Burning swamps : peat and the forgotten margins of Russia's fossil economy / Katja Bruisch, Trinity College Dublin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bruisch, Katja, Author.

Series:

Studies in environment and history.

Studies in environment and history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Peat bogs--Russia (Federation).

Peat bogs.

Peat industry--Russia (Federation)--History.

Peat industry.

Fossil fuels--Economic aspects--Russia (Federation).

Fossil fuels.

Environmental degradation--Russia (Federation).

Environmental degradation.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 271 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2025.

Summary:

This groundbreaking environmental history recounts the story of Russia's fossil economy from its margins. Unpacking the forgotten history of how peat fuelled manufacturing industries and power plants in late Imperial and Soviet Russia, Katja Bruisch provides a corrective to more familiar historical narratives dominated by coal, oil, and gas. Attentive to the intertwined histories of matter and labor during a century of industrial peat extraction, she offers a fresh perspective on the modern Russian economy that moves beyond the socialism/capitalism binary. By identifying peat extraction in modern Russia as a crucial chapter in the degradation of the world's peatlands, Bruisch makes a compelling case for paying attention to seemingly marginal places, people, and resources as we tell the histories of the planetary emergency.

Contents:

Part 1. Promising Environments: Material Premises of Growth and Power

Part 2. Working Environments: Extraction and the Making of Place

Part 3. Unsettling Environmets: Threat, Loss and Precarity in Russia's Peatlands

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 15 Sep 2025).

ISBN:

1-009-60312-4

1-009-60313-2

1-009-60309-4