Bibliography of English-language materials on the environmental history of Russia and its neighbours

Victoria Beale and David Moon have created an online bibliography of English-language materials on The environmental history of Russia and its neighbours.  

The main focus is on the Post-Soviet space, the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire and its predecessors. It currently lists 497 items including books, book sections, theses, journal articles, conference papers and presentations, newspaper and magazine articles, websites, blogs and television broadcasts.

This is a public resource which anyone is welcome to use and pass on to others who may be interested.

If you have suggestions of other items, including your own publications, to add, please contact David Moon or leave the details as a comment on this post. Thank you.

For practical reasons, this is an English-language bibliography for the time being. One of its aims to bring research on environmental history of Russia and neighbouring countries to the attention of environmental historians of other parts of the globe.

Thanks to The Leverhulme Trust, which funded the project of which this is a part.

Bibliography of English-language materials on the environmental history of Russia and its neighbours

Victoria Beale and David Moon have created an online bibliography of English-language materials on The environmental history of Russia and its neighbours.  

The main focus is on the Post-Soviet space, the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire and its predecessors. It currently lists 497 items including books, book sections, theses, journal articles, conference papers and presentations, newspaper and magazine articles, websites, blogs and television broadcasts.

This is a public resource which anyone is welcome to use and pass on to others who may be interested.

If you have suggestions of other items, including your own publications, to add, please contact David Moon on david.moon'@york.ac.uk 

For practical reasons, this is an English-language bibliography for the time being. One of its aims to bring research on environmental history of Russia and neighbouring countries to the attention of environmental historians of other parts of the globe.

Thanks to The Leverhulme Trust, which funded the project of which this is a part.

Wildfires in Siberia

An interesting, and sad, article about the wildfires in Siberia.

Of particular interest to the Network group who visited Lake Baikal last summer and experienced the lake shrouded in smoke from wildfires.

https://theconversation.com/vast-wildfires-are-burning-in-remote-siberia-far-from-humans-heres-why-we-should-care-62881

Into a Frozen Inferno: Personal and Historical Trajectories in Monchegorsk

An article in 'Toxic News' on August 3 2016, by Andy Bruno.

https://toxicnews.org/2016/08/03/into-a-frozen-inferno-personal-and-historical-trajectories-in-monchegorsk/

Andy Bruno is Assistant Professor of History and Faculty Associate in Environmental Studies at Northern Illinois University. He is the author of The Nature of Soviet Power: An Arctic Environmental History.

CFP: Chernobyl – Turning Point or Catalyst? Changing Practices, Structures and Perceptions in Environmental Policy and Politics (1970s-1990s)

Call For Papers

Chernobyl – Turning Point or Catalyst? Changing Practices, Structures and Perceptions in Environmental Policy and Politics (1970s-1990s)

International Conference, 2 - 3 December 2016

Heinrich-Boell-Foundation (HBS), Schumannstr. 8, D-10117 Berlin, Germany

Convenors: Christoph Becker-Schaum (Heinrich-Boell-Foundation), Jan-Henrik Meyer (Copenhagen/HoNESt) and Marianne Zepp (Heinrich-Boell-Foundation)

In cooperation with the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich, HoNESt – History of Nuclear Energy and Society Project, and the Center for Metropolitan Studies (TU Berlin).

Does Chernobyl constitute a turning point in the history of environmental policy and politics? Around the world environmental policy was introduced in the early 1970s as a new policy area and arena of political and societal conflict. However, from mid-1970s onwards, as a result of the oil crisis, the new policy came to be increasingly challenged, and considered an obstacle to traditional economic growth objectives. Notably in West Germany, environmental policy’s great leap forward only happened in the 1980s. The debate about the dying forests led to the introduction of new filter technologies and catalytic converters to stop acid rain from killing trees and harming people. It was the shock of Chernobyl, however, that convinced the West German government to eventually establish a separate ministry of the environment at the federal level.

This conference has two aims:

First, it seeks to assess change in environmental politics and policy making – from its beginnings around 1970 until the 1990s, when the Rio Conference definitely lifted environmental issues to a global scale with the breakthrough of the sustainability agenda and the increasing dominance of the climate change issue. While the early phase of environmental policy is increasingly well-covered by environmental history, we know very little about the subsequent development of the policy.

Against this backdrop, we seek to examine to what extent and how environmental policy and politics changed during the first thirty years of their existence. Transformations may have concerned political, administrative, societal, and media practices and structures as well as problem perceptions. The conference’s goal is to uncover, in particular, the conditions for change, ruptures, intercepted developments and roads not taken.

