongside the blurring ofborders to permanent individual housing areas in Arcticcities is a sign of the end of the post-Soviet periodWe see here the advent of broader trends of mainstreameveryday life in the Arctic with relative affluence andlife-trajectories that are not characterised by a love for theextreme (climate conditions exceptional social fabrics)but for the normal

We have further analysed the dacha as a visual arenafor the interplay between economic and social needsof northerners in the Russian Arctic More than justenabling additional food production in difficult times thedacha is a playground for balancing the freedom of in-dividual creation of place with the deeply social desire toshare experiences with neighbours Dachas are like bookswherein we can read and experience the character pro-fessional biography material wellbeing individual lifestory social status and belonging and preferred practicesof their owners The Arctic dacha cooperative in Russiais a model of self-governance that incorporates the Sovietlegacy of the kollektif while also considering individualcreative freedom in place creation Dacha places arealso a mirror image of the changed balance between theindividual and the collective since the perestroika periodin Arctic Russia late Soviet time dachas were open andvisible while from the late 1990s onwards high fencesbecame the symbols of dachas even in the Arctic wherepeople usually emphasise that collectivity and mutualassistance are life-important

We suggest seeing these developments as a sign of theRussian Arctic becoming a less extreme and more normalplace Rather than a frontier to open up as portrayed in somany popular discourses on Arctic resources the northhas become home for the non-indigenous population thatwas induced by the state to move there While the lsquonative-ness of settlersrsquo (Thompson 2008) or their intensive ad-aptation to the northern nature (Nakshina and Razumova2009) have been emphasised before our material sug-gests that incomer dacha-peoplersquos worldview and relation

to the land in those industrial areas of the Russian north isbased largely on their southern roots and an agriculturallogic Dichotomies are always controversial but we dareto put them forward to inspire more refined analysis inthis direction We argue that industrial city-dwellers anddacha ownersrsquo footprint on the land contributes to prideand identity-building whereas among most indigenousinhabitants peoplersquos embeddedness in the surroundingenvironment with minimal footprint prevails This meansthat the future of the Russian north is one of at leasttwo different modes of dwelling and perceiving the en-vironment both of which involve very intimate relationsbetween people and the land

Acknowledgements

We thank all our friends and collaborators in Apat-ityKirovsk Novyi Urengoy Nadym Pangody and Yak-utsk for their openness and hospitality Funding is grate-fully acknowledged from the research projects BOREASMOVE-INNOCOM funded by the Finnish Academyunder the BOREAS ESF EUROCORES scheme de-cision number 118702 and from the subsequent FinnishAcademy project ORHELIA decision number 251111Moreover the project lsquoThe peoples of the north-eastof the Russian Federation choosing a new adaptivestrategy under conditions of globalisation A social-anthropological approachrsquo Yakutsk (North Eastern Fed-eral) University Russia) contributed funding for thisresearch

ReferencesAnderson D 2000 Identity and ecology in Arctic Siberia the

number one reindeer brigade Oxford Oxford UniversityPress

Bird-David N 1990 The giving environment another perspect-ive on the economic system of gatherer-hunters CurrentAnthropology 31(2) 189ndash96

Bolotova A 2005 Discourses on taiga the state geologists andnature in the Soviet Union In Bammeacute A G Getzinger andB Wieser (editors) Yearbook of the Institute for AdvancedStudies on Science Technology and Society Munich andVienna Profil 25ndash53

Bolotova A 2012 Loving and conquering nature shifting per-ceptions of the environment in the industrialised Russiannorth Europe-Asia Studies 64(4)645ndash671

Bolotova A and F Stammler 2010 How the north becamehome Attachment to place among industrial migrants inMurmansk region In Southcott C and L Huskey (editors)Migration in the circumpolar north issues and contextsEdmonton Alberta Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press(University of Alberta CCI occasional publication 64) 193ndash220

Budaev A 2013 Sovremennye Realii Yakutskogo Agropoi-asa [Modern realities of Yakutian agro-belt] YakutskEkho Stolitsy 43 2160 URL httpwwwexo-yktruarticles244857494 (accessed 24 November 2013)

Crate S 2006 Cows kin and globalization an ethnography ofsustainability Walnut Creek Alta Mira Press

