Josephson, Paul R. (Author)
Spanning nine time zones from Norway to the Bering Strait, the immense Russian Arctic was mostly unexplored before the twentieth century. This changed rapidly in the 1920s, when the Soviet Union implemented plans for its conquest. The Conquest of the Russian Arctic, a definitive political and environmental history of one of the world's remotest regions, details the ambitious attempts, from Soviet times to the present, to control and reshape the Arctic, and the terrible costs paid along the way. Paul Josephson describes the effort under Stalin to assimilate the Arctic into the Soviet empire. Extraction of natural resources, construction of settlements, indoctrination of nomadic populations, collectivization of reindeer herding---all was to be accomplished so that the Arctic operated according to socialist principles. The project was in many ways an extension of the Bolshevik revolution, as planners and engineers assumed that policies and plans that worked elsewhere in the empire would apply here. But as they pushed ahead with methods hastily adopted from other climates, the results were political repression, destruction of traditional cultures, and environmental degradation. The effects are still being felt today. At the same time, scientists and explorers led the world in understanding Arctic climes and regularities. Vladimir Putin has redoubled Russia's efforts to secure the Arctic, seen as key to the nation's economic development and military status. This history brings into focus a little-understood part of the world that remains a locus of military and economic pressures, ongoing environmental damage, and grand ambitions imperfectly realized.
...MoreReview Per Högselius (2015) Review of "The Conquest of the Russian Arctic". Technology and Culture (pp. 761-763).
Review Pincus, Rebecca (2015) Review of "The Conquest of the Russian Arctic". Environmental History (pp. 838-839).
Review Jenks, Andrew L. (2015) Review of "The Conquest of the Russian Arctic". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 497-498).
Article
Sörlin, Sverker;
(2014)
Circumpolar Science: Scandinavian Approaches to the Arctic and the North Atlantic, ca. 1920 to 1960
(/isis/citation/CBB001420410/)
Thesis
Stuhl, Andrew;
(2013)
Empires on Ice: Science, Nature, and the Making of the Arctic
(/isis/citation/CBB001567488/)
Thesis
Peterson, Maya Karin;
(2011)
Technologies of Rule: Empire, Water, and the Modernization of Central Asia, 1867--1941
(/isis/citation/CBB001567280/)
Thesis
Emelin Elizabeth Miller;
(2019)
Empire of Ice: Arctic Natural History and British Visions of the North, 1500-1800
(/isis/citation/CBB984131524/)
Article
Bathsheba Demuth;
(2019)
The Walrus and the Bureaucrat: Energy, Ecology, and Making the State in the Russian and American Arctic, 1870–1950
(/isis/citation/CBB042440470/)
Chapter
Bones, Stian;
(2013)
Science In-Between: Norway, The European Arctic and the Soviet Union
(/isis/citation/CBB001421152/)
Article
Doel, Ronald E.;
Friedman, Robert Marc;
Lajus, Julia;
Sörline, Sverker;
Wråkberg, Urban;
(2014)
Strategic Arctic Science: National Interests in Building Natural Knowledge---Interwar Era through the Cold War
(/isis/citation/CBB001450344/)
Book
Sörlin, Sverker;
(2013)
Science, Geopolitics and Culture in the Polar Region: Norden beyond Borders
(/isis/citation/CBB001421143/)
Book
Bathsheba Demuth;
(2019)
Floating coast: An environmental history of the Bering Strait
(/isis/citation/CBB610557368/)
Chapter
Shaw, Denis J. B.;
(2021)
The Subarctic: A Classic Soviet Study of the Tundra
(/isis/citation/CBB533453825/)
Book
Andy Bruno;
(2016)
The Nature of Soviet Power: An Arctic Environmental History
(/isis/citation/CBB001811907/)
Article
Bruce Grant;
(2020)
Missing Links. Indigenous Life and Evolutionary Thought in the History of Russian Ethnography
(/isis/citation/CBB724939608/)
Book
Blake C. Scott;
(2022)
Unpacked: A History of Caribbean Tourism
(/isis/citation/CBB848404575/)
Article
Vanessa Heggie;
(2019)
Blood, Race and Indigenous Peoples in Twentieth Century Extreme Physiology
(/isis/citation/CBB404527790/)
Article
Sera-Shriar, Efram;
(2015)
Arctic Observers: Richard King, Monogenism and the Historicisation of Inuit through Travel Narratives
(/isis/citation/CBB001422412/)
Book
John R. Bockstoce;
(2018)
White Fox and Icy Seas in the Western Arctic: The Fur Trade, Transportation, and Change in the Early Twentieth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB031576298/)
Article
McCannon, John;
(2010)
Winged Prometheans: Arctic Aviation as Socialist Construction in Stalinist Russia, 1928--1939
(/isis/citation/CBB001211530/)
Thesis
Daniella McCahey;
(2018)
Extreme Environments and the Production of Scientific Knowledge: The History of Science in Antarctica
(/isis/citation/CBB933911142/)
Article
Alexandra Bekasova;
(2020)
Voyaging Towards the Future: The Brig Rurik in the North Pacific and the Emerging Science of the Sea
(/isis/citation/CBB936084999/)
Article
Elina, Olga;
Heim, Susanne;
Roll-Hansen, Nils;
(2005)
Plant Breeding on the Front: Imperialism, War, and Exploitation
(/isis/citation/CBB000610603/)
Be the first to comment!