From Chekhov to Chernobyl: Russian Literature of Environmental Catastrophe

What is it that made the fact of anthropogenic climate change “unthinkable” in the 20th century, and what ideas might allow us to think past what Amitav Ghosh calls this “great derangement”? Environmental degradation and disaster provide a steady backdrop to the 20th century in Russia and the Soviet Union. With control over one sixth of the world’s land mass, the Russian and Soviet Empires exploited the seemingly inexhaustible natural resources of the country’s territory via industrialization, collectivization, forced migration and a vast system of prison camps and internal exile. While the Soviet regime promised mastery over nature, and Russian culture valorized the harmonization of humans with the natural world, environmental catastrophe, both sudden and cumulative, proved the folly of those dreams. Though the Soviet narrative of unflagging progress towards an industrialized utopia rendered these follies unmentionable, imaginative literature provides an indelible record of their costs. We will read works by authors who have grappled with this ongoing catastrophe and its implications for relations between human beings and the world. How might the cultural legacies of communism reframe some of the most vital questions for our shared planetary future? We will examine the ecological thinking of writers and filmmakers including Anton Chekhov, Vladimir Vernadsky, Andrey Platonov, Valentin Rasputin, Larisa Shepitko, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Svetlana Alexievich.