Stalinist Environmentalism

Potential Question: How do historians explain the term Stalinist

Environmentalism?

Answer:

Introduction
The Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature was kickstarted in 1948 and
marked the first state-sanctioned program to alter human-induced climate change.
Joseph Stalin’s reign in the USSR has predominantly been perceived as
authoritarian. His ambitious Great Plan and its grandiose plan of field-protective
afforestation has been linked to the totalitarian nature of his regime. The plan was
drawn up and implemented by a mixed bag of technocratic environmentalists and
promethean (idealist) agronomists. Both groups exercised varying influences at
different points of time. The massive scale of this plan, glaring limitations, limited
successes, and its abrupt withdrawal by the Soviet state after Stalin’s death in 1953,
have been the subject of considerable critical analysis by environmental historians
and other concerned scholars. Stephen Brain, James Scott, Charles Ziegler, and
Philip Pryde are prime examples. This answer essay seeks to explore how
historians explain Stalinist Environmentalism, how it came about, and what its
trajectory entailed.

Historiography of Stalinist Environmentalism

Stephen Brain has laid down the brief yet complicated outline of the Great Stalin
Plan in his various articles and book Song of the Forest: Russian Forestry and
Stalin’s Environmentalism. He has also critically analysed the varying divergent
impulses in Stalinist Environmentalism. He lauds the ecologically grounded
approach of earlier technocrats like Vasilii Koldanov who tried to plant sustainable
forests in the dry steppe regions of Russia in 1920s and 1930s. The technocratic
methodology was based on empirical research and consideration for locally
varying determinants and microclimatic alteration. Brain criticises the
ideologically and politically motivated prometheans, Trofim Lysenko in particular,
who tried to implement scientifically unsound theories like the ‘nesting method’
and attempted to alter the climate of the entire Soviet nation. He blames the
predominance of such overambitious ideologues, and Soviet central command’s
confusion over which methodology to follow - for the failure and ultimate
disbanding of the Great Stalin Plan. Also in passing mentions, Brain compares
Stalin’s authoritarian environmentalism with equally ambitious and politically
motivated conservationist movements in Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and
Mao’s China.

In Seeing Like A State, James Scott criticises the high-modernist impulses of

totalitarian states, like Stalin’s USSR, in their environmentalist initiatives. He
observes that they fail to account for local variations, climate patterns, soil types,
vegetation and fauna ecosystems when they formulate and try to enforce
centralised, universalistic schemes. In their drive to simplify environmental
conservation, they ignore complex realities and make their plans prone to crushing
failures. Charles Ziegler, in his Environmental Policy in the USSR, highlights the
overconfident tendency of the Great Stalin Plan in particular, and USSR in general,
to assume that human innovation and communist states can alter and manipulate
nature according to their whims and fancies. In Conservation in the Soviet Union,
Philip Pryde writes that the Great Stalin Plan blatantly expressed that rather than
being an interdependent, integral part of nature, human beings are represented as
masters and perfectors of their natural environment. This also indicates Stalin’s
aggressive, entitled attitude towards natural resource exploitation and conservation.
Douglas Weiner, in A Little Corner of Freedom, talks about the role of Trofim
Lysenko’s pseudoscientific, politically motivated claims and drastic, erratic
implementation in the demise of Stalinist Environmentalism. In The Lysenko
Affair, David Joravsky confirms Weiner’s perspective and warns readers against
how Lysenko and his allies treated a significant portion of Russia’s forest cover as
their personal laboratories. The historiographical consensus on Stalinist
Environmentalism is thus characterised by a demarcation of technocratic and
promethean factions in Soviet forest administration.
Prehistory of Stalinist Environmentalism
Before delving into the dichotomy of technocratic and promethean factions, it may
be useful to understand the prehistory of Stalinist Environmentalism. Russian
centralised efforts to plant forests in southern Russia go way before the advent of
the USSR. As early as the mid-nineteenth century, agronomist Viktor von Graf
investigated the dry steppes to figure out which woody species were suited to be
domesticated there. In 1892, Tsar Alexander III appointed soil scientist Dokuchaev
to investigate causes of a drought. Dokuchaev cited human-induced climate
change, especially agricultural expansion. He recommended water conservation
measures, construction of forest belts throughout the south, and application of
hydrology, soil science, and dendrology to afforest and restore Russian lands to
their prehistoric greenery. The tsarist government financed his proposals to a
limited extent, planted experimental forests in steppes, and promised to plant some
more. Other than scientific calculations, cultural and imperial prerogatives had a
role to play in this. Environmental historian David Moon illustrates how diverse
groups in Russian society, including rulers, Cossacks, peasant migrants, scientists,
govt officials, writers, artists, and music composers glorifying mythical imageries
of fertility, beauty, prosperity, and ‘Russianness’ prevailing in steppes long ago.
Jane Costlow discusses how celebrated playwright Anton Chekhov personifies the
forest in Uncle Vanya, and historian Kliuchevskii constructed this narrative of the
history of Russia being marked by the eternal battle between Russian forest and
Asiatic steppe. Even before the Soviet state had been established therefore, the
Russian state had had a tendency for benevolent, paternalistic, protective attitude
towards environmental conservation in the steppe region.

