Zhanna Pachina's Dacha

This is Zhanna's dacha. A dacha is a very common second 'home' for many city dwelling people in the former Soviet Union. We work with Zhanna at our school. Her husband died last year and together they owned nearly 2 acres of apples, plums, apricots, cherries and pears.

It's a bit much for her to manage by herself now, so several of us who actually miss doing yard work converge at her dacha once in a while and attack the yard.

More of a cabin than a house, it's perched on the side of the mountains that fence in the city of Almaty. There are thousands of dachas with a 45 minute drive of the city and no two of them are alike. Outdoor toilets, running (mountain cold) water, and a goat-track for a road.

The first dachas in Russia began to appear during the reign of Peter the Great (1725). Initially they were small estates in the country, which were given to loyal vassals by the Tsar. In archaic Russian, the word dacha means something given.