Abstract
Shaw, D.J.B., ‘The Subarctic: a Classic Study of the Tundra’, Workshop sponsored by the Rachel Carson Centre (Munich) and German Institute, Frost, Ice, and Snow: Cold Climate in Russian History, German Historical Institute, Moscow, February 2012
A.A. Grigor’ev’s classic study, The Subarctic (Subarktika, Izd. Akademii nauk SSSR, Moscow-Leningrad, 1946) was part of a series of works by the author entitled ‘Descriptions of the Characteristics of the Basic Types of Physico-Geographical Environment’. As the author states in the introduction, work for the first three studies, on the equatorial, tropical and arctic belts, and the introductory parts of the studies on the Subarctic and temperate belts, had been completed before the war and all this work was subsequently published in the series ‘Problems of Physical Geography’. Work on the Subarctic, however, was seriously delayed by the war, but what subsequently emerged was much longer than its companion studies and was eventually recognised as a classic study in its field. One reason for this additional length is emphasized by Grigor’ev when he states that, since most of the Subarctic region lies within the territory of the USSR, an extended study is important for both scientific and practical reasons.
A.A. Grigor’ev was Director of the Academy of Sciences Institute of Geography from its foundation early in the Soviet period until 1951. After an early period in his career when he flirted with economic (socio-economic) geography, he switched his allegiance to physical geography where he quickly established a reputation for his studies of the natural environment. Like other Russian and Soviet physical geographers of the day, but unlike most Western geographers who tended to specialize, his approach was ‘holistic’, viewing the geographical environment as a series of interdependent and interlinked elements which can only be understood in an interlinked way. The purpose of the series of which The Subarctic was a part was to attempt to provide an overall description of the different physical environments on the earth’s surface from which an overall theoretical understanding of the laws governing the environment might emerge. Grigor’ev’s particular theoretical contribution to these studies was the concept of ‘the single (unified) physical-geographical process’ which was an attempt to characterise each physical-geographical region as endowed with one specific ‘process’. Central to this idea was the notion of the earth’s heat and moisture balance, a concept which goes back to the Russian geographer and meteorologist, A. I. Voeikov. Since the early 1930s Grigor’ev had been arguing that his approach was the only scientifically, (and thus ideologically) correct way of studying the environment rather than the prevailing concept of landscape science. It is the ‘single physical-geographical process’ idea which underpins The Subarctic.
The paper considers the specific contribution which The Subarctic made to studies of the tundra regions both from a theoretical and a practical perspective. Some comparisons with contemporary Western studies are also made. From an international perspective, some light is thrown on the question of how far Soviet science was a pioneer in studies of the tundra environment.