Howard E. Woodin ES Colloquium Series

“Environment and Power in the Soviet Arctic” by Andy Bruno, Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Faculty Associate in Environmental Studies, Northern Illinois University.

During the twentieth century, the Soviet Union turned the Kola Peninsula in the northwest corner of the country into one of the most populated, industrialized, militarized, and polluted parts of the Arctic. This transformation suggests, above all, that environmental relations fundamentally shaped the Soviet experience. Environmental interactions both enabled industrial livelihoods and curtailed socialist promises. By treating the natural world as a participant in the communist project, this talk will counter the notion that the Soviets simply conquered the north. While Soviet power remade nature, nature also remade Soviet power.