From weekend retreat to commuter's paradise

From the time of Peter the Great the dacha has fulfilled various roles in the environs of Russia's cities : in the 18th century it was the palatial mansions of the aristocratic elite outside of St. Petersburgand Moscow ; in the 19th century the dacha became a summer rental property for urbanites to escape the cramped and dirty cities ; in the Soviet dominated 20th century the dacha was organized into garden plot communities for subsistence farming. However, the privatization of land following the collapse of the Soviet Union signaled a shift in the dacha's existence. Lamp-lined streets and perfectly pruned lawns began to fill the territory beyond the belt of gray, generic apartment structures where the dacha was once king. In light of the dacha's decline, this thesis explores the origins and development of suburbanization in post-Soviet Russia and discusses its shared and dissenting characteristics with that of the West.