INTRODUCTION

The allotment association, as it exists in Russia of the present day, is a form of common land use that first came into being in the Soviet Union. After the war, factories and other employers began, via their trade union committees, to provide for their employees not only housing, kindergarten places and summer holiday arrangements, but also allotments (usually 600 square metres) on so-called collective plots. It was supposed that people would grow fruit and vegetables for themselves there and thus compensate for the food shortages that prevailed in the cities at that time. However, in the big cities the allotments were often so situated that it took a journey of an hour and a half to two hours (or even more) by train to get to them from the city where their holders lived. Therefore they had no choice but to build sheds there to keep their tools in and to spend the night in, since it was too far to travel every day.

The collective plots thus turned into seasonal settlements to which a large number of the townsfolk migrated in the summer, and became a sort of dacha available even to the poorest sections of society. (A ‘real’ dacha remained more or less the privilege of the social elite.)

Soviet law required holders of allotments on collective plots to organise allotment associations – something intermediate between an amateur gardeners’ club, a co-operative and a local authority. Each association's activities were controlled by the trade union committee of the organisation under which it had been created. When, after perestroika, enterprises were privatised, they abandoned their allotments to their fate (as they also often did with their kindergartens, rest-homes, etc.).