Secondly, the conference aims at re-assessing the importance of the Chernobyl nuclear accident for change in environmental policy and politics. Did Chernobyl actually constitute a turning point? Did Chernobyl really strengthen environmental policy, by bringing environmental issues back to the centre of political attention? What were the consequences of Chernobyl for the perception of environmental policies? What was the impact on political and societal action, mobilisation and structures? Did Chernobyl offer new windows of opportunity for environmental policy makers.

We will also discuss an alternative interpretation: Is it more appropriate to consider Chernobyl rather as a catalyst where the different environmental debates, growing environmental consciousness and ecological concerns of the 1980s came together to accelerate and strengthen environmental policy. Next to the lasting conflict about nuclear power this included concerns about the visible environmental problems such as dying forests and polluted water, and increasingly also invisible and global concerns about the hole in the ozone layer and climate change. We will look beyond national borders: How does the West German response compare to other European countries – a question that seems relevant with a view to the German phase-out after Fukushima?

The conference seeks to focus on the different actors that shaped environmental policy:

(1) Political parties,
(2) Courts of law, government administrations and bureaucracies, and scientific experts,
(3) environmental movements,
(4) business groups, utilities and industry and
(5) media.

All of these different actors did not only discuss environmental issues from their respective perspectives. They also interpreted environmental problems differently and offered divergent solutions. These include, for instance, the growing interest in market solutions and ideas about green growth and ecological modernisation. These actors engaged in environmental policy at – but routinely also across - different levels – the local, regional, national, but also at the European and international levels.

The starting point of the debate will be the experience in the Federal Republic of Germany, which however needs to be understood in its European and international context, involving transnational linkages and experiences from other countries in a comparative perspective.
Conference languages are both German and English (simultaneous translation is provided). The event is open to the public.

The aim of the conference is to prepare for a tightly integrated publication. Thus all contributors are invited to explicitly address both questions outlined above. We suggest analysing the role of one or several actors in order to cover the issue of change in environmental policy in a broader perspective in a first part. In a second part, contributors may zoom in on the impact and consequences of Chernobyl on the policy and the responses and reactions of their respective actors.

Please submit your proposal (title, abstract [150 - 200 words], biographical note [150 words]) to

becker-schaum@boell.de; j.h.meyer@hum.ku.dk; zepp@boell.de

by 31 July 2016.

Travel and accommodation costs for speakers will be covered by HBS.

Download the English and German Version of the CFP: https://www.academia.edu/26367688/CFP_Chernobyl_Turning_Point_or_Catalyst_Changing_Practic...

Article published by Jan-Henrik Meyer on H-Net on Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Congratulations to Alan Roe on his new job at William and Mary!

We offer our warmest congratulations to Alan Roe who has accepted a two year Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Environmental Science and Policy program at William and Mary University, Virginia, USA.

Alan will be teaching three courses over that time as well as organizing a lecture series for the program.

Network fieldtrips to Chernobyl and the Urals

Today, ten network members from the UK and USA will meet in Kyiv to start a field trip looking at the history of the Chernobyl reactor accident and the consequences for both people and wildlife.

Tomorrow they will hear from local experts and share their knowledge at a workshop in Kyiv. On Thursday to Friday they will travel to the Exclusion Zone to see the place for themselves and meet with some of those who were evacuated after the accident but have since returned.

Then, on 11 July, another group of network members will gather in the city of Perm on the banks of the Kama River near the Ural Mountains. They will visit the cities of Perm and Ekaterinburg and surrounding areas, looking particularly at how a history of mining activities has shaped this region.

More information, including itineraries, participant lists, workshop programmes etc can be found on the Events page of the Network website. 

European Society for Environmental History: Call for Papers for 2017 Conference

The next biennial conference of the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) will be held in Zagreb, Croatia, on 28 June to 2 July 2017.

The conference announcement and call for papers (deadline 1 October 2016) has just been posted on the ESEH website.

http://eseh.org/event/next-conference/

Our Russian partners win prestigious grant from the Russian Science Foundation!

A team of researchers led by Professor Julia Lajus of the Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg (HSE Spb), has been awarded a large grant for their project entitled:

Natural Resources in the History of Russia: Economic Institutes, Communities of Experts, and Infrastructures 

The full team is: Julia Lajus, Alexandra Bekasova, Marina Loskutova, Margarita Dadykina, Elena Korchmina, Elena Kochetkova and PhD students Ekaterina Kalemeneva and Vassily Borovoy (HSE Spb); Andrei Volodin (Moscow State University); Alexei Kraikovski  (European University at St Petersburg); Anastasia Fedotova (Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg). 

