‘Russia, although awed by its forests, tried to dominate these, with surprising results’

Sophie Pinkham is Professor of the Practice, Comparative Literature, Cornell University. Speaking with Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke , she discusses the rich forest life of Russia — and why it inspires humility:What is the core of your research?■ My book, ‘The Oak and the Larch: A Forest History of Russia and its Empires’, tells the story of the Russian Empire, theSoviet Union, the Russian Federation and the different places conquered by Russia over the centuries. I describe this from the perspective of the forest and environment, beginning with the Neolithic period, going forward to the forest in the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia.How are forests perceived in Russia?■ Once Slavic power moved from Kyiv after the Mongol invasion to central Russia, its heartland was in a densely forested area. So, the forest was at the heart of Russian culture from its beginning. For early Russians, the forest was essential for timbre, firewood, energy, building materials, food and pelts that helped Russia become an economic power. But the forest was also a source of threat — there was this dichotomy of need with great danger.That tension — affection and fear — continued into the techno-utopianism of the Soviet period, when leaders fantasised about making nature subservient to human wishes. There was fear, even hate, of forests, rivers and other natural features that weren’t serving human purposes. There was aggressive rhetoric in the Soviet period about declaring war on ‘useless forests’. Russian ambivalence to the forest tells us about broader human relationships to the natural environment.We see this in contemporary Russia. There is rhetorical celebration of the forest, countryside and traditional architecture. For Russian nationalists, the forest is a location of true Russian identity. There’s a strong strain of ‘econationalism’. Meanwhile, there is considerable mistreatment of Russia’s forests — almost one-fifth of the world’s forest cover, playing a very important ecological role for the planet. Alongside illegal logging, there have been reports of plans to clear-cut the forests around Lake Baikal, a huge freshwater lake, to build ski lodges. It’s a classic story of commercial greed at the expense of an irreplaceable natural treasure.You say ‘Russia has more trees than there are stars in the galaxy’ — please elaborate?■ I wanted to highlight the unbelievable vastness of Russia’s territory, both in scale and variety. Russia is the only country that encompasses both Arctic tundra and subtropical forests — there is great variety even within that. The title of my book, ‘The Oak and the Larch’, gestures towards a principal duality of Russian forests. The oak is a deciduous tree, symbolising righteousness and strength, worshipped in early Slavic society. It’s the most iconic tree of the beautiful deciduous forests of European Russia, immortalised by Tolstoy and Turgenev.Meanwhile, the ‘larch’ is a symbol of Siberia, the taiga or boreal — that’s a much harsher ecosystem. It’s very cold, swampy and vast. It’s commonly understood that if you get lost in the taiga, you can easily perish — but the larch hasbecome a symbol of survival. I write about gulag prisoners often put near the taiga to cut wood — the forest literally kept them alive. People facing lethal malnutrition found vitaminladen berries in the forest. On a metaphorical level, the larch and dwarf pine became symbols of resilience.Can you tell us about climate change in Russia today?■ Climate change is a serious threat to many of Russia’s landscapes and ecological balance. It’s affecting water supply, making permafrost melt and forests drier — the fires seen in Russia over the last 10 years have been unprecedented in recorded history.So, is there a Russian environmental politics?■ Given the political situation since 2022, many environmental activists have had to leave. It’s dangerous to oppose the government and there’s been a great decline in ecological activism, as with other kinds of resistance. But there are many ordinary Russians who treasure nature and who, in the case of plans to clear-cut the shores of Lake Baikal, for instance, fought back, saying, ‘This is part of our national heritage and we must protect it.’ So, this is not without hope.Also, because smaller-scale provincial ecological activism is not necessarily linked to western NGOs or broader geopolitical agendas, there is more room for people to protest that in Russia than, for example, to oppose the war in Ukraine.What role do animals and birds play in Russian imagination?■ An important aspect in Russian nature writing is how central hunting was — there’s this tension here between admiring the beauty of the natural landscape and killing animals like the pheasant, grouse, etc. The taiga has an entirely different set of animals, including the Siberian tiger and bears. I have written about a Russian ecologist who devoted his life to rescuing orphaned bears, whose mothers were killed by hunters, trying to get them back to the wild. Bears are emblematic of the forest — that’s why the Russian national identity is often described as ‘the Russian bear’, linked to notions of power and danger.The bear occupies an ecological niche extremely close to humans in these northern forests. Bears look a little like humans. They can walk on their hind legs, grab things with their hands and seek honey, which, like berries, was one of the most important forest products for early Slavs. There are stories in Russian folklore about seeking honey or berries and running into a bear looking for these too — here, the bear is a rival. This interaction is about survival — some indigenous peoples of the boreal have elaborate bear ceremonies around coexistence and harmony. The more European approach has been to kill the bear — or assert dominance on it. That’s what ‘dancing bears’ are about — if you had a bear as your plaything, you’ve shown you are the master. The bear as the symbol of Russia in political iconography reflects a long-standing idea that Russians represent something that isn’t fully civilised. There is an Orientalist tradition of thinking about Russia as this ‘bear neighbour’ who hasn’t been chained and taught to dance yet.The Russian state tried dominating ecology — did nature ever beat it?■ Absolutely. There was this tremendous hubris in Russia that they could ‘tame’ nature — with very unsatisfactory results. Imperial Russia tried importing cutting-edge German forestry methods but found it impossible to use these in vast Russia — even today, many areas of the Russian forest remain untouched. In Russian Karelia, you see a striking difference on the Finnish versus Russian side. The Finns have exploited their forests — Russia has much more wildness. So, some animals managed to survive.In the imperial period, Tolstoy became a forest advocate, linked to a deforestation crisis when tree-cutting was followed by erosion, drying of lands, etc. Later, there was a Soviet plan to make huge agricultural fields in Central Asia by using the Aral Sea as irrigation — that caused the almost complete drying-up of the Aral Sea, with very shocking images of a sea that just disappeared. I wrote about Stalin’s ‘Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature’ as well — under this bombastic program, Stalin decided he would plant huge forests to protect Russia from what was seen as ‘uncivilised Central Asian winds’. However, Stalin found you can’t suddenly plant enormous forests where they’ve never grown before. Such attempts to tame nature for human purposes make a history of unintended consequences — it should teach us respect for nature and its unknowns.