What Is Stalin's Treatment Of Nature

There are several reasons why botanical, ecological and other environmental ideas have been misused to promote particular policies and goals. The simple fact that environmentalists forget that any human interaction with nature is human interaction with nature, alters what we believe as “nature” or the “wild.” Simply put, it seems best to just accept that all humans, like animals, are residents of the biosphere, and as members of the community of nature, everyone affects nature whether as hunter-gatherers, farmers, capitalists, communists, etc. (Slater 114). What we need to do is realize we a Part of nature, not above it. If we look at the development by which particular landscapes came to be perceived as Natural, we discover that this perception

Something, however, is better than nothing. Throughout the early Soviet period, the agencies in charge of timber removal repeatedly pressed for greater leeway, seeking exceedingly engineered, regularized woodlands while employing aggressive, revolutionary rhetoric. Yet with one quickly reversed exception, the Politburo (the highest policy-making government authority under the Communist Party) consistently rejected the drive toward hyper-industrialism in the forest. After briefly submitting to the industrialists’ relentless attacks on conservationism in 1929, Stalin’s government reversed course, and in the 1930’s and 1940’s set aside ever larger tracts of Russia’s most valuable forests as preserves, off-limits to industrial exploitation. Forest protection ultimately rose to such prominence during the last six years of Stalin’s rule that the Politburo took control of the Soviet forest away from the Ministry of Heavy Industry, and elevated the nation’s forest conservation bureau to the dominant position in implementing policy. The results of this struggle for supremacy in the forest, which pitted the party leadership against those very bureaucratic interests assigned to carry out the party’s industrial ambitions, show that environmental protection could find a place in a

M. Powell began with a well-meaning attempt at humor: "Question. Why is environmental history like Belgium?" Answer. "Because it was entirely the product of a resident collective imagination."' There is no denying that this is true (Weiner