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Comrade Yenisei: Soviet Development and the Siberian River, Intertwined

22. Januar 2025 | 16:00 MEZ | Online

Vortrag von Mariia Koskina (University of Cambridge)
Kommentar von Artemy Kalinovsky (Temple University)

Das ESEH Online-Seminar in Umweltsgeschichte ist von Anna Mazanik und Mariia Koskina organisiert.

The presentation explores the twists and turns of Soviet development in Siberia from the 1950s onwards. It focuses on the zones of contact between the state, the people, and nature in the Yenisei River valley: a mega dam (built in 1956-1972), its reservoir, a nearby city, villages, and a nature reserve. Since the Russian colonial conquest, Siberian rivers have served as “truth-spots,” unveiling the intricacies of environmentality – power hierarchies co-produced with resource exploration, use, and management. Soviet authorities aimed to mold the Soviet people and Soviet space in Siberia through the transformation of local nature and landscape. Mariia Koskina’s research reveals how people’s relationships with the environment were shaped both through and against state industrial programs, transcending the dichotomy of exploitation versus protection. Nature influenced Soviet development and subjectivity. It amplified the state’s power through energy production and hindered it with extreme weather, seasonal floods, and mosquito attacks. Workers viewed the Yenisei as a fellow proletarian, acquiring a distinct, “organic” identity, tempered by natural forces, that of Siberians.

Mariia Koskina is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for History and Economics at the University of Cambridge, specializing in the environmental history of Russia and the USSR. Mariia earned her PhD from Binghamton University in 2023. Her ongoing book project examines the transformation of the Yenisei River under Soviet development. She is also pursuing a project on the history of Soviet glaciology in Central Asia, with a focus on Kazakhstan.

Artemy Kalinovsky is a professor of integrative knowledge at the College of Liberal Arts, Temple University. He is the author of A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Harvard University Press, 2011),  Laboratory of Socialist Development: Cold War Politics and Decolonization in Soviet Tajikistan (Cornell University Press, 2018) and the co-editor of Alternative globalizations. Eastern Europe and the Postcolonial World, with Steffi Marung and James Mark (Indiana University Press, 2020).

Arbeitssprache: Englisch

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OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Maria Tschassowskaja (21. Januar 2025). Comrade Yenisei: Soviet Development and the Siberian River, Intertwined. Max Weber Netzwerk Osteuropa. Abgerufen am 9. Februar 2026 von https://mwsosteuropa.hypotheses.org/8140


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