scholarly journals The Ennoblement of Nature: Gleb M. Krzhizhanovskii's Energetika and the Concept of Metabolism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Russ
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
District Heating ◽  
State Planning ◽  
State Planning Commission ◽  
History Of ◽  
Energy Economy ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Nature And Society ◽  
Economic Thinking ◽  
Soviet Experiment

There has been a growing interest in the relation between Marxism and the Soviet Union’s relation to nature. While historical scholarship rarely explores the intellectual context in which the Soviet experiment unfolded, ecomarxists tend to describe the Soviet Union’s mistaken path as a result of the loss of ‘metabolic’ thinkers. This article challenges the neat divide between a ‘metabolic’ and ‘productivist’ Marxism byanalysing the energy-economic thinking of Gleb M. Krzhizhanovskii, chairman of the electrification commission (GOELRO) and the State Planning Commission (Gosplan). Krzhizhanovskii understood human production as part of the general life process and envisioned the energy economy to become an ‘ennobling’ element within nature. His argument rested on the hope that large-scale electrification, district heating and electro-chemistry––realisable under Socialism––could help govern the metabolism between nature and society more rationally. The history of energetika shows thatproductivist and metabolic thinking are more intricately connected than thought before.

scholarly journals Energetika: Gleb Krzhizhanovskii’s Conception of the Nature–Society Metabolism

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-218
Author(s):  
Daniela Russ
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Socialist Economy ◽  
State Planning ◽  
State Planning Commission ◽  
Energy Economy ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
To Come ◽  
Nature And Society ◽  
Economic Thinking ◽  
Soviet Experiment

Abstract In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the relation between Marxism and the Soviet productivist economy. While historical scholarship rarely explores the intellectual context in which the Soviet experiment unfolded, ecomarxists tend to describe the Soviet Union’s mistaken path as a result of the loss of ‘metabolic’ thinkers following the rise of Stalin. This article challenges the neat, purported divide between a ‘metabolic’ and ‘productivist’ Marxism by analysing the energy-economic thinking of Gleb M. Krzhizhanovskii, a Bolshevik engineer and old friend of Lenin. As chairman of both the electrification commission (GOELRO) and the State Planning Commission (Gosplan), Krzhizhanovskii conceptualised the energy economy as something embedded in the metabolism of nature and society and as the technical-economic basis of the socialist economy. This argument drew its strength from his idea that production is part of the general, ongoing life-process, and the hope that large-scale electrification and electro-chemistry could help govern the metabolism between nature and society more rationally – both arguments commonly found among contemporary natural scientists. Any ecomarxist attempt to recover the concept of metabolism today has to come to terms with its productivist and technocratic history.

scholarly journals Rauner - one and a half centuries in the service of forestry in Russia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
В.А. Липин
Keyword(s):  
State Planning ◽  
State Planning Commission ◽  
Deputy Chairman ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Government ◽  
Xix Century ◽  
First Time ◽  
Revolutionary Period ◽  
Private Collections

В статье впервые в обобщенном виде приводятся ранее неопубликованные сведения о судьбе и деятельности представителей династии выходцев из Австрии Раунеров на русской службе и в послереволюционный период. На основе архивных материалов, редких и малодоступных публикаций, а также материалов из частных собраний отражены малоизвестные страницы истории лесного хозяйства России. Непосредственно к лесному делу России имели отношение целый ряд представителей клана Раунеров. Юлий Карлович Раунер, который учился в Лисинском учебном лесничестве. С 1855 г. Ю.К. Раунер главный лесничий Екатеринбургского горного округа. Наибольшей известности в лесоводстве достиг Станислав Юльевич Раунер, лесовод, мелиоратор, теоретик и практик горно-облесительных работ, проводимых в целях борьбы с эрозией почв и селевыми потоками. После окончания Алексеевского Екатеринбургского Реального училища с 1879 по 1882 год С.Ю Раунер являлся студентом Лесного института в Петербурге. Влияние леса на режим поверхностных и подземных вод составляло предмет особенно тщательного изучения С.Ю. Раунера. С середины 80-х годов XIX в. до 1917 года С.Ю. Раунером было написано большинство научных трудов, составлено множество инструкций и программ, непосредственно по географическому, биологическому и другим исследованиям. После Революции с 1917 г. С.Ю. Раунер работал в Москве в ВСНХ в должности Заместителя председателя Госплана. В 1920 году был выбран профессором лесного института в Петрограде. For the first time, the article summarizes previously unpublished information about the fate and activities of representatives of the dynasty of come from Austria, Rauner in Russian work for the government and in the post-revolutionary period. On the basis of archival materials, rare and inaccessible publications, as well as materials from private collections, little-known pages of the history of forestry in Russia are described. A number of representatives of Rauner clan were directly involved in forestry in Russia. Julius Karlovich Rauner, who studied at the Lisinsky training forestry. Since 1855, Yu.K. Rauner is the chief forester in the Yekaterinburg mountain district. Stanislav Yulievich Rauner, a forest grower, land reclamator, theoretician and practitioner of mining and afforestation works carried out to combat soil erosion and mudflows, became the most famous in forestry. After graduating from the Alekseevsky Yekaterinburg Real School from 1879 to 1882, S.U. Rauner was a student at the Forest Institute in St. Petersburg. The influence of the forest on the regime of surface and groundwaters was the subject of a particularly thorough study by S.Yu. Rauner. Since the mid 80s of the XIX century. until 1917 S.Yu. The majority of scientific works were the rauner, many instructions and programs were compiled, directly on geographical, biological and other studies. After the Revolution since 1917, S.Yu. Rauner worked in Moscow at the Supreme Economic Council as a Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Commission. In 1920 he was chosen as a professor at the Forestry Institute in Petrograd.

