‘We are going to be back later than
I said’, I heard my host, Andrei, saying to his wife on the phone in the back
of the car driving me from the airport at Kazan’ (500 miles east of Moscow) to Elabuga (a further
130 miles east). I had been invited to speak at a conference on Russian
environmental history at the Elabuga Institute, part of Kazan’ Federal
University. I was on the last leg of my journey from York, which started the
previous evening after a full day’s teaching. We were delayed by our driver’s
belated decision to observe the speed limit (after being relieved of 500
roubles by zealous traffic police), a dense fog of the sort Russians associate
with ‘foggy [tumanyi] Albion’ and
sand blowing from the sides of the road, which cut our visibility to a few
yards as we were travelling through the dark, and road works.
It was well worth the journey.
Together with an American historian, Stephen Brain from Mississippi State
University, I spent the first day giving a series of lectures on aspects of
Russia’s environmental history to students. We lectured in English with
interpreters, sparing the students the ordeal of listening to me speaking
Russian with a west midlands accent, but for immediacy of communication, we did
the questions and answers in Russian. I was impressed by the students’
questions and interest in what we, as a British and an American scholar,
thought about their country. Although we were in Russia, Kazan’ and Elabuga are
in the autonomous republic of Tatarstan. Conquered by Ivan the Terrible in the
1550s, Tatarstan has its own distinctive history and a mixed population of
Russians, Tatars and other ethnic groups, Orthodox churches and mosques, and
statues of Russian, Tatar, and Volga Bulgar historic figures.
On the second morning our hosts had
organised a tour for all attending the conference, including historic locations
in the city dating back to its medieval past as a Bulgar and Tatar city as well
as its more recent history as an important commercial centre in the nineteenth
century. For me, the highlight was a visit to the
Lower Kama National Park,
just outside the city, expertly guided by the park’s head of research, Rinur
Bekmansurov. The grey, overcast November weather could not conceal the majestic
pine forests which go right up to the steep bank of the Kama river, from where
we had panoramic views. The forests of the lower Kama were immortalized, as
images of typical Russian landscape, by the artist Ivan Shishkin in the late
nineteenth century. Our guide pointed out the locations where Shiskhin had
painted some of his pictures, and later presented a formal paper on this at the
conference. One of Shishkin’s most famous, ‘
Morning in a Pine Forest’ is of
bear cubs playing in a forest. Shishkin and his landscapes are very familiar to
me. I have used them in my teaching, referred to them in my writings (including
one of my lectures to the students the previous day), and even have prints of
two of his paintings on my walls at home. And yet, until I was invited to the
conference, I had not been aware that he was from Elabuga.
 |
| Nizhnekamsk national park: Krasnaya
Gorka, overlooking the Kama River. |
The conference was an intense two
and a half days of lectures, round-table discussions, and papers, interspersed
with meetings with the Director of the Institute, representatives of the
Tatarstan Ministry of the Environment, and ad hoc interviews with journalists
from the student and local media.
The conference was a wonderful
opportunity to meet specialists on the environmental history of Russia from all
over Russia. I knew only one of the Russian scholars: Julia Lajus from St
Petersburg, who I have known for about a decade and is a member of our
Leverhulme international network on Russia’s environmental history. I was very pleased, therefore, to have the
chance to meet other Russian specialists in our field. The Elabuga Institute
has long-standing expertise in environmental history. Our host and the
conference organiser, Andrei Vinogradov, spoke about his research on pollution
caused by the chemical industry in the region and also the settlement of
Tatarstan. Like many younger scholars, he is building an impressive track
record of research, publication, and engagement with partners outside the
academic world and international contacts. His former supervisor, Professor
Aidar Kalimullin, spoke about his work on urban environmental history. It is
unfair to single out participants, but I was impressed by a group comprising
Professor Evgenii Gololubov and two younger scholars, Julia Prikhodko and
Maksim Mostovenko from Surgut State Pedagogical University in western Siberia,
who I would not otherwise have met and with whom I have maintained contact with since my
return. Galina Lyubimova, from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of
the Russian Academy Sciences in Novosibirsk, gave a fascinating paper on
peasant manuscript sources on environmental consciousness. There were also
interesting papers by scholars from the regions around Tatarstan, which
focussed on conservation projects as well as more historical topics. I was also
very pleased to meet a Ukrainian scholar, Anna Olenenko, who had travelled all
the way from Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine. She is keen to develop
environmental history in Ukraine and to build collaborative links with Russian
scholars despite the difficult international situation.
Thus, at least as important as the
formal part of the conference were the informal contacts I made, which are
already bearing fruit, and were cemented over dinner and a beer or two every
evening in a cafe.
David giving his presentation to a plenary
session of the conference
