Environment, Power & the Soviet Arctic

Andy Bruno, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Northern Illinois University

When: Thursday, December 10, 4:00 PM

Where: 206 Ingraham Hall

Sponsors: CREECA

About the Lecture: 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.

About the Speaker: Andy Bruno is Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Faculty Associate in Environmental Studies at Northern Illinois University. His research explores varied aspects of the environmental history of the Soviet Arctic. He has published articles on the Soviet appropriation of reindeer, the environmental experience of forced laborers during Stalinism, and vulnerability to snow avalanches in the far north. His first book, The Nature of Soviet Power: An Arctic Environmental History, will be published by Cambridge University Press in March 2016.