The project will make a significant contribution to the growing international scholarship in environmental history from a European as well as a global perspective. The environmental history of Russia will be analysed within an interdisciplinary framework incorporating a range of fields from across the humanities and social sciences. The project involves analysis of economic institutions, the activities of the expert community, and the development of infrastructures. The project comprises individual case studies of s , formed by major chronological periods , and the focus will be on lesser known historically significant natural resources (forests , water, fisheries , minerals ) over the period from the seventeenth century to the end of the Cold War in the late twentieth century.

The new knowledge obtained as a result of joint work of researchers specializing in the field of economic, environmental and technological history, will significantly improve the understanding of the interaction of people and nature in the past and will be useful in the development of informed decisions in the field of environmental management in the present.

The project is a very good example of what can be termed the ‘usable past’ i.e. knowledge and understanding of the past which has a practical relevance for addressing contemporary problems.

For the announcement on the website of the Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg (in Russian), please see: https://spb.hse.ru/news/179560031.html

For more details (in English) please see: http://russianenvironmentalhistory.blogspot.co.uk/p/blog-page_17.html

New book "The Nature of Soviet Power - An Arctic Environmental History"

The Nature of Soviet Power

An Arctic Environmental History

Part of Studies in Environment and History

Author: Andy Bruno, Northern Illinois University

Date Published: April 2016

During the twentieth century, the Soviet Union turned the Kola Peninsula in the northwest corner of the country into one of the most populated, industrialized, militarized, and polluted parts of the Arctic. This transformation suggests, above all, that environmental relations fundamentally shaped the Soviet experience. Interactions with the natural world both enabled industrial livelihoods and curtailed socialist promises. Nature itself was a participant in the communist project. Taking a long-term comparative perspective, The Nature of Soviet Power sees Soviet environmental history as part of the global pursuit for unending economic growth among modern states. This in-depth exploration of railroad construction, the mining and processing of phosphorus-rich apatite, reindeer herding, nickel and copper smelting, and energy production in the region examines Soviet cultural perceptions of nature, plans for development, lived experiences, and modifications to the physical world. While Soviet power remade nature, nature also remade Soviet power.

http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/environmental-history/nature-soviet-power-arctic-environmental-history?format=HB  

Radio New Zealand interview

Professor David Moon discusses research on Russian environmental history 

Professor David Moon has been interviewed on the 'Nights' programme on Radio New Zealand. He was talking about the on-the-ground research on Russian environmental history being conducted as part of the Leverhulme International Network Exploring Russia's Environmental History and Natural Resources.

The interview was broadcast live on 13 April, and you can listen again here

Oxford Symposium - Population, Migration, and the Environment

Invitation to the Oxford Symposium on

Population, Migration, and the Environment 

1-2 August 2016

You are invited to participate in the Oxford Symposium on Population, Migration, and the Environment.

The symposium will be held 1 and 2 August 2016 at the Rothermere American Institute, Oxford, UK.

You are invited to present a paper that encourages the exchange of interdisciplinary ideas about the main themes of the conference: world population increase, human migration, and environmental sustainability.  Alternatively, you may wish to attend as an observer or panel member.

The Symposium seeks to cover a broad agenda that includes disciplines such as economics, education, environmental studies, agriculture, law, political science, religion, and social studies. Topics for presentation may reach beyond these areas, and our website contains an extensive list of suggested topics.

Papers presented at the meeting will be subsequently peer-reviewed by external readers for possible inclusion in Symposium Books or sponsored academic journals.

Please Email Lydia at contact@oxford-population-and-environment-symposium.com if you have questions.

David Moon to speak on Radio New Zealand

David Moon is to be interviewed on the 'Nights' programme on Radio New Zealand about the Network's on-the-ground research on Russian environmental history

The interview will be broadcast live on Wednesday 13th April, at 7.10pm New Zealand time (8.10am UK time)

The programme will then be available online at rnz.co.nz/nights.

50% discount on new book "Cycling and Recycling"

New from Berghahn Books:

CYCLING AND RECYCLING

 Histories of Sustainable Practices

Edited by Ruth Oldenziel and Helmuth Trischler

256 pages, 18 illus., bibliog., index

ISBN  978-1-78238-970-5 $95.00/£60.00

“This book’s conceptual framework is truly innovative and makes a much-needed intervention in the vast literature on sustainability. Writing against the ‘techno-fix mentality’ that dominates so many contemporary environmental discourses, the editors persuasively argue for the need to resurrect ‘older technologies for a new purpose.’” · Edward D. Melillo, Amherst College

In fascinating case studies ranging from the Early Modern secondhand trade to utopian visions of human-powered vehicles, the contributions gathered here explore the historical fortunes of two such technologies—bicycling and waste recycling—tracing their development over time and providing valuable context for the policy successes and failures of today."

