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Sharashkin, Leonid. The socioeconomic and cultural significance of

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however, the terms garden <strong>and</strong> dacha are <strong>of</strong>ten used interchangeably, with the exception <strong>of</strong><br />

legal <strong>and</strong> statistical documents. For this reason, unless otherwise indicated, I will use the<br />

term garden in its generic sense to refer to a cultivated plot (uchastok) <strong>of</strong> either an urbanite<br />

or a villager (as opposed to the more formal usage <strong>of</strong> “garden” to refer to only urbanites’<br />

plots).<br />

Subsidiary plot. “Dachas” (“gardens”) <strong>and</strong> “allotments” are terms used to refer to plots<br />

<strong>of</strong> l<strong>and</strong> with a garden belonging to an urbanite. <strong>The</strong> similar plot <strong>of</strong> l<strong>and</strong> with a garden belonging<br />

to a rural resident is referred to as a personal, private, or subsidiary plot (lichnoe<br />

podsobnoe khoziaistvo). Unlike dachas, subsidiary plots usually have no dwelling on them,<br />

since they are either adjacent to (priusadebnyi = “next to the house”) or in close proximity<br />

(polevoi = “in the field”) to the owner’s village house. Subsidiary plots are also larger in<br />

size, <strong>and</strong> can be up to 0.5 ha or larger depending on regional laws.<br />

Food gardening is the generic term used to refer to dacha gardening by an urbanite<br />

<strong>and</strong>/or subsidiary plot cultivation by a villager. Other terms used in the same sense are<br />

household/family agriculture or household/family gardening (to highlight that this activity<br />

is practiced by individual households/families rather than agribusinesses), as well as selfprovisioning<br />

(to highlight the fact that most <strong>of</strong> the agri<strong>cultural</strong> produce is used for subsistence<br />

rather than for sale). This generic term is needed especially because <strong>of</strong>ficial Russian<br />

statistics <strong>of</strong>ten make no distinction between dacha or subsidiary plot production (reporting<br />

an aggregate <strong>of</strong> production by both urban <strong>and</strong> rural population). Some <strong>of</strong> the basic characteristics<br />

<strong>of</strong> food gardening are: small plot size, manual cultivation by family members (no<br />

hired labor), <strong>and</strong> emphasis on subsistence growing. Because <strong>of</strong> the subsistence-orientation<br />

<strong>of</strong> family agriculture, the modest size <strong>of</strong> garden-plots <strong>and</strong> also the fact that it is most <strong>of</strong>ten<br />

a part time activity rather than main pr<strong>of</strong>essional occupation, I avoided using the term<br />

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