After the Revolution of 1917, the steppe afforestation projects grew in importance,
rigour, and scope. Throughout party conferences in 1920s, Lenin and Stalin
lobbied for aggressive afforestation. After Stalin had consolidated his power, a
1931 law established ‘forest cultivation zones’. The law also required the People’s
Commissariat of Agriculture to combat drought by planting protective forest belts
on state territory and collective farms. Meanwhile, the Council of People’s
Commissars (the highest government authority in the Soviet Union) demanded a
report about the usefulness of a “screen of forest belts between the Ural and
Caspian seas to defend against winds originating in the eastern deserts.” The
reports proved that narrow, wind-permeable belts provide the greatest influence on
the microclimate of agricultural fields. Such belts give the most protection from the
wind and retain the most snow. Forest education institutes were set up and
thousands of students graduated from them. They devised elaborate afforestation
plans based on vegetation patterns and needs in specialised, localised contexts.
Their aim was to alter microclimates of certain locales so as to counter drought and
maximise agricultural yields. However, agricultural collectivisation created chaos
and farmers barely cooperated with the State in its field-protective afforestation
efforts.

In 1936, Stalin ordered the GLO (Main Administration of Forest Protection and
Afforestation) to be set up. It was wholly devoted to afforestation and forest
preservation. It had its own journal In Defense of the Forest which gave way to
intellectual debates, deliberations, and solutions to environmental problems. In
October 1937, GLO engineer Mikhail Lokot wrote a letter to the Moscow office
and recommended “construction of 2-4 parallel forest belts of a width of 100-200
metres around all agricultural fields” near the country’s largest rivers. Hence,
GLO’s afforestation methodology/approach was technocratic, small-scale,
empirical research-based, and didn’t subscribe to ideological presuppositions.
Lokot’s letter marked a precursor to Stalin’s Great Plan. In pre-war years, GLO’s
methods increased forest survival rates significantly. Forest workers and officials
were increasingly educated. The country was divided into 14 zones wherein
different crop combinations and forest species were planted according to local
climatic, geological, and hydrological conditions. The Second World War halted
GLO’s work almost entirely. But post-WWII, field-protective afforestation
received more impetus than ever before. In April 1947, the GLO was transformed
into the Ministry of Forest Management and had more power and resources to
carry out radical but ecologically grounded environmental preservation. A setback
in GLO’s work was that its pace was slower than Soviet aims for grand
reconstruction of the Russian landscape. And GLO methodology was too sober for
Soviet ideologues who wanted grand schemes and grander results. GLO
technocrats wanted to alter microclimates in order to combat drought and ensure
agricultural stability. Soviet prometheans wanted to change the climate of Russia as
a whole. To this end, Joseph Stalin launched his ultra-ambitious The Great Stalin
Plan for Transformation of Nature on 20 October, 1948.
The Great Stalin Plan: Trends, Factions, Failure
The advent of the Great Stalin Plan was marked by the rise of a promethean,
politically motivated faction. The centrepiece of the Stalin Plan would be the
construction of eight enormous shelterbelts, their walls of foliage intended to
screen dry winds rushing in from Central Asia, thereby rendering southern Russia
as cool and moist as Moscow. new forests would extend across 16 provinces and
204 districts. The Soviet central command crafted grand, appealing propaganda
surrounding the plan. Newsreels and booklets were disseminated, depicting
children eating fruits growing in the belts, and strolling through deserts turning into
oases. Nikolai Krementsov highlighted the role of international politics and Cold
War in Soviet afforestation projects. Party leaders hailed communism and opined
that capitalist nations would never apply rational sciences for the benefit of nature,
or that of humankind. While capitalism sought to spread destruction, the
propaganda surrounding the plan asserted, the communists spread gardens; or, as
one poster from the time had it, communists plant life, while capitalists sow death.