Materials for the history of the gospel-Baptist movement in Ukraine

1996 ◽  
pp. 4-15
Author(s):  
S. Golovaschenko ◽  
Petro Kosuha
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Theological Seminary ◽  
National Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Evangelical Christians ◽  
Evangelical Christian ◽  
First Results ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fruitful Cooperation ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

The report is based on the first results of the study "The History of the Evangelical Christians-Baptists in Ukraine", carried out in 1994-1996 by the joint efforts of the Department of Religious Studies at the Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Odessa Theological Seminary of Evangelical Christian Baptists. A large-scale description and research of archival sources on the history of evangelical movements in our country gave the first experience of fruitful cooperation between secular and church researchers.

World-Ecological Satire: Peat, Brian O'Nolan, and the Irish Free State's Energy Regime

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-104
Author(s):  
Robert Kiely
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Ecological Perspective ◽  
Energy Regime ◽  
Energy History ◽  
History Of ◽  
External Site ◽  
Ecological Relations ◽  
Nature And Society ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
The Relationship

A world-ecological perspective of cultural production refuses a dualist conception of nature and society – which imagines nature as an external site of static outputs  – and instead foregrounds the fact that human and extra-human natures are completely intertwined. This essay seeks to reinterpret the satirical writing of a canonical figure within the Irish literary tradition, Brian O'Nolan, in light of the energy history of Ireland, understood as co-produced by both human actors and biophysical nature. How does the energy imaginary of O'Nolan's work refract and mediate the Irish environment and the socio-ecological relations shaping the fuel supply-chains that power the Irish energy regime dominant under the Irish Free State? I discuss the relationship between peat as fuel and Brian O'Nolan's pseudonymous newspaper columns, and indicate how questions about energy regimes and ecology can lead us to read his Irish language novel An Béal Bocht [The Poor Mouth] (1941) in a new light. The moments I select and analyze from O'Nolan's output feature a kind of satire that exposes the folly of separating society from nature, by presenting an exaggerated form of the myth of nature as an infinite resource.

A Sacred Space Is Never Empty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Smolkin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Experiment

When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off. Soviet power used a variety of tools—from education to propaganda to terror—to turn its vision of a Communist world without religion into reality. Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion and creating an atheist society. This book presents the first history of Soviet atheism from the 1917 revolution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The book argues that to understand the Soviet experiment, we must make sense of Soviet atheism. It shows how atheism was reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of positive beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments. Through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the “sacred spaces” of Soviet life was not enough. Then, in the final years of the Soviet experiment, Mikhail Gorbachev—in a stunning and unexpected reversal—abandoned atheism and reintroduced religion into Soviet public life. The book explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.

Integration of Ecological and Engineering Aspects in Planning Large Scale Tidal Power Development in the Bay of Fundy, Canada

1984 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 281-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald C Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Feasibility Studies ◽  
Bay Of Fundy ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Power Development ◽  
Tidal Power ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientists And Engineers ◽  
The Many ◽  
University Scientists

Large-scale tidal power development in the Bay of