A little corner of freedom : Russian nature protection from Stalin to Gorbachëv / Douglas R. Weiner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weiner, Douglas R., 1951-

Contributor:

American Council of Learned Societies.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Environmentalism--Soviet Union--History.

Environmentalism.

Environmentalism--Former Soviet republics--History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 556 p. ) ill. ;

Other Title:

Russian nature protection from Stalin to Gorbachëv

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, Calif. : University of California Press, c1999.

Summary:

While researching Russia's historical efforts to protect nature, Douglas Weiner unearthed unexpected findings: a trail of documents that raised fundamental questions about the Soviet political system. These surprising documents attested to the unlikely survival of a critical-minded, scientist-led movement through the Stalin years and beyond. It appeared that, within scientific societies, alternative visions of land use, resrouce exploitation, habitat protection, and development were sustained and even publicly advocated. In sharp contrast to known Soviet practices, these scientific societies prided themselves on their traditions of free elections, foreign contacts, and a pre-revolutionary heritage.Weiner portrays nature protection activists not as do-or-die resisters to the system, nor as inoffensive do-gooders. Rather, they took advantage of an unpoliced realm of speech and activity and of the patronage by middle-level Soviet officials to struggle for a softer path to development. In the process, they defended independent social and professional identities in the face of a system that sought to impose official models of behavior, ethics, and identity for all. Written in a lively style, this absorbing story tells for the first time how organized participation in nature protection provided an arena for affirming and perpetuating self-generated social identities in the USSR and preserving a counterculture whose legacy survives today.

Contents:

Introduction

Chapter 1. Environmental Activism and Social Identity

Chapter 2. Archipelago of Freedom

Chapter 3. The Road to "Liquidation": Conservation in the Postwar Years

Chapter 4. Zapovedniki in Peril, 1948-1950

Chapter 5. Liquidation: The Second Phase, 1950

Chapter 6. The Deluge, 1951

Chapter 7. In the Throes of Crisis: VOOP in Stalin's Last Years

Chapter 8. Death and Purgatory

Chapter 9. VOOP after Stalin: Survival and Decay

Chapter 10. Resurrection

Chapter 11. A Time to Build

Chapter 12. A Time to Meet

Chapter 13. More Trouble in Paradise: Crises of the Zapovedniki in the Khrushchëv Era

Chapter 14. Student Movements: Catalysts for a New Activism

Chapter 15. Three Men in a Boat: VOOP in the Early 1960s

Chapter 16. Storm over Baikal

Chapter 17. Science Doesn't Stand Still

Chapter 18. Environmental Struggles in the Era of Stagnation

Chapter 19. Environmental Activism under Gorbachëv

Conclusion

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 451-527) and index.

ISBN:

9780520928114

0520928113

9780585253879

0585253870

OCLC:

1414456016

Publisher Number:

2027/heb05308 hdl