Despite promethean utopianism, technocrats tried to salvage the former’s

impractical programs and oversaw workers personally. Despite grandiose
symbolism of oak in state propaganda, technocrats instructed workers to plant
different species in different local circumstances, depending on local soil type,
hydrology, geology, and microclimate. Suitable secondary trees and bushes were
also recommended to foresters. Texts were distributed to workers that emphasise
the importance of the ecology of a plot of ground scheduled for afforestation.

A decisive blow to the technocratic initiative and autonomy was however struck by
the establishment of GUPL (Main Administration for Field Protective
Afforestation). It was supposed to provide technical guidance, and to coordinate
the efforts of the Ministry of Forest Management and the Ministry of Agriculture.
Trofim Lysenko, a rudimentarily educated agronomist, was appointed as the head
of GUPL and this body was given more autonomy and power over Stalin Plan’s
implementation, than was GLU. Lysenko’s allies like Chekmenev predominated in
GUPL as well as Politburo. He’d also received personal commendations from the
likes of Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. Lysenko devised the disastrous nesting
method for steppe afforestation. The underlying rationale behind this method was
that trees could become collectivists. Lysenko claimed that while members of
different species did compete for resources, members of the same species actually
helped one another. By way of proof, Lysenko showed that when certain plants
were planted in high densities, their survival rates increased. From this Lysenko
concluded that all plants possessed a quality called “self-thinning,” which allows
them to work together in fighting against weeds during their early years and then to
pool their energy for the benefit of one shoot in the nest (the other shoots
sacrificing themselves for the main plant) when the appropriate time comes. Thus
in Lysenko’s scheme, plants could become soldiers in the fight for the survival of
communism, if organised properly.

The unscientific, politically motivated rationale behind this method was the recipe
for it to fail spectacularly. One merit of the method was that it took simply 3
man-days to plant forests around fields, and then never take care of the same again,
as nest forests would grow on their own. This merit however turned out to be the
biggest drawback of the plan. Dense planting proved to be wasteful. Young forests
must be weeded, thinned of underbrush or dead seedlings, and replanted as
necessary if they are to reach maturity quickly. Whereas Lysenko claimed that a
hectare of forest could be established with the application of three worker-days, the
Ministry of Forest Management calculated that the true number was closer to
eighty-five; three worker-days was just enough to sow forests that would die within
a year or two.

Meanwhile, Lysenko used his position at GUPL and powerful central political
allies to implement this disastrous (ecologically, economically, logically) on a
nation-wide scale. The onus of afforestation work fell on collective farmers instead
of trained, educated workers under Ministry of Forest Management. Besides,
farmers were given little to no proper instructions. In provincial forest
administration, chains of command broke down so often that only collective farm
saw any sort of numerical breakdown of expected tasks.

Lysenko was severely criticised by Koldanov, Sukachev, Zonn, and other

technocrats in Ministry of Forest Management who were appalled by the irrational,
ecologically harmful consequences of the nesting method. Technocrats appealed to
politicians and interacted with on ground workers to salvage excesses of
prometheans. Their strongly worded letters to politicians in the early 1950s were
the harshest, most accurate critiques of Lysenko and his allies’ madness.
Ultimately in 1952, the Politburo favoured technocrats after realising fallacies of
prometheans. There was a renewed intellectual efflorescence and viable plans in
the Great Stalin Plan, aimed at protective afforestation. Technocrats were excitedly
devising localised, regional-specific cropping patterns and forest species till March
1953, when Stalin passed away. After Stalin’s demise, the Politburo was confused
as to whether to heed the technocratic or promethean faction in the Great Stalin
Plan. They didn’t want to offend either powerful factions and were already
confused about which methodological approach to choose. Ultimately, they
decided to disband the Great Stalin Plan and dissolved the Ministry of Forest
Management.

Conclusion
The Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature was an ambitious, albeit
utopian environmental preservation programme. Stalinist Environmentalism was
similar to other authoritarian environmental projects due to its grandiose
ideological claims and the radical, misguided attempt of the state to alter the
climate of the nation. It was unique in its origins which were more ecologically
grounded, scientific, region-specific, and practical than what it became under
prometheans. The rational technocrat v/s utopian promethean tension was
seemingly essential to maintain the logical balance in Stalinist Environmentalism.
The downfall began when prometheanism gained ground and power over
technocracy. Ideology and political agendas prevailed over science, nature
conservation, and drought control. Stalinist Environmentalism is thus a harsh
lesson in the need for more ecologically grounded, economically viable, and micro
environmental preservation.