The Development of Russian Environmental Thought: Scientific and
Geographical Perspectives on the Natural Environment
Jonathan D Oldfield
and Denis J B Shaw
Routledge, London,
2016.
‘This book provides a comprehensive overview of the very
rich thinking about environmental issues which have grown up in Russia since
the nineteenth century, a body of knowledge and thought which is not well known
to Western scholars and environmentalists. It shows how in the late nineteenth
century there emerged in Russia distinct and strongly articulated
representations of the earth’s physical systems within many branches of the
natural sciences, representations which typically emphasized the completely
integrated nature of natural systems. It stresses the importance in these
developments of V. V. Dokuchaev who significantly advanced the field of soil science. It goes on to discuss how this distinctly Russian approach to the
environment developed further through the work of geographers and other
environmental scientists down to the late Soviet period.’
