Eurasian Environments: Nature and Ecology in Imperial Russian and Soviet History ed. by Nicholas B. Breyfogle (review)

This edited collection picks up effectively on a range of trends that have emerged within Russian/Soviet environmental history and cognate areas during the last decade or so. At a general level, it aims to move away from the relatively restricted interpretations of Soviet environmental history that tended to dominate Western scholarship during the 1990s and early 2000s. In doing so, it showcases a range of alternative avenues for investigation and further analysis, gathering an internationally diverse group of academics to explore nature—society interactions and associated conceptualizations within imperial Russia and the Soviet Union.

In his introduction, Breyfogle suggests that the various contributions help to contextualize and analyze the changing character of nature-society interactions during the last 200 years or more of Russian and Soviet history. Furthermore, he argues that they also assist in highlighting the associated shifts in "understandings of 'nature'" during this period. As in any edited collection, the various contributions differ in style and effectiveness. Nevertheless, taken together, the fourteen substantive chapters ably advance a nuanced and at times divergent picture of the multiple ways in which Russian and Soviet society mingled with the natural world. In order to further this agenda, the volume is divided into five main parts structured by the region's main biophysical features and environments, in addition to a section dedicated to the interplay between health and disease.

A number of interesting themes can be distilled from the various contributions. First is a moderated and critical approach to the longstanding scholarly interest in Soviet prometheanism. Although the scale and destructive power of the Soviet project is clearly evident within many of the chapters, the authors generally acknowledge that it was not part of a blind descent into the ecological abyss but a consequence of the complex interplay between society—nature factors. Moreover, the Soviet regime was not devoid of its own environmental reflexivity, elements of which emerge repeatedly and in different forms within the different chapters. Second, many of the contributions emphasize the ongoing process during the last couple of centuries of "getting to know" the Russian and Soviet environments and the complexity of the natural processes at work across the vast Russian landmass.

Third, several of the chapters draw attention to the negotiated process at the heart of nature—society interaction. The chapters by Andy Bruno and Pey-Yi Chu are particularly effective in this regard. Bruno dwells on industrial development in northeastern Russia during the early Soviet period, and Chu reflects on Soviet engagement with the country's extensive permafrost regions. What emerges from their analysis is, among other things, the multiple ways in which Soviet nature forced adaptive measures within Soviet society to permit production and construction activities to progress. As Christian Teichman and Lisa K. Walker underline in their respective chapters about water issues and mosquitoes in modern-day Central Asia, openness to the persistent agency of the natural world helps to highlight the often "improvisational nature of the Soviet project" (282).

Fourth, a number of the chapters highlight the tensions between the Russian/Soviet state and the local population in the pursuit of a management system for environmental resources. Such tensions were observable most clearly in the Central Asian region where the large-scale water management efforts of the state met the seemingly petty resistance of local peoples (for example, the chapters by Teichmann and Julia Obertreis). They were also apparent in the Russian north where local knowledge of fisheries repeatedly intermingled with, and undermined, the scientific approach of the state. Julia Lajus' chapter concerning the northern fisheries highlights the problems of championing differing knowledges, regardless of their origin, given the pressures in a rapidly developing country that can demand a melding of insights and understandings in order to manage a given resource.

In short, the volume has significant value in pushing ahead the noted broader agenda linked to the advancement of a critical Russian...