Annual Report 2011-2012

The USSR and its contribution to global environmental scientific understanding and policy prescription, 1945-1991 

ESRC award reference number: RES-062-23-1734

Jon Oldfield, University of Glasgow, UK
Denis Shaw, University of Birmingham, UK

Brief overview of activities

 Library work continued in London, Helsinki and St. Petersburg. Progress was made in 3 specific areas:

  1. the involvement of Soviet geographers in the development and subsequent evaluation of the Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature.
  2. broader work concerning the role of Soviet geographers in theorising society-nature interaction with a specific focus on the burgeoning work in this specific area during the 1960s and 1970s.
  3. the work of A.A. Grigor’ev related to the single physical-geographical process (and particularly his work concerning the Subarctic) and related later work advanced by I.P Gerasimov and M.I. Budyko, concerning heat-water balances at the earth’s surface.
  4. linked to (3), conceptualisations of climate change amongst Soviet geographers. This work has focussed primarily on the early post-1945 period documenting both technical understanding as well as growing awareness of the deleterious influence of human activity.

Conference activity

Preparations have been made for conference activity in 2012 and will include involvement in:

Workshop sponsored by the Rachel Carson Center, University of Munich, “Frost, Ice, and Snow: Cold Climate in Russian History,” Moscow
(further information: http://www.carsoncenter.uni-muenchen.de/events_conf_seminars/calendar/2012-02-16/index.html)

  •  Jon Oldfield, Conceptualisations of climate and climate change amongst Soviet geographers, 1945-1960s.
  • Denis Shaw, The Subarctic: a Classic Study of the Tundra

BASEES 2012 annual conference
3 linked panels have been established for BASEES 2012 and include:

  • Mobility, Circulation, and Exchange in the Long Eighteenth Century
  • Science in 19th century Russia - regional, national and transnational exchange
  • A final panel involving Oldfield, Shaw and Julia Lajus devoted to, Soviet understandings of climate change.  

Writing activities

Finished papers:

  • Oldfield, J and Shaw, DJB, V.I. Vernadskii and the development of biogeochemical understandings of the biosphere, circa 1880s-1968, forthcoming in the British Journal for the History of Science

Papers in preparation:

  • Paper exploring the role of Soviet geographers in the development and assessment of the Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature;
  • Paper exploring the early debates within Soviet geography and related disciplinary fields concerning climate change.

Book:

  • Oldfield, J and Shaw, DJB, provisional title: Russian Environmental Thought, 1880-1991, contract with Routledge, provisional publication date 2012/13.

The work on this book is also underpinned by work being carried out on the AHRC-funded project: ‘The Landscape Concept in Russian Scientific Thought, c1880s – 1991.’