Our Notes & References

An unusual booklet advertising plots for dachas on the Georgian Black Sea coast, replete with practical information, including cost of labour, and profusely illustrated with photographs of the vernacular architecture. Printed in Batumi and complete with its large folding map, showing also an inset with the larger Batumi coast.

Situated 15 kilometers north of Batumi on the Black Sea coast, the Georgian village of Tsikhisdziri has a specific climate, which is cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It also boasts greenery, beaches and sea views, and is most famous for the Byzantine fortress of Petra, mentioned in Procopius as the site of prolonged conflict with the Persians in the sixth century. Russia conquered the area in 1878 (just about 30 years before our publication) and in the Soviet era the region was used for two purposes — to grow lemons, and to (further) construct dachas, or summer homes.

Originally the exclusive province of the wealthy, dachas by the late imperial period had become second homes of the growing middle class, with everyone from shopkeepers, craftspeople and tradesmen able to afford summer holidays outside of the city (cf. Lovell). This booklet is an unusual example of a wider advertising genre that resulted from this boom — the detailed map at the end shows the plots of land still available for construction, and the text provides all the information a prospective client could require, from the quality of bricks to the price of labour (Turks being 30% cheaper than Russians). Suggested routes for leisurely walks are also provided, as are lists of the other dacha owners, square footage and price per desiatina.

Interestingly, dacha construction in the late imperial period was highly influenced by English models — several of the photographs show a strong Victorian, mock-Gothic influence, complete with crenellations and verandas, which must have worked pretty well in the local climate. Servants and women in long flowing dresses are also prominently featured, promising the reader an aristocratic lifestyle straight out of The Cherry Orchard. Previous residents of the village had included such illustrious personages as the Princes Golitsyn and General Ushakov, hero of the Napoleonic Wars, several of whose properties were turned over in later decades to the rather ominous sounding “KGB holiday home”.

The author is most probably the Vladimir Alekseevich mentioned in the list of dacha owners, from the important aristocratic family Golitsyn (Galitsine); the booklet also shows a Golitsyn dacha. It may well be the army engineer (1865-after 1930) who then suffered much loss during the Revolution.

Very rare: no copies recorded on WorldCat nor at auctions, including in Russia, but we could trace three copies there (State Lib., National Lib. and trade).

Provenance

A. Stark (owner’s inscription in Russian to upper cover, possibly Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Stark, 1849-1933, Russian entomologist who studied the insects of the Caucasus; possibly his (rather illegible) writing to upper right corner of map, in Russian, dated 8 January 1912 in Batumi); from the estate of Avenir Alexandrovich Nizoff (a pianist who lived in Edmonton, Canada, in the second half of the 20th century, and gathered a large, wide-ranging library of Russian works, especially covering art, émigré, literature and history); from the estate of Prof. Philip Longworth (1933-2021, historian and writer, esp. on Russian history).

Bibliography

Lovell, Stephen. 2002. ‘Between Arcadia and Suburbia: Dachas in Late Imperial Russia’. Slavic Review 61 (1): 66–87.