To get your 50% discount use the code OLD705 when you buy the book from the website: http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=OldenzielCycling

Oxford Symposium on Population, Migration, and the Environment

Oxford Symposium on Population, Migration, and the Environment

21 and 22 March 2016 

Wadham College, Oxford, UK

We invite you to present a paper that encourages the exchange of interdisciplinary ideas about the main themes of the conference: world population increase, human migration, and environmental sustainability.  Alternatively, you may wish to attend as an observer or panel member.

The Symposium seeks to cover a broad agenda that includes disciplines such as economics, education, environmental studies, agriculture, law, political science, religion, and social studies. Topics for presentation may reach beyond these areas, and our website contains an extensive list of suggested topics.

Papers presented at the meeting will be subsequently peer-reviewed by external readers for possible inclusion in Symposium Books or sponsored academic journals.

Bilingual website on Russian Environmental History

This website is devoted to 

Environmental History in Russia and about Russia. 

It is bilingual, but oriented mostly towards the Russian public. 

It is the creation of:

Andrei Vinogradov (Senior Lecturer in the Dept of History, Elabuga Institute, Kazan’ Federal University); and 

Maxim Mostovenko (Research Associate, Lab for Historical Research, Surgut State Pedagogical University)

2016 Chernobyl Trip

The Leverhulme Network 

Exploring Russia's Environmental History and Natural Resources 

will be visiting Kiev and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone on 

28 June - 2 July 2016 

More details

More outputs from conference "Natural Resources, Landscapes and Climate in Russia and Neighbouring Countries"

Natural Resources, Landscapes and Climate in Russia and Neighbouring Countries

26-28 November 2015

at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg

This conference was organised jointly by the National Research University Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, and the Leverhulme Network "Exploring Russia's Environmental History and Natural Resources".

The following documents are available on the Network website:

Conference programme (final version 24.11.15) conference_programme_natural_resources_final (MS Word , 28kb)

Conference abstract (translated into English by David Moon) conference_abstract (MS Word , 14kb)

Conference Report (in Russian) http://sh.spb.hse.ru/chr/news/170851899.html

Reflections of the conference by David Moon (in English) conference_reflections (MS Word , 16kb)

Student Conference "Useable Pasts" 4-5 Feb, St Petersburg

The Second History Student Conference of Higher School of Economics

USABLE PASTS

February 4-5, 2016

National Research University Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg

deadline for registrations 15 January

History undergraduate and graduate students  are welcome to submit paper proposals for the International History Student Conference ‘Usable Pasts’, organized by Department of History,  National Research University Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg.  It is a part of International Students Forum to be held in NRU HSE, Saint Petersburg on 4-5 February 2016.

The conference aims at exploring the dynamic field of history featuring both the efforts of various disciplines in dealing with the pasts and interdisciplinary approaches within the discipline of history.  The conference embraces a broad variety of research themes, which deal with material objects in history and their meanings within the framework of heritage and memory studies on the one hand, and the politics of circulation of historically formed discourses of identity and legitimacy in present-day society, on the other hand.

-- historical memory and historically-informed discourses of public politics, identity politics nationalism, cultural heritage and nationalization of the past,

-- comparative history of the imperial pasts, imperial diversity and imperial legacy;

-- symbolic representations of history in post-imperial and post-colonial societies,

-- studies of collective trauma and historical justice,

-- cultural, natural and industrial heritage, including public museums, media space, use of nature in
historical narratives and memory;

-- history in interaction with other disciplines: environmental history, history of science, technological history, urban history, economic history, history and law.

The conference will take place in Saint Petersburg on February 4-5, 2016.

The working language of the conference is English.
 
The application should be in English and consists of an extended abstract of the paper (no more than 800 words including references) and an application form.

You can register for the conference, fill the form, and load extended abstract of your paper here:
http://www.hse.ru/pasts/expresspolls/poll/166849955.html
before January 15, 2016
 
You are very welcome to ask questions, sending your queries to the address:
usable.pasts2016@gmail.com
and to Alexandra Bekasova (abekasova@hse.ru)

Conference Report - Natural Resources, Landscapes and Climate in Russia and Neighbouring Countries

A report (in Russian) is now available from the conference

 

Natural Resources, Landscapes and Climate in Russia and Neighbouring Countries

which was held in St Petersburg 26-28 November 2015 and jointly organised by the National Research University Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, and the Network.

http://sh.spb.hse.ru/chr/news/1708518https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4774445939931750905#editor/target=post;postID=263479237229677136099.html