Eilmsteiner-Saxinger G 2013 Auf uns ndash auf euch ndash auf Oumll undGas FernpendlerInnen in der Erdgas- und Erdoumllindustrie im

12 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

We have shown that the typical dacha with a gardenplot and a summer house has a clearly seasonal characterand with few exceptions people do not spend much timethere in winter However as their presence in the northbecomes less seasonal and their involvement with thenorthern land more intensive signs of permanent livingon dacha places increase In such cases the former dachatransforms to a hybrid of summer place close to thenatural environment and permanent housing close to thecity

It is in this microcosm of their own plots wherenortherners with southern origin can enact their intensiveindividual engagement with the land using their creativeand productive potential in free decision making Weagree with Nakhshina and Razumova (2009) that dachasreflect the individual freedom and creativity of the plotowners This freedom is crucial as a counterbalance totheir work in the north that has always been a part ofa larger development project for a country-wide com-munity It is alongside the physical engagement withthe land a crucial factor characterising the particularhuman-environment relation that dacha people haveDacha owners create on their plots material expressionsof their own individual character and biography In thelife histories recorded during fieldwork in 2007ndash2010 wesee how lifelines connect southern places of origin andnorthern places that have become home They becomeintertwined in the dacha places that combine a moresouthern agricultural logic with garden plots plantsvegetables and a northern approach to nature in whichberry picking hunting and fishing as recreational andsubsistence activity are very important

We can interpret on the dacha plots these intertwinedlines through the construction materials used an aspectalso covered in the publication by Nakhshina and Razu-mova (2009) Somebody who works for example in aconcrete factory or has friends who do so is more likelyto use various leftovers or otherwise acquired items ofthat kind of production on their dachas although usuallydachas would be built of wood in a countryside villagestyle (Fig 6) Some dacha plots are very elaborate in per-fect order decorated with love for every detail whereasothers focus more on the functionality take the growingof food very seriously as they or their relatives may havedone in their places of origin in the south Or they mayjust use the dacha plot for planting flowers and as a baseto gather hunt and fish in the northern landscape sur-rounding the dachas in cases where industrial expansionhas left space for such practices This individual freedomof creating a place of onersquos own preference is somethingthat people cannot enjoy in their city There they livein apartment blocks planned and built by somebody elsefollowing a collective ideology with the goal of efficientorganisation of work and life

This combination of onersquos southern mirror image ofhome and components stemming from onersquos northern lifeand work lets the dacha appear almost as a physical ne-cessity how else could people express this other dimen-

sion of homeness and placehood that goes beyond livingfor the sake of working in an industrial city until reachingthe age of retirement Therefore dacha can become butnot always is a sign of increased attachment of onersquosnorthern place of life which was not originally thoughtfor long-term inhabitation by incomers But differentfrom the indigenous hunter or gatherer the attachmenthere is not to the natural environment with minimalfootprint but to onersquos self-created place that combineselements of onersquos southern origin the northern place ofwork and the local climate In most cases the relationshipof people to their dacha places is reciprocal It com-plements the idea of the lsquogiving environmentrsquo that weknow from hunter-gatherer societies (Bird-David 1990)in which a sentient environment offers its resources tothe hunter who shows respect and his knowledge of theplaces through appropriate behaviour (Anderson 2000)

Among northern industrial city inhabitants the self-created dacha place rewards its masterrsquos hard work withgiving back the fruits of the land even though maybeon soil especially imported from the south and put in alayer on top of the permafrost The environment is thusself-created In this respect we cannot necessarily speakof settlers getting closer to natives as is suggested forChukotka in the work of Thompson (2008)

Conclusion

This article has described the development of dachas inArctic Russian industrial cities We took the anthropolo-gical study of Arctic dacha places a step further from asingle region case study as was done previously (Naksh-ina and Razumova 2009 Nakshina 2013 Bolotova 2012)to a comparative approach We acknowledge the diversityand uniqueness of our three field sites and therefore stateahead of our general conclusions that those must not betaken as generalisations and final words but rather asinvitation for further research in this little studied field

