In Russia, summer homes have become a cause célèbre

When the demolition crews showed up in Rechnik, a quaint district of summer homes on the banks of the Moscow River, Sergei Bobyshev threatened to unleash his pet leopard on them. Alexander Navrodsky vowed to set fire to his house and go down with it in flames. Other residents set up a barricade, and when police broke through, some lay down in the snow to stop the bulldozers.

The government pressed ahead with plans to clear the area for a park, confident in its time-tested ability to crush the protests of ordinary citizens. But a month has passed and, in a surprise, not only is this little neighborhood still kicking, but its cause has been embraced by the country as a David-and-Goliath struggle, pitting desperate homeowners against one of the nation's most powerful politicians.

The drama in Rechnik presents a vivid illustration of Russia's incomplete transition to capitalism. Despite nearly two decades of U.S.-backed market reforms since the fall of Communism, including a crash course in privatization, individual ownership of land in the world's largest country remains a tenuous proposition. But if property rights are weak in Russia, the outpouring of support for Rechnik has underscored the nation's growing devotion to a particular kind of property, and delivered an unexpected warning to those who call the shots in Vladimir Putin's increasingly authoritarian state:

Don't come between Russians and their dachas.

Unlikely allies

In the weeks since the first house fell, an unlikely cast has rallied to defend Rechnik, including Putin loyalists in the parliament and the prime minister's most ardent foes in the pro-democracy opposition, as well as prominent lawyers, extreme right-wing nationalists and the leader of a leftist youth movement. Journalists across the country have filed sympathetic reports, and even the tightly controlled nightly news has broadcast images of Rechnik's tearful residents.

With polls showing only 10 percent of the public backing the city authorities, and nearly 50 percent taking the residents' side, President Dmitry Medvedev intervened, too, warning against any attempt to turn the situation "into a kind of campaign." But he also ordered prosecutors to investigate the demolitions.

Some analysts say the Kremlin may be trying to sideline Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, who is leading the charge to bulldoze Rechnik. At 73, he has governed the capital since 1992 and is one of the few politicians in the country with a strong local power base. Previous attempts to unseat him have failed, but he has never been portrayed as an enemy of the dacha before.

More than half of all Russians and perhaps two-thirds of Muscovites own a dacha, giving Russia one of the world's highest rates of second-home ownership. Some are stately manors on city outskirts, others just shacks in distant exurbs without heat or plumbing. Most are built on land allocated to Soviet-era workers for household gardening, which provided a critical supply of food during the shortages of the planned economy.

But as construction soared during the past decade, the dacha has taken on an almost mythic significance in the Russian mind. It is a place to escape the pressures of modern life, a way to get closer to nature, a haven for growing one's own vegetables -- a symbol of freedom, self-reliance and middle-class achievement all in one.

So word spread quickly among the 200 or so families with dachas in Rechnik when bulldozers were spotted near the neighborhood in mid-December. City officials had been pressuring them to move for nearly three years, cutting off water and power and accusing them of illegally occupying environmentally protected parkland.

The charge infuriates residents, most of whom have lived in Rechnik for decades. The settlement was established in 1956, when the Soviet government set aside the land for employees of the Moscow Canal, which connects the Moscow and Volga rivers. Only the socialist state could own land back then, but its institutions often distributed garden plots to workers to use in perpetuity.

"It was kind of a reward, for doing a good job, because there was a long waiting list," said Maria Gurlynina, 79, who was a telephone operator for the canal when she was given her plot. It was just barren sand then, but her family carted in soil, planted trees and flowers, and built a simple house that four generations have used as a summer retreat.