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Environmental Subjectivities from the Soviet North

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2019

Andy Bruno
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Abstract

This article develops the concept of “Soviet environmental subjectivity.” Taking a theoretical step toward comparative political ecology and neo-materialism, it makes the case that engagement with the natural environment comprised a potent, but underappreciated, determinant of Soviet subjectivity. To elaborate this argument, the article examines the life stories of three individuals who spent time in a common region in the far north: ornithologist Oleg Semenov-Tian-Shanskii, geologist Leonid Potemkin, and aspiring ballerina turned technician and prisoner Inna Tartakovskaia. Their lives reveal certain distinguishing features of Soviet environmental subjectivities, including a common desire to both exploit and protect the environment and a tendency for the state's punitive use of harsh natural conditions to alter subjective experiences. Furthermore, the very different paths of these individuals—one became an environmentalist, one defended the Soviet treatment of the natural world, and one did not actively engage in environmental politics—indicate the possible pervasiveness of environmental subjectivities in the Soviet Union.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 78 , Issue 1 , Spring 2019 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2019 

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Footnotes

This work has benefited from many eyes and much support. I would like to thank Anatoly Pinsky, Alexey Golubov, Francine Hirsch, Kathryn Ciancia, David McDonald, Piotr Puchalski, Karen Petrone, Harriet Murav, Sarah Frohardt-Lane, and the participants in the Midwest Russian History Workshop in March 2017 for their feedback on this work. Various pieces of this research and writing occurred over a long time period. Therefore, I would like to acknowledge the generous funding from the Fulbright Program, the Social Science Research Council, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the German Historical Institute, the National Science Foundation (NSF ARC 0922651), Florida State University, the University of Tübingen, Northern Illinois University, and a Fellowship in Aerospace History from the History of Science Society and the National Aeronautical and Space Administration.

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68. GARF, f. 10174, op. 1, d. 58, l. 68.

69. GARF, f. 10174, op. 1, d. 40, l. 5.

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71. Potemkin, Okhrana nedr i okruzhaiushchei prirody, 196.

72. Ibid., 8.

73. Ibid., 162.

74. Ibid., 166.

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79. Tartakovskaia, “Nachalo,” in Rakov, ed., Khibinskie Klady, 63; I. L. Tartakovskaia, “Fersman i Kondrikov,” Zhivaia Arktika, no. 1 (October 2001): 35.

80. Tartakovskaia, “Nachalo,” in Rakov, ed., Khibinskie Klady, 64.

81. “Boi za nikeĺ,” Monchegorskii rabochii (September 18, 1986), 4.

82. “Boi za nikeĺ,” Monchegorskii Rabochii (September 23, 1986), 3–4.

83. “Boi za nikeĺ,” Monchegorskii rabochii (September 11, 1986), 3.

84. Tartakovskaia, “Nachalo,” in Rakov, ed., Khibinskie Klady, 62.

85. Sergei Tararaksin, Sudeb sgorevshikh ochertańe (Murmansk, 2006), 81–90.

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87. Ibid., 137–39.

88. Ibid.; “Zhertvy politicheskogo terror SSSR,” Memorial, at, http://lists.memo.ru/d32/f109.htm (last accessed August 20, 2018). Tartakovskaia recalled bravely crying “aren’t you ashamed” at the sentencing agent when learning this fate.

89. Varlam Shalamov, Kolymskie rasskazy (London, 1978), 94.

90. “Boi za nikeĺ,” Monchegorskii rabochii, September 18, 1986, 4.

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