Skip to main content
Gifts from The Morning Star
Refuge for the soul
MICHAL BONCZA recommends an exquisitely illustrated publication which charts the origins, rise and fall of the seminal Russian dacha
Arkhangelsk dachas panorama [Fyodor Savintsev]

Dacha
by Anna Benn (words) and Fyodor Savintsev (photos)
Fuel £26.95

DACHAS are as much a state of mind as they are actual physical constructs.

They are a timeless cultural identity that evolved from an imperial legacy of recognition for services rendered — instead of an OBE you got a dacha — to what became an attainable, classless aspiration of city dwellers in the aftermath of the October Revolution.

Their association with the need for a retreat that offered physical and spiritual solace is, perhaps, best defined by Fyodor Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment: “It was terribly hot outside, stuffy and crowded; everywhere there was whitewash, scaffolding, brick, dust and that certain summer stench so well known to every Petersburger who doesn’t have the means to rent a dacha.”

Udelnaya/Moscow region [Pic: Fyodor Savintsev]
The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
kam
Exhibition review / 22 August 2025
22 August 2025

MICHAL BONCZA highly recommends a revelatory exhibition of work by the doyen of indigenous Australians’ art, Emily Kam Kngwarray

FOTW
Film of the week / 21 August 2025
21 August 2025

Despite an over-sentimental narrative, MICHAL BONCZA applauds an ambitious drama about the Chinese rescue of British POWs in WWII

tanner
Meet the Cartoonist / 18 July 2025
18 July 2025

Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet

MB
Album reviews / 23 June 2025
23 June 2025

New releases from Hannah Rose Platt, Kemp Harris, and Spear Of Destiny

Similar stories
The crowd at Manchester Punk Festival 2024
Culture / 11 April 2025
11 April 2025
Ben Cowles speaks with IAN ‘TREE’ ROBINSON and ANDY DAVIES, two of the string pullers behind the Manchester Punk Festival, ahead of its 10th year show later this month
Free supplement / 8 March 2025
8 March 2025
Read Sisters, the journal of the National Assembly Of Women, below.
Anselm Kiefer, Wer jetzt kein Haus hat (Whoever has no House
Exhibition Review / 14 February 2025
14 February 2025
JAN WOOLF wallows in the historical mulch of post WW2 West Germany, and the resistant, challenging sense made of it by Anselm Kiefer
GUILTY PARTIES: Rembrandt Van Rijn (1606-1669), Syndics of t
Book Review / 4 February 2025
4 February 2025
CAROLINE FOWLER explains how the slave trade helped establish the ‘golden age’ of Dutch painting and where to find its hidden traces