Dacha Idylls

“[Caldwell’s] insight into Russian life is impressive. . . . Her descriptions are so sumptuous and almost tangible that they nearly prompt readers to make their own travel arrangements to spend the next summer at a dacha community in the greater Moscow region. Richly supplemented with the best of scholarship on spatial history, temporalities and identities, the book undeniably deserves to be read and appreciated by scholars of Russia and its culture.”

— Europe-Asia Studies

"Valuable and accessible. . . . Dacha Idylls is an evocative and original examination of a central aspect of Russian life."

— American Anthropologist

"Any future scholar working on modern Russian rural life would do well to read this book. It provides an excellent survey of the field."

— Journal of Modern History

“A brief review such as this cannot do justice to Caldwell’s thoughtful analysis. She complicates the binary oppositions that ordinary people and academics use to explain their world-- private/public, core/periphery, urban/rural, and labor/leisure. In explicating the complex reality that lies between these oppositions, Caldwell helps us to understand the paradox that is modern Russia.”

— Slavic Review