ABSTRACT
A dacha is a Russian equivalent of a second home or vacation house. Dachas are widespread within all social classes across the territory of the Russian Federation. Russia is considered to be a European leader in second home ownership, as estimations reach the number of 20 million dachas. The dacha is a unique place out of the city that is used nowadays for recreation, food production, additional living space or an escape from a polluted urban environment. The dacha is also a site of constant negotiations between private and communal, between passive leisure and active land cultivation, between a liberating second home and strictly regulated recreation space. The aim of this chapter is to define the ways of interpreting, negotiating and deviating from the prescribed leisure code by contemporary dacha dwellers in order to live out their dacha dream. The chapter represents a study in four dacha settlements and one village outside the city of Petrozavodsk in the Republic of Karelia, Russia. The empirical evidence is based on 15 dacha owners’ narratives that uncover the process of acquiring, constructing and inhabiting the dacha leisure space.
