In mid-April we received a mail from representatives of the BBC with a request for cooperation. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster placed in London. The BBC is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world. We were pleased about this mail.

BBC at Soviet Dacha

The company planned to shoot series of documentaries about the lives of Muscovites. Many residents of Moscow spend their weekends at their houses outside Moscow. Therefore, a separate series of the BBC film would be about the life at Russian summer houses. 

Two representatives from the English office came to Soviet Dacha. We talked about modern houses and showed them dachas of the Soviet past.  From the beginning we had argues about real life at Russian dacha. But as a result, we have not agreed and the shooting was done elsewhere.

However, this meeting has brought us to the beginning of a series of articles about real life in the country of Russia. We will write about Russian dachas and what we muscovites do there nowdys and what we did in the past. 

Our guests from BBC came to us with a ready plot - they know better than us what should be the Russian dacha. They wanted to see the bathhouse, because the Russian have to bathe in the Russian bath with a birch broom. Also Muscovites have to go to dachas only by the train and nothing else. And at the weekend the Russians have to drink vodka in a large company at their dachas. To complete the picture "Russian through the eyes of a foreigner" they missed only a bear with a balalaika. 

Russian bear with balalaika

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That is why we want to talk about this kind of Russian rest. Movies, the plot of which is drawn up in advance by foreign writers do not correspond to the reality, in our opinion they cannot be called a documentary. This is just the fiction without a monetary investment to the actors, special effects and so on.
Dachas are serious and very mass phenomenon in Russia. Dacha is our job. Therefore, we begin series of articles about Russian summer houses colled Dacha.
The next article will be devoted to the baths at Dachas, the history and spread of this phenomenon in Russia.

Russian bathhouse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 During the discussion about bathhouses at dachas with representatives of the BBC, we conducted a survey among Muscovites. Among 168 respondents Muscovites at least once a month enjoys bath of 11%. Five of them have their own bathhouse, the rest go to the baths to friends or in public baths. Private bathhouses have only three of them, two have private baths, but in the village. About the difference between the Russian village and dacha we will write a separate article, but it is a completely different concept. 8% use the broom in the bath - birch, eucalyptus or oak.

Russian broom for the bath

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More than half of respondents said that ever visited bath with friends during a meeting or holiday. And 7% of respondents said that they never had a bath or ever, will not go into it for different reasons, all of them were women.

We will conduct a survey among Muscovites on how they get to their dachas, but we are confident that most of them get to their dachas by car.
We will tell interesting facts about the dacha's value for the development of roads in Russia and about how we get to dachas from the time of Peter I to the present day. Our grandparents went to dachas by trains and grandfathers in horse-drawn wagons.

Retro transport in Russia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But in the real modern Russia Muscovites still use their cars and there are reasons and explanations for it.

We don't always drink vodka and the bears are rare at our dachas.

Even more rarely we meet people who know how to play the balalaika.
So we invite you to read our series of articles about dachas or come in Russia and visit us to see all with your own eyes.

Welcome to Soviet Dacha in Moscow!