Nature and Industry in Late State Socialism. A History of Soviet Forests

About the event

The presentation is based on the forthcoming book The Green Power of Socialism (MIT Press, 2024). It examines the relationship between nature and humans under state socialism by looking at the industrial role of Soviet forests. The book explores evolving Soviet policies of wood consumption, discussing how professionals working in the forestry industry of the Soviet state envisaged the present and future of forests, perceiving them both as a natural resource and a trove of industrial material. Looking at the materiality of Soviet industry through forests and wood, this work demonstrates how, paradoxically, industrial ecology emerged and developed as a by-product of the Soviet industrialization project. Emphasizing the technological and environmental impacts of the Cold War, the book critically reconsiders two explanatory models which have become dominant in historiography of Soviet approaches to nature over the last decades – ecocide and environmentalism. It extends beyond these polarized characterizations to show that under state socialism, concern over the environment arose due to industrial priorities of the modernizing state, giving birth to an industrially embedded ecology. Within the context of the current environmental crisis, the book invites readers to re-evaluate state socialism as a complex phenomenon with sophisticated interactions between nature and industry. In so doing, it contributes a fresh perspective on the activities of socialist experts and their view of nature, shedding light on Soviet state industrial and environmental policy and its continuing legacy in the present day. 

Presenter

Elena Kochetkova is a historian of the environment, technology, economy and state socialism. Currently, she is an Associate Professor in Modern European Economic History at the Department of Archeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion at the University of Bergen. She served as a Secretary of the European Society of Environmental History in 2019-2021. Among her publications are articles in leading international journals, such as Technology and Culture, Environment and History, Contemporary European History, Journal of Contemporary History, among others. 

Reading

Cheng Li and Yanjun Liu, ‘Selling Forestry Revolution: The Rhetoric of AfforestationinSocialist China, 1949–61,’ Environmental History 25, no. 1 (January 2020): 62–84. 

Organizer

KLIMER

NB: External guests should register with Ada Arendt.