Into Russian Nature

Since the early twentieth century, nations around the world have set aside protected areas for tourism, recreation, scenery, wildlife, and habitat conservation. In Russia, biologists and geographers had been intrigued with the idea of establishing national parks before the Revolution, but instead persuaded the government successfully to establish nature reserves (zapovedniki) for scientific research during the USSR's first decades. However, as the state pushed scientists to make zapovedniki more useful during the 1930s, some of the system's staunchest defenders started supporting tourism in them. In Into Russian Nature, Alan D. Roe offers the first history of the Russian national park movement. In the decades after World War II, the USSR experienced a tourism boom and faced a chronic shortage of tourism facilities. During these years, Soviet scientists took active part in Western-dominated international environmental protection organizations and enthusiastically promoted parks for the USSR as a means to expand recreational opportunities and reconcile environmental protection and economic development goals. In turn, they hoped they would bring international respect to Soviet nature protection efforts and help instill in Russian/Soviet citizens a love for the country's nature and a desire to protect it. By the end of the millennium, Russia had established thirty-five parks to protect iconic landscapes in places such as Lake Baikal. Meanwhile, national park opponents presented them as an unaffordable luxury during a time of economic struggle, especially after the USSR's collapse. Despite unprecedented collaboration with international organizations, Russian national parks received little governmental support as they became mired in land-use conflicts with local populations. Exploring parks from European Russia to Siberia and the Far East, Into Russian Nature narrates efforts, often frustrated by the state, to protect Russia's vast and unique physical landscape.

"Into Russian Nature examines the history of the Russian national park movement. Russian biologists and geographers had been intrigued with the idea of establishing national parks before the Great October Revolution, but pushed the Soviet government successfully to establish nature reserves (zapovedniki) during the USSR's first decades. However, as the state pushed scientists to make zapovedniki more "useful" during the 1930s, some of the system's staunchest defenders started supporting tourism in them. In the decades after World War II, the USSR experienced a tourism boom and faced a chronic shortage of tourism facilities. Also during these years, Soviet scientists took active part in Western-dominated international environmental protection organizations where they became more familiar with national parks. In turn, they enthusiastically promoted parks for the USSR as a means to reconcile environmental protection and economic development goals, bring international respect to Soviet nature protection efforts, and help instil a love for the country's nature and a desire to protect it in Russian/Soviet citizens. By the late 1980s, their supporters pushed transformative, in some cases quixotic, park proposals. At the same time, national park opponents presented them as an unaffordable luxury during a time of economic struggle, especially after the USSR's collapse. Despite unprecedented collaboration with international organizations, Russian national parks received little governmental support as they became mired in land-use conflicts with local populations. While the history of Russia's national parks illustrates a bold attempt at reform, the state's failure's to support them has left Russian park supporters deeply disillusioned. "--

"Into Russian Nature examines the history of the Russian national park movement. Russian biologists and geographers had been intrigued with the idea of establishing national parks before the Great October Revolution, but pushed the Soviet government successfully to establish nature reserves (zapovedniki) during the USSR's first decades. However, as the state pushed scientists to make zapovedniki more "useful" during the 1930s, some of the system's staunchest defenders started supporting tourism in them. In the decades after World War II, the USSR experienced a tourism boom and faced a chronic shortage of tourism facilities. Also during these years, Soviet scientists took active part in Western-dominated international environmental protection organizations where they became more familiar with national parks. In turn, they enthusiastically promoted parks for the USSR as a means to reconcile environmental protection and economic development goals, bring international respect to Soviet nature protection efforts, and help instil a love for the country's nature and a desire to protect it in Russian/Soviet citizens. By the late 1980s, their supporters pushed transformative, in some cases quixotic, park proposals. At the same time, national park opponents presented them as an unaffordable luxury during a time of economic struggle, especially after the USSR's collapse. Despite unprecedented collaboration with international organizations, Russian national parks received little governmental support as they became mired in land-use conflicts with local populations. While the history of Russia's national parks illustrates a bold attempt at reform, the state's failure's to support them has left Russian park supporters deeply disillusioned. "--

Through a series of essays, Eurasian Environments prompts us to rethink our understanding of tsarist and Soviet history by placing the human experience within the larger environmental context of flora, fauna, geology, and climate. This book is a broad look at the environmental history of Eurasia, specifically examining steppe environments, hydraulic engineering, soil and forestry, water pollution, fishing, and the interaction of the environment and disease vectors. Throughout, the authors place the history of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union in a trans-chronological, comparative context, seamlessly linking the local and the global. The chapters are rooted in the ecological and geological specificities of place and community while unveiling the broad patterns of human-nature relationships across the planet. Eurasian Environments brings together an international group scholars working on issues of tsarist/Soviet environmental history in an effort to showcase the wave of fascinating and field-changing research currently being written.

While researching Russia's historical efforts to protect nature, Douglas Weiner unearthed unexpected findings: a trail of documents that raised fundamental questions about the Soviet political system. These surprising documents attested to the unlikely survival of a critical-minded, scientist-led movement through the Stalin years and beyond. It appeared that, within scientific societies, alternative visions of land use, resrouce exploitation, habitat protection, and development were sustained and even publicly advocated. In sharp contrast to known Soviet practices, these scientific societies prided themselves on their traditions of free elections, foreign contacts, and a pre-revolutionary heritage. Weiner portrays nature protection activists not as do-or-die resisters to the system, nor as inoffensive do-gooders. Rather, they took advantage of an unpoliced realm of speech and activity and of the patronage by middle-level Soviet officials to struggle for a softer path to development. In the process, they defended independent social and professional identities in the face of a system that sought to impose official models of behavior, ethics, and identity for all. Written in a lively style, this absorbing story tells for the first time how organized participation in nature protection provided an arena for affirming and perpetuating self-generated social identities in the USSR and preserving a counterculture whose legacy survives today.

This book offers new perspectives on the environmental history of lands that have come under Russian and Soviet rule by paying attention to 'place' and 'nature' in the intersection between humans and the environments that surround them. Through case studies of specific places in northwestern Russia, for example the Solovetskie Islands, the Urals, Siberia, in particular Lake Baikal, and the Russian Far East, the book highlights the importance of local environments and the specificities of individual places and spaces in understanding the human-nature nexus. This focus is accentuated by the fact that the authors have considerable, first-hand experience of the places they write about that complements and supplements their research in textual sources.

In Nature and the Iron Curtain, the authors contrast communist and capitalist countries with respect to their environmental politics in the context of the Cold War. Its chapters draw from archives across Europe and the U.S. to present new perspectives on the origins and evolution of modern environmentalism on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The book explores similarities and differences among several nations with different economies and political systems, and highlights connections between environmental movements in Eastern and Western Europe.