Natural Resources in the History of Russia: Economic
Institutes, Communities of Experts, and Infrastructures.
Julia Lajus and team, HSE, St Petersburg
The
proposed project will make a significant contribution to the growing
international scholarship in environmental history from a European as well as a
global perspective. The environmental history of Russia will be analysed within
an interdisciplinary framework incorporating a range of fields from across the
humanities and social sciences. The project is directed towards the radical
advancement of current academic narratives concerning the history of Russia
with specific reference to the problems of natural resource use, climate
processes, and perceptions and constructions of nature, resources and landscapes.
New knowledge which will be gained as a result of the collaborative work of
historians who all specialize in the environmental and technological history of
Russia, will enhance significantly our understanding of the processes of
interaction between people and nature in the past and facilitate the
incorporation of such understanding within contemporary political and
decision-making processes concerning the rational use of nature and of natural
resources.
This
knowledge about past events has the potential to inform and shape contemporary
understanding and associated policy decision-making and address issues of path
dependency. Indeed, modern research in environmental history consistently
demonstrates that the past which is revealed and analysed using the methodology
of environmental history is one of the leading examples of what can be termed
the ‘usable past’ i.e. knowledge and understanding of the past which has a
practical relevance for addressing contemporary problems.
The
project will combine rigorous data collection and analysis of historical
sources with the latest theoretical ideas in the field of environmental history
thus representing a novel and substantial contribution to the disciplinary
area.
Analysis
of the relationship between society and nature in historical perspective forms
a core area of research in the field of environmental history. This direction
of historical studies has emerged as a well-defined and innovative sub
discipline of history during the last 20 years and is rapidly developing.
However, in Russia this area of historical research remains limited in its
development and little studied by professional historians. Traditional
divisions between scientific disciplines in Soviet and post-Soviet science, the
emphasis places on traditions in knowledge production, and the reproduction of
scientific schools – all these trends facilitate the amplification of
traditional fields of history at the expenses of new developments. This leads
to a situation where the history of resource use as well as the history of our
perception of nature, landscapes, and even climate history have been pushed to
the periphery of historical research and typically merged with historical
geography, which in the context of Russian historical scholarship is considered
as a subsidiary discipline.
However,
for those who are involved in responsible decision-making in the political and
economic sphere related to use of natural resources and landscape management,
an understanding of the changing relationship between society and nature over
time is of considerable value: How did technologies mediate this relationship?
What issues emerged as a consequence of society-nature interaction? How were
such consequences managed?. This knowledge about past events has the potential
to inform and shape contemporary understanding and associated policy
decision-making and address issues of path dependency. Indeed, modern research
in environmental history consistently demonstrates that the past which is
revealed and analysed using the methodology of environmental history is one of
the leading examples of what can be termed the ‘usable past’ i.e. knowledge and
understanding of the past which has a practical relevance for addressing
contemporary problems.
At the
moment search for new approaches to the study of the past are actual as never
before. Russia is looking for its place in the changing world and is referring
to the past basing its identity on the meanings and ideas found and accepted
from this past. That’s why it is so important to renew powerful instruments of
historical research and analysis. Meanwhile enormous massive of historical data
existing now includes implicitly a plenty of context linked to the problems of
interaction between the society and the natural resources. The new component of
historical analysis connected to the research of the history of this
interaction will create new possibilities of understanding of the past as it
makes the understanding of the history of our country far more complete and
multidimensional. Consequently the prognosis for further development will
become more fundamental and efficient.
This is
especially important today when Russia, like many other countries, obviously
approaches to the next crossroads in the economic development when the further
growth depends to a great extent from our understanding and mastering the rules
of life on this planet which is obviously not fare from the limits of its
potential (planetary boundaries). This is directly connected to the global
environmental changes in particular conditioned by the climate change. It is
especially necessary to stress that our research will be focused predominantly
on the key moments of the Russian history when the changes of interrelations
between the society and the environment were very fast. The further comparative
research in the competence of the environmental history to the other
historical processes will open the possibility to achieve a new level of
understanding on the reasons and consequences in the history of Russia and will
make the perspectives more clear.
The
objective of the proposed project is twofold: first, to study the environmental
history of Russia and Soviet Union from 17th Century until 1991 from an
interdisciplinary perspective (combining environmental history with economic
and technological history, institutional analysis, the history of
science, political sciences, especially geopolitics, and cultural history) and
second, to create a strong, robust and long-term network of historians
specialized in environmental history and with a focus on Russia.
The
scientific agenda is built up around the following main axes:
-
the
circulation of knowledge including the role of expert cultures, foreign
academic cultures and new scientific disciplines which have influenced the
construction of knowledge about the environment from the 17th Century until the
end of the Cold War.
-
changing
perceptions of the environment and its economic, social and cultural impact
incorporating the observation and measurement of Nature and natural processes
as well as the utilization and management of natural resources (including areas
such as urban planning, pulp and paper production and mining industries.)
-
the role
of economic institutes of different level in environmental history.
-
the creation
and evolution of infrastructures, necessary for examining and using natural
resources by various actors, i.e. as developing research facilities, industrial
mechanisms, etc.
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