The analysis of dacha situations in Arctic cities inthree regions (Apatity-Kirovsk Novyi Urengoy Yak-utsk) leads us to reach the following four main pointsfirstly the Arctic city dacha movement can be seen inpath-dependence to the Soviet working class dachaswhereas the pre-Soviet summer recreational house ideare-surfaces gradually after the immediate post-Sovietperiod Secondly in the Arctic dacha movement theexpression of individual creativity and intensive socialorganisation in collectives do not exclude each otherThirdly we suggest that Arctic dacha settlements andpractices are excellent cases for studying processes ofhuman agency and place creation which grant us deeperinsights in the determinants of peoplersquos relation to theland Fourthly this human agency on the land helps usto understand how urban communities in Arctic Rus-sia change their spatial practices gradually from state-induced inhabitation of compressed dense high-rise con-crete landscapes to village-resembling agglomerations ofsmaller houses close to the land As a consequence the

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 13

seasonality of dacha practices gradually gives way to areintroduction of peoplersquos quality of life closer to whatthey call lsquonaturersquo on a permanent year-round basis

What do these four main concluding points tell usIndustrial northerners change the approach to their citiespeople who invest today in a dacha stop seeing them-selves as just working in the north but gradually also startliving there be it temporarily or permanent This showshow the Arctic has become a place to lead a normal lifefor immigrants and their descendants with characteristicsof a normal urban population elsewhere albeit with somespecifics related to seasons climate and permafrost

The increase in development of Arctic dachas asgarden plots arose largely out of economic necessitiesin perestroika but at the same time was a perfect matchwith a deeply Russian approach to the land namelythrough physical agricultural engagement that is focusedon refinement of nature on leaving the human footprintand on adding value The increasing popularity of recre-ational dachas we argued here alongside the blurring ofborders to permanent individual housing areas in Arcticcities is a sign of the end of the post-Soviet periodWe see here the advent of broader trends of mainstreameveryday life in the Arctic with relative affluence andlife-trajectories that are not characterised by a love for theextreme (climate conditions exceptional social fabrics)but for the normal

We have further analysed the dacha as a visual arenafor the interplay between economic and social needsof northerners in the Russian Arctic More than justenabling additional food production in difficult times thedacha is a playground for balancing the freedom of in-dividual creation of place with the deeply social desire toshare experiences with neighbours Dachas are like bookswherein we can read and experience the character pro-fessional biography material wellbeing individual lifestory social status and belonging and preferred practicesof their owners The Arctic dacha cooperative in Russiais a model of self-governance that incorporates the Sovietlegacy of the kollektif while also considering individualcreative freedom in place creation Dacha places arealso a mirror image of the changed balance between theindividual and the collective since the perestroika periodin Arctic Russia late Soviet time dachas were open andvisible while from the late 1990s onwards high fencesbecame the symbols of dachas even in the Arctic wherepeople usually emphasise that collectivity and mutualassistance are life-important

We suggest seeing these developments as a sign of theRussian Arctic becoming a less extreme and more normalplace Rather than a frontier to open up as portrayed in somany popular discourses on Arctic resources the northhas become home for the non-indigenous population thatwas induced by the state to move there While the lsquonative-ness of settlersrsquo (Thompson 2008) or their intensive ad-aptation to the northern nature (Nakshina and Razumova2009) have been emphasised before our material sug-gests that incomer dacha-peoplersquos worldview and relation

to the land in those industrial areas of the Russian north isbased largely on their southern roots and an agriculturallogic Dichotomies are always controversial but we dareto put them forward to inspire more refined analysis inthis direction We argue that industrial city-dwellers anddacha ownersrsquo footprint on the land contributes to prideand identity-building whereas among most indigenousinhabitants peoplersquos embeddedness in the surroundingenvironment with minimal footprint prevails This meansthat the future of the Russian north is one of at leasttwo different modes of dwelling and perceiving the en-vironment both of which involve very intimate relationsbetween people and the land

Acknowledgements

We thank all our friends and collaborators in Apat-ityKirovsk Novyi Urengoy Nadym Pangody and Yak-utsk for their openness and hospitality Funding is grate-fully acknowledged from the research projects BOREASMOVE-INNOCOM funded by the Finnish Academyunder the BOREAS ESF EUROCORES scheme de-cision number 118702 and from the subsequent FinnishAcademy project ORHELIA decision number 251111Moreover the project lsquoThe peoples of the north-eastof the Russian Federation choosing a new adaptivestrategy under conditions of globalisation A social-anthropological approachrsquo Yakutsk (North Eastern Fed-eral) University Russia) contributed funding for thisresearch

