Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I
Chapter 1: For Science or Tourism? Protected Territories Before World War II
Chapter 2: Taking the "Best" from the West? The Beginnings of the Soviet National Park Movement
Chapter 3: Transformative Visions during the Brezhnev Era
Chapter 4: Disappointments and the Persistence of Grandiose Visions
Part II
Chapter 5: The "Shield" of the Sacred Sea: National Parks around Lake Baikal
Chapter 6: Paddling Upstream: Samara Bend National Park and the Transformation of Citizen "Environmentalism" from Soviet to Post-Soviet Society
Chapter 7: Protecting the Pechoran Alps? The Unmet Promise of Iugyd Va National Park in the Circumpolar Urals
Chapter 8: The Vision and the Reality in the Taiga of Karelia and the Arkhangelsk Oblast: Oleg Cherviakov and Vodlozero National Park
Part III
Chapter 9: The Crisis of National Parks in the 1990s
Conclusion: Russia's Forgotten Parks and the Crisis of Environmental Protection in the Russian Federation
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Alan D. Roe is a lecturer in history at West Virginia University.

Reviews

"Alan Roe reconstructs in close detail the history of national parks in Soviet and post-Soviet history. This sweeping history features romantics, rebels, ideologues, economic pragmatists, champions and opponents of nature protection. Modulating among local, federal, and international registers, Roe's account reveals how positioning themselves as part of a global environmental movement could be both an asset and liability for Soviet/Russian environmentalists.
Into Russian Nature haunts the reader with the ways in which the Soviet/Russian history of nature protection departs from and shares with that history in the West." -- Erika Monahan, Author of The
Merchants of Siberia: Trade in Early Modern Eurasia
"This is a fascinating and sobering account of efforts to connect recreation and conservation in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia. Roe offers important perspectives on Russians' engagement with what Americans would call 'backcountry,' relating how a Russian version of the 'wilderness debate' has played out and how Russia's vast and varied terrain continues to inspire deep love and fierce protection." -- Jane Costlow, Author of Heart-Pine Russia:
Walking and Writing the Nineteenth-Century Forest
"Into Russian Nature tells the fascinating and previously unexamined story of Russia's national parks. With vibrant and lucid prose, it explores the history of Soviet environmentalism, tourism, and the culture of twentieth-century science and nature protection. Alan Roe has written the kind of book that we all wish we could produce: thoughtful and impressive analysis of a topic of global importance, built on unparalleled research and a dazzling array
of sources." -- Nicholas Breyfogle, Editor of Eurasian Environments: Nature and Ecology in Imperial Russian and Soviet History
"Writing with contagious passion and remarkable thoroughness, Alan Roe tells the neglected history of national parks in Russia. While policy makers in the country treated national parks as an afterthought instead of a 'best idea,' Russian conservationists projected deep hopes onto these protected territories and experienced bitter disappointments over them. Into Russian Nature offers a vital contribution to the environmental history of Russia and
understandings of national parks globally." -- Andy Bruno, Northern Illinois University