Irena Mostowicz gave on 28 August 2020 a public talk on the significance of the Russian dacha. She is GSIS Member and researcher at the Institute.

In times of the current pandemic, humanity faces many challenges. A healthy lifestyle, decent nutrition, and adequate living conditions are the most basic needs which are essential for absolutely everyone. Russian dacha shows an interesting and universal example of a sustainable lifestyle, which helps millions of Russians to cope with the political and economic difficulties. The work Russian dacha as an alternative life strategy presents the history of dacha and shows how a secondary house with a piece of land can transform human life into a fully independent and healthy way of life. The dacha can serve as an example of the success of an alternative lifestyle. A Russian dacha is a place for an individual agriculture; it is a place for living and a place for leisure.

The anthropological material presented in this work was gathered during the fieldwork done for the PhD project in the Smolensk region and Moscow in 2016 and updated in 2020.

See Mostowicz’s presentation here.

The talk took place as an outdoor event at the GSIS office in Vienna.