An Environmental History of the Russian Steppes, c.1700-c.1914

The principal subject is the interaction between human societies and environments over time when people move from one type of natural environment to another, thereby encountering unfamiliar conditions. Such encounters have recurred over human history, and were common during the period of European overseas empires. Europeans migrated to distant parts of the globe and in many cases tried to transplant their ways of life, such as European-style agriculture, to new lands, with varying results. The main focus of this research is a major agricultural region which has not received due attention from environmental historians: the Russian steppes. The steppes were settled by farmers from central and northern Russia and Ukraine, and also from central Europe, over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They displaced the nomadic population; arable farming replaced pastoralism as the mainstay of the economy; and the farmers changed the face of the land by ploughing up the grassland, sowing cereals, and felling much of the small areas of woodland. Over the following decades, there were waves of anxiety over increasing soil erosion, dust storms (similar to those on the American plains in the 1930s), and droughts and crop failures that seemed to recur ever more frequently.

The Russian government and developing scientific community subjected the steppe region to serious study from the early stages of agricultural settlement. In the late eighteenth century the Russian Academy of Sciences dispatched expeditions, led mostly by German or German-trained naturalists, to the steppes and beyond, which produced detailed studies. Over the nineteenth century, Russian science developed and produced scientists of international importance, such as pioneering soil scientist Vasilii Dokuchaev (1846-1903). Dokuchaev and his colleagues engaged in further detailed study of the steppe environment. Scientists sought to distinguish between human-induced and natural environmental change. On the basis of these studies, the authorities, agricultural societies, and farmers developed ways to promote sustainable agriculture in the steppe environment. They planted trees in the hope of mitigating the semi-arid climate, introduced irrigation, and developed ways of working the land that conserved the scarce moisture.

The key aim is to reconstruct the unfolding understanding among contemporaries of the processes of environmental change that the farmers were involved in. This is to be achieved by analysis of contemporary sources produced by natural scientists, officials, the local population, and the educated public. A further aim is to place the Russian experience on the steppes in a global perspective, thus making contributions to Russian, environmental, and global history. Conducting the research will enable the researcher to develop a methodological approach drawing on traditional historical analysis of primary sources, the approaches of different branches of history, including social history and history of science, geography, and natural sciences. Furthermore, the methodology incorporates fieldwork in nature reserves. Promoting existing links between scholars working on related subjects in UK, Russia and elsewhere in the world is an additional aim. In terms of outputs, the aims are to produce a monograph under contract to OUP, three papers for seminars or conferences in Russia, UK, and Finland, a podcast for an established environmental history website, and an article for a popular history journal.

The research would be undertaken on trips to St Petersburg, Russia, and Helsinki, Finland, to work in archives and libraries and meet specialists. A field trip would be undertaken to the most important nature reserve on steppes, Askania Nova, Ukraine, where the researcher would explore the reserve and engage with scientists. The rest of the fellowship would be spent in Durham analyzing the findings from the research and field trips and writing.

The immediate beneficiaries from this research include the academic beneficiaries listed elsewhere in this application in the fields of the environmental history and geography of Russia, more broadly in various branches of history, including environmental history, social history, history of science and global history, geography, Russian and E. European Studies, and environmental sciences.

In the medium and longer term this research can potentially benefit a wider group, including stakeholders engaged in nature conservation and in researching and managing the environment in the UK and internationally at the present time, as well as the general public.

The research could benefit this wider group in a number of ways:

- The Russian experience of seeking to understand how an environment changed over time in part as a consequence of activities by migrants familiar with quite different environmental conditions offers a useful and instructive comparison when considering changes of resource use in other environments;

- Likewise, the Russian experience of seeking to differentiate between human-induced and natural factors in environmental change offers a reminder from another part of the globe of both the importance of taking account of all causes of environmental change and the difficulty in doing so. The current controversy over the causes of climate change offers a salutary reminder of the need for effective communication of the findings of scientific research to other stakeholders and the wider public;

- The Russian/Ukrainian experience of nature conservation, moreover, has made an important contribution to the theory and practice of conservation worldwide. The principle of 'inviolable management' of nature reserves from which all human activity except scientific research was excluded, established in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century, to some extent anticipated the principles of the worldwide network of UNESCO Biosphere Reserves, which includes the Askania Nova reserve in Ukraine which the investigator plans to visit. While the theory and practice of conservation has changed over time as a result of developments in natural sciences and the engagement of scientists with the wider societies of which they are a part, the Russian/Ukrainian experience again offers useful comparisons for considering policies in the UK and elsewhere;

The main benefit research by an environmental historian can bring to a wider group of interested parties is the importance of understanding human interaction with the environments of which they are a part in the wider social, economic, political, cultural and scientific contexts which have shaped human understanding of this interaction and the theoretical, practical and policy implications that flow from these.

Plans to disseminate the findings of the research to academic beneficiaries by means of publication of a monograph under contract to OUP and presentation of papers to audiences of different academic specialists at seminars and conferences have been outlined elsewhere. Immediate plans to communicate and engage with a wider group include meeting scientists who work at the Askania Nova UNESCO Biosphere reserve in Ukraine, recording a podcast for an environmental history website and writing an article for a popular history journal. In the medium and longer term, it is envisaged that engagement be extended to stakeholders in researching, conserving and managing the environment in the UK and further afield. To this end, the investigator is a co-investigator in an application for an AHRC network grant 'Local Places, Global Processes' under the Landscape and Environment theme. The investigator, who is the Regional Representative for Britain and Ireland of the European Society for Environmental History, envisages as part of a wider and longer term process of seeking to broaden enga