UID:
almafu_9958103472402883
Format:
1 online resource (xiv, 556 p. )
,
ill. ;
ISBN:
0-520-92811-3
,
0-585-25387-0
Content:
While researching Russia's historical efforts to protect nature, Douglas Weiner unearthed unexpected findings: a trail of documents that raised fundamental questions about the Soviet political system. These surprising documents attested to the unlikely survival of a critical-minded, scientist-led movement through the Stalin years and beyond. It appeared that, within scientific societies, alternative visions of land use, resrouce exploitation, habitat protection, and development were sustained and even publicly advocated. In sharp contrast to known Soviet practices, these scientific societies prided themselves on their traditions of free elections, foreign contacts, and a pre-revolutionary heritage.Weiner portrays nature protection activists not as do-or-die resisters to the system, nor as inoffensive do-gooders. Rather, they took advantage of an unpoliced realm of speech and activity and of the patronage by middle-level Soviet officials to struggle for a softer path to development. In the process, they defended independent social and professional identities in the face of a system that sought to impose official models of behavior, ethics, and identity for all. Written in a lively style, this absorbing story tells for the first time how organized participation in nature protection provided an arena for affirming and perpetuating self-generated social identities in the USSR and preserving a counterculture whose legacy survives today.
Note:
Introduction --
,
Chapter 1. Environmental Activism and Social Identity --
,
Chapter 2. Archipelago of Freedom --
,
Chapter 3. The Road to "Liquidation": Conservation in the Postwar Years --
,
Chapter 4. Zapovedniki in Peril, 1948-1950 --
,
Chapter 5. Liquidation: The Second Phase, 1950 --
,
Chapter 6. The Deluge, 1951 --
,
Chapter 7. In the Throes of Crisis: VOOP in Stalin's Last Years --
,
Chapter 8. Death and Purgatory --
,
Chapter 9. VOOP after Stalin: Survival and Decay --
,
Chapter 10. Resurrection --
,
Chapter 11. A Time to Build --
,
Chapter 12. A Time to Meet --
,
Chapter 13. More Trouble in Paradise: Crises of the Zapovedniki in the Khrushchëv Era --
,
Chapter 14. Student Movements: Catalysts for a New Activism --
,
Chapter 15. Three Men in a Boat: VOOP in the Early 1960s --
,
Chapter 16. Storm over Baikal --
,
Chapter 17. Science Doesn't Stand Still --
,
Chapter 18. Environmental Struggles in the Era of Stagnation --
,
Chapter 19. Environmental Activism under Gorbachëv --
,
Conclusion
,
Issued also in print.
Additional Edition:
ISBN 0-520-23213-5
Additional Edition:
ISBN 0-520-21397-1
Language:
English
Subjects:
Natural Sciences