ReferencesAnderson D 2000 Identity and ecology in Arctic Siberia the

number one reindeer brigade Oxford Oxford UniversityPress

Bird-David N 1990 The giving environment another perspect-ive on the economic system of gatherer-hunters CurrentAnthropology 31(2) 189ndash96

Bolotova A 2005 Discourses on taiga the state geologists andnature in the Soviet Union In Bammeacute A G Getzinger andB Wieser (editors) Yearbook of the Institute for AdvancedStudies on Science Technology and Society Munich andVienna Profil 25ndash53

Bolotova A 2012 Loving and conquering nature shifting per-ceptions of the environment in the industrialised Russiannorth Europe-Asia Studies 64(4)645ndash671

Bolotova A and F Stammler 2010 How the north becamehome Attachment to place among industrial migrants inMurmansk region In Southcott C and L Huskey (editors)Migration in the circumpolar north issues and contextsEdmonton Alberta Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press(University of Alberta CCI occasional publication 64) 193ndash220

Budaev A 2013 Sovremennye Realii Yakutskogo Agropoi-asa [Modern realities of Yakutian agro-belt] YakutskEkho Stolitsy 43 2160 URL httpwwwexo-yktruarticles244857494 (accessed 24 November 2013)

Crate S 2006 Cows kin and globalization an ethnography ofsustainability Walnut Creek Alta Mira Press

Eilmsteiner-Saxinger G 2013 Auf uns ndash auf euch ndash auf Oumll undGas FernpendlerInnen in der Erdgas- und Erdoumllindustrie im

DACHAS ON PERMAFROST THE CREATION OF NATURE AMONG ARCTIC RUSSIAN CITY-DWELLERS 13

seasonality of dacha practices gradually gives way to areintroduction of peoplersquos quality of life closer to whatthey call lsquonaturersquo on a permanent year-round basis

What do these four main concluding points tell usIndustrial northerners change the approach to their citiespeople who invest today in a dacha stop seeing them-selves as just working in the north but gradually also startliving there be it temporarily or permanent This showshow the Arctic has become a place to lead a normal lifefor immigrants and their descendants with characteristicsof a normal urban population elsewhere albeit with somespecifics related to seasons climate and permafrost

The increase in development of Arctic dachas asgarden plots arose largely out of economic necessitiesin perestroika but at the same time was a perfect matchwith a deeply Russian approach to the land namelythrough physical agricultural engagement that is focusedon refinement of nature on leaving the human footprintand on adding value The increasing popularity of recre-ational dachas we argued here alongside the blurring ofborders to permanent individual housing areas in Arcticcities is a sign of the end of the post-Soviet periodWe see here the advent of broader trends of mainstreameveryday life in the Arctic with relative affluence andlife-trajectories that are not characterised by a love for theextreme (climate conditions exceptional social fabrics)but for the normal

We have further analysed the dacha as a visual arenafor the interplay between economic and social needsof northerners in the Russian Arctic More than justenabling additional food production in difficult times thedacha is a playground for balancing the freedom of in-dividual creation of place with the deeply social desire toshare experiences with neighbours Dachas are like bookswherein we can read and experience the character pro-fessional biography material wellbeing individual lifestory social status and belonging and preferred practicesof their owners The Arctic dacha cooperative in Russiais a model of self-governance that incorporates the Sovietlegacy of the kollektif while also considering individualcreative freedom in place creation Dacha places arealso a mirror image of the changed balance between theindividual and the collective since the perestroika periodin Arctic Russia late Soviet time dachas were open andvisible while from the late 1990s onwards high fencesbecame the symbols of dachas even in the Arctic wherepeople usually emphasise that collectivity and mutualassistance are life-important

We suggest seeing these developments as a sign of theRussian Arctic becoming a less extreme and more normalplace Rather than a frontier to open up as portrayed in somany popular discourses on Arctic resources the northhas become home for the non-indigenous population thatwas induced by the state to move there While the lsquonative-ness of settlersrsquo (Thompson 2008) or their intensive ad-aptation to the northern nature (Nakshina and Razumova2009) have been emphasised before our material sug-gests that incomer dacha-peoplersquos worldview and relation

to the land in those industrial areas of the Russian north isbased largely on their southern roots and an agriculturallogic Dichotomies are always controversial but we dareto put them forward to inspire more refined analysis inthis direction We argue that industrial city-dwellers anddacha ownersrsquo footprint on the land contributes to prideand identity-building whereas among most indigenousinhabitants peoplersquos embeddedness in the surroundingenvironment with minimal footprint prevails This meansthat the future of the Russian north is one of at leasttwo different modes of dwelling and perceiving the en-vironment both of which involve very intimate relationsbetween people and the land

Acknowledgements

We thank all our friends and collaborators in Apat-ityKirovsk Novyi Urengoy Nadym Pangody and Yak-utsk for their openness and hospitality Funding is grate-fully acknowledged from the research projects BOREASMOVE-INNOCOM funded by the Finnish Academyunder the BOREAS ESF EUROCORES scheme de-cision number 118702 and from the subsequent FinnishAcademy project ORHELIA decision number 251111Moreover the project lsquoThe peoples of the north-eastof the Russian Federation choosing a new adaptivestrategy under conditions of globalisation A social-anthropological approachrsquo Yakutsk (North Eastern Fed-eral) University Russia) contributed funding for thisresearch

ReferencesAnderson D 2000 Identity and ecology in Arctic Siberia the

number one reindeer brigade Oxford Oxford UniversityPress

Bird-David N 1990 The giving environment another perspect-ive on the economic system of gatherer-hunters CurrentAnthropology 31(2) 189ndash96

Bolotova A 2005 Discourses on taiga the state geologists andnature in the Soviet Union In Bammeacute A G Getzinger andB Wieser (editors) Yearbook of the Institute for AdvancedStudies on Science Technology and Society Munich andVienna Profil 25ndash53

Bolotova A 2012 Loving and conquering nature shifting per-ceptions of the environment in the industrialised Russiannorth Europe-Asia Studies 64(4)645ndash671

Bolotova A and F Stammler 2010 How the north becamehome Attachment to place among industrial migrants inMurmansk region In Southcott C and L Huskey (editors)Migration in the circumpolar north issues and contextsEdmonton Alberta Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press(University of Alberta CCI occasional publication 64) 193ndash220

Budaev A 2013 Sovremennye Realii Yakutskogo Agropoi-asa [Modern realities of Yakutian agro-belt] YakutskEkho Stolitsy 43 2160 URL httpwwwexo-yktruarticles244857494 (accessed 24 November 2013)

Crate S 2006 Cows kin and globalization an ethnography ofsustainability Walnut Creek Alta Mira Press

Eilmsteiner-Saxinger G 2013 Auf uns ndash auf euch ndash auf Oumll undGas FernpendlerInnen in der Erdgas- und Erdoumllindustrie im

14 STAMMLER AND SIDOROVA

Norden Russlands Unpublished PhD dissertation ViennaUniversity of Vienna Department of Anthropology

Golovnev A 2000 Letter from Varandei Polar Research19135ndash142

Gusev A V 2010 The time of Ust-Poluy In Fedorova NV(editor) Istoria Yamala Vzglyad iz Muzeinykh khranilishch[History of Yamal a perspective from the museum archives]Ekaterinburg RPP Krik Tsentr 15ndash20

Haakanson S 2000 Ethnoarchaeology of the Yamal Nenetsutilising emic and etic evidence in the interpretation of ar-chaeological residues Unpublished PhD dissertation Cam-bridge MA Harvard University

Heleniak T 2010 Population change in the periphery changingmigration patterns in the Russian north Sibirica 9(3) 9ndash40

Holt G and V Amilien 2007 Introduction from local food tolocalised food Anthropology of food (Special issue on localfood products and systems) URL httpaofrevuesorg405

ILO (International Labour Organisation) 2009 Cooperative sec-tor in Russia and the implementation of the ILO recom-mendation 193 In ILO Subregional Office for EasternEurope and Central Asia (editor) The development ofdifferent Russian cooperative trends Moscow ILO (Ana-lytical report ILO 59) URLhttpwwwiloorgpublicenglishregioneurpromoscowinfopublcoop_enpdf (accessed 24November 2013)

Ingold T 2000 The perception of the environment essays inlivelihood dwelling and skill London New York Routledge

Khlinovskaya-Rockhill E 2010 Living in two places permanenttransiency in the Magadan region Alaska Journal of Anthro-pology 8(2) 43ndash62

Macnaghten P and J Urry 1998 Contested natures LondonSage

Nakhshina M 2013 The perception of the built environment bypermanent residents seasonal in-migrants and casual In-comers in a village in the northwest of Russia In AndersonDG R Wishart and V Vateacute (editors) About the hearthperspectives on the home hearth and household in thecircumpolar north Oxford Bergahn Books 200ndash222

Nakhshina M and I Razumova 2009 Country house practicesand perceptions among northerners In Bashmakova N andM Ristolainen (editors) The dacha kingdom summer dwell-ers and dwellings in the Baltic area Joensuu GummerusPrinting (Aleksanteri Instituteof Helsinki series) 417ndash445

Nuykina E 2011 Resettlement from the Russian north ananalysis of statendashinduced relocation policy Rovaniemi ArcticCentre (A r c t i c C e n t r e R e p o r t 5 5) URL httpwwwdoriafibitstreamhandle1002472513AKreport55_electronic110808pdfsequence=1 (accessed 24 November2013)

Russian population census 2010 URL httpwwwgksrufree_docnew_siteperepis2010crocDocumentsVol1pub-01-04pdf (accessed 31 August 2014)

Salimova SM 2011 Iz Istorii Poselka Apatity [From thehistory of the Apatity settlement] Apatity Apatitylibrary Lecture delivered13 June 2013 URL httpwwwapatitylibrruindexphp2011ndash04ndash05ndash08ndash02ndash202011ndash04ndash05ndash08ndash03ndash36 (accessed 9 May 2013)

Stammler F 2010 Gorod stal rodinoy dlya zhiteley noumiratrsquo zdesrsquo nikto ne sobirayetsya Antropologicheskiyerazmyshleniya o chelovecheskikh soobshchestvakh vsevernom gorode [The city has become home to peoplebut nobody is going to die here anthropological reflectionson human communities in the northern city] In StammlerF and G EilmsteinerndashSaxinger (editors) Biografiyavakhtovyy trud i sotsializatsiya v severnom industrialrsquonomgorode [Biography shiftndashlabour and socialisation in anorthern industrial city] Tyumen Rovaniemi TyumenState University and Arctic Centre Rovaniemi 33ndash41httparcticcentreulaplandfidocsNURbook_2ed_100421_finalpdf (accessed 30 August 2014)

Stammler F 2011 Kochevye I Osedlye Obidateli na Severe OStanovlenii Chuvstva Mestnosti v Severnom Chelovechest-com Soobshestve [Nomandic and sedentary residents inthe north the formation of the feeling of the locality in thenorthern community] Nauchnyi Vestnik YamalondashNenetskogoAvtonomnogo Okruga [Scientific messenger of the YamalondashNenets Autonomous okrug] 70 (1) 84ndash89

Stammler F and E Khlinovskaya Rockhill 2011 Einmal lsquoErdersquound zuruumlck Bevoumllkerungsbewegung in Russlands NordenIn Sapper M V Weichsel and C Humrich (editors) Log-buch Arktis Der Raum die Interessen und das Recht Berlin(Osteuropa 2ndash32011) 347ndash371

Takakura H 2002 An institutionalized humanndashanimal relation-ship and the aftermath the reproductive process of horsendashbands and husbandry in northern Yakutia Siberia HumanEcology 30(1) 1ndash19

Thompson N 2008 Settlers on the edge identity and modern-ization on Russiarsquos Arctic frontier Vancouver UBC Press

Weiss B 2011 Making pigs local Discerning the sensorycharacter of place Cultural Anthropology 20(3) 438ndash461

Yurchak A 2005 Everything was forever until it was no morethe last Soviet generation Princeton New Jersey PrincetonUniversity Press

Zhiritskaia E 2008 O kodekse zhizni na nikolinoi gore[About the life codex on Nikola Mountain] Interview withOlga Vainsthein Nezavisimaya Gazeta [Independent News-paper] annex lsquoantraktrsquo Urlhttpwwwngrutheme2008ndash02ndash1513_codexhtml (accessed 30 August 2014)