Propaganda poster. Stalin with map of plans for reforestation

Propaganda poster. Stalin with map of plans for reforestation

Conference reports The Russian Industrial Legacy: The blind faith in big science and technocratic solutions and the absence of a vibrant civil society

“Inheriting the Pandora Box: Environmental Impacts of the Soviet Industrial Legacy”, was a Roundtable arranged May 26, 2021, at the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies at Södertörn University. Here follows a brief summary of the event from the social studies' perspectives, while a longer report from the environmental studies' perspectives also can be found at this website.

Published on balticworlds.com on June 14, 2021

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“Inheriting the Pandora Box: Environmental Impacts of the Soviet Industrial Legacy”, was a Roundtable arranged May 26, 2021, at the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies at Södertörn University. In 2021 a series of roundtables are arranged on the theme USSR 30 Years to discuss and contemplate this period of “afterness” or Post-. Four speakers presented and discussed on this online event. Here follows a brief summary of their contributions and a conclusion from the social studies’ perspectives. For a longer report from the environmental studies’ perspectives, press here.

Russia’s persistence of a scientific, large-scale approach to resource management

Paul Josephson Professor in History, Colby College, Waterville, Main, argued that the Soviet development model was central to the Soviet environmental history, and that Russia continues many of those development practices. From a historical perspective, there is a continuity in the environmental history of Russia, starting with the Tsarist period and going all the way to the early 1920s. Until that point, the question of how to deal with local versus scientific knowledge, how to manage natural resources to fuel social advancement remained open. But in the Stalinist period the dice was cast. Thus, Soviet legacy became all about centralization, collectivization, heavy industrialization and resource extraction. This is clear in the “Hero projects”, successful in bringing social reformation but economically inefficient and environmentally devastating, in the destructive legacy of collectivization and the industrialization of farming for Russian agriculture, in the Stalinist or even the Khrushchevian programs for the transformation of nature. The same goes for the decision to raise nuclear power to an industrial enterprise. Josephson argued that the development of the Arctic today follows the same path, and is characteristic of the persistence of a scientific, large-scale approach to resource management.

The voices of people who were involved in catastrophic environmental events

Next speaker, Anna Barcz Assistant Professor, Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Science, Warsaw, identified a missing element in Soviet environmental history: the perspective of speaking on behalf of the environments, but also the schism inflicted upon people and nature. She suggested revisiting two relevant literary works, in order to construct this narrative, and bring into surface voices of people who were involved in catastrophic environmental events. The first comes from Platonov and was written in the late 1920s. Its uniqueness lies in being both the historical testimony of an engineer who was directly involved in the Stalinist collectivization, but also reflecting attitudes to nature from the pre-Soviet past, loaded with a certain Russian melancholy. But it also shows how language is contaminated by propaganda. The second text, “Chernobyl prayer” is the first that shows the Chernobyl trauma from within, but also the first where people speak on behalf of non-human elements, such as animal victims.

The early 1990s: a period of both cultural and political breakdown

Raised in a family of exiled dissidents far away from civilization, Dmitry Litvinov got involved with Greenpeace already in the late Soviet period and gained a rare first-hand experience of the evolution of the state attitude towards environmental activism. Today he is Campaigner, Greenpeace Sweden. In his speak he argued that Soviet ideas for large scale industrialization at any cost, or the concept of personal sacrifice for the common good, had instilled in the society the idea that the individual doesn’t really matter. Also, the size of the country created the impression of an endless supply of resources, while Siberian indigenous peoples’ spiritual links to nature were completely disregarded. All those elements created a distinct Soviet attitude towards the environment. Dmitry highlighted Chernobyl as the moment when it suddenly became acceptable to be in opposition on environmental grounds. For a brief moment, it seemed that society could go either way: towards civil society, personal agency and a connection to nature or towards apathy and the unimportance of the individual. This happened because the early 1990s were a period of both cultural and political breakdown. That interesting period ended in the early 2000s, with society moving towards a misguided direction, much as a result of the well-known widespread kleptocracy.

A new ecological civilization as antidote to managerialism

The effect of the Soviet environmental legacy was the discreditation of what had seemed to be an alternative to capitalism. This was the opening viewpoint argued by Arran Gare, Associate Professor in Philosophy and Cultural Inquiry, Faculty of Life and Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. The question he then posed was how to overcome this, and the answer, according to him, lies in a new democratic socialism that would oppose not just the neoliberal imposition of markets everywhere, but also managerialism. An answer might lie in China, with Chinese leadership seeking to create a vision to address the global ecological crisis. Gare presumes that this effort is inspired by radical thinkers from the 1920s. In the second part of his presentation, Gare asked how the czarist Russia had developed really good science, including an ecological movement, strongly influenced by German philosophers and proceeded to suggest two hypotheses: First, the Russian version of Orthodox Christianity was more conducive to environmental thinking. Second, there might be something in Russian language being more verbal, allowing for more process-oriented thinking. From these hypotheses, Gare concluded that Russia has the potential to take a leading role in creating this ecological civilization today, as China is. Russia might not have the politicians to do so now, but if one considers the new geopolitical balance that climate change might induce in areas such as the Russian Far East or the Arctic, then Russia might need to play this civilizational role.

The development of a mechanical view of the world in the West

In the discussion that followed, Litvinov brought up the close association between consumerism and neoliberalism: Could Russia, with its rather short exposure to neoliberal consumerism, teach Western neoliberal regimes something? Gare agreed that Russia has a longer tradition of rejecting consumerism, but offering a new civilizational paradigm is not realistic if one considers Russian politics and environmental attitudes today. Barzc added that events such as Chernobyl demonstrated the desire of people to speak out and own their language indeed, and although this might echo a certain cultural and philosophical tradition, she would be hesitant to essentialize it as a Russian trait. She noted the Soviet legacy has been somehow trapped in divisions such as West and East or the Cold War lines, although it has become unclear what a Cold War today really means. Josephson agreed that one should not assume any uniqueness of Russian culture in regards to nature and argued that the Cold War divisions today are rather to be found between the universal divide between the dominant culture and the local cultures, in the urban-rural divide. To him the major problem today is the blind faith in big science and technocratic solutions. Gare extended this to the development of a mechanical view of the world in the West in the centuries following the fall of Byzantium in the East, bringing up Orthodox Christianity into the discussion. This has something to say about science replacing religion, or about the prevalent managerialism today.

Coming back to the Soviet experience, Litvinov added that the subservience of the individual to the collective is the root of the absence of a vibrant civil society in Russia today: Russia functioning for the benefit of a few is built upon a certain ideology, which extends to the centralized control of energy resources and, eventually, the rejection of energy transition in the foreseeable future. A final topic discussed was the tendency in the West, and especially Scandinavia, towards placing the responsibility for the environment on the individual, as part of the present consumerist paradigm. With regards to similar environmental discourses in post-Soviet areas, Josephson added that there are interesting discussions but do not offer something unique. Litvinov agreed, adding that the idea of individual responsibility for the common good remains quite foreign in Russia. But rather than a rejection of the consumerist paradigm, it reflects the disconnect between individual and society and a lack of feeling of agency.