Placing Climates Across (Post-)Soviet Regions: Knowing, Writing, Planning

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel investigates the concepts and practices of Soviet territorial development and climate adaptation, including their pre-revolutionary origins and post-Soviet repercussions. Papers examine the development, circulation, and legacies of Soviet-era ways of knowing about climate and regional variation, particularly the intersection of such knowledge systems with resource use, regional development, and urban environmental planning, specifically in climatically-challenging northern territories and in Central Asia. In relation to economic and industrial expansion, the panel addresses the issues of labor migration and its ideological pitfalls, reflected in the conflicting representations of life and work in the northern lumber camps created by, on the one hand, state propaganda and, on the other hand, personal written communication between recruited workers and their home communities. The tension between the expert knowledge supported by the state policies and the repressed local knowledge about climate adaptation is revealed in the example of Kyrgyz agricultural fairs. The papers collectively explore how the Soviet government and scientific expertise attempted to shape human-environment interactions in its quest for industrial and territorial expansion, while local communities employed their own knowledge and practices in response to state policies.

Sub Unit

• Geography, Environmental Studies

Chair

• Maria C Taylor, Cornell U

Papers

• Climate-Responsive Planning: The Case of the Northern Territories in the Soviet Union - Stéphane Gaessler, U of Toronto (Canada)

• 'Not a Stony Desert': Microclimate and Communal Hygiene in Soviet City Greening - Maria C Taylor, Cornell U

• Forgotten Memories of the Kyrgyz Traditional Climate Adaptation Techniques and its Revival - Anara Jeenbekova, U of Washington

• Postcards with Wildflowers: Memory, Women, and the Nature of Climate in Domestic Bucharest - Iulia Statica, U of Sheffield (UK)

Discussant

• Michael Alexander Brinley, Princeton U