dacha and valenki

Anton and his family live in a country house, an hour drive outside New York. He compares it with the Russian “dacha”—a wooden house people use as an escape from the big city for holidays and vacations. Ioukhnovets grows his own vegetables and chops wood himself.

In the mid-2000s, he and his wife started a successful e-commerce business selling “valenki” (a decisively un-cool, Russian peasant winter boot) in the US. “Four thousand pairs later it remains one of my highest achievements in America,” Ioukhnovets says.