When a Muscovite out for a Sunday afternoon drive in the family Zhiguli comes to a thickly wooded area about 20 miles southwest of Moscow, he had better resist the temptation to park his car and stroll among the pines and birches. Just to remind him, a NO STOPPING line is painted along the side of the road, TRANSIT ONLY signs prohibit him from pausing in villages along the way, and NO ENTRY notices block all side streets. There is also a forbidding 10-ft. green wooden fence, set back from the road and stretching for miles. If, despite these warnings, he should pull off the shoulder even for a moment, armed guards are likely to materialize out of the woods or roar up in yellow patrol cars and hustle him on his way.
Soviet officials would prefer inquisitive foreigners to believe that the elaborate privacy is for the benefit of disabled war veterans and aged proletarians in nearby rest homes and hospitals. In fact, as every Muscovite knows, the fence hides a cluster of sumptuous villas belonging to the Kremlin elite. They are the most luxurious examples of the dacha (country house), a cherished retreat for every Russian lucky enough to have one, and a coveted status symbol for those who do not. There are approximately 40,000 dachas within a 30-mile radius of Moscow alone, including elegant mansions of the country's leaders, comfortable cottages for favored bureaucrats and humble izbas, or huts, often without plumbing or electricity, for less exalted citizens.
The government dachas near the village of Uspenskoye are the Soviet Union's answer to Britain's Checquers or the U.S. presidential retreat at Camp David. On a summer weekend, virtually the entire Communist Party and state hierarchy speeds in convoys of limousines under police escort to an exclusive park full of country houses.
Not all of the Kremlin leaders have their dachas within the same compound. The most prominent dachnik, Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, has a weekend getaway spot near Barvikha, where he entertained Richard Nixon during the Moscow summit meetings. Former President Anastas Mikoyan has retired to Zubalovo, an estate surrounding a manor house decorated with marble statues, tapestries and stained glass. In czarist times it belonged to an oil millionaire; Joseph Stalin later expropriated the estate and included one of its mansions among his nine dachas around Moscow and in his native Georgia.
The dacha belt south of Moscow is segmented by profession and prestige. The picturesque village of Peredelkino, 15 miles from the capital, has been a writers' colony since the '30s and is now the dacha land of the officially approved intelligentsia, including Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who lives in a wood-paneled, two-story country house decorated with antique Russian Orthodox icons and abstract modern paintings.
A member of the Soviet establishment who falls from favor usually loses his dacha. When a top Moscow scientist recently applied for permission to emigrate to Israel, his country house was the first privilege to be taken away from him. These days dacha watchers are wondering if Pyotr Shelest, recently deposed as first secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, will be able to hang on to his spacious villa and mile-long private beach on the Black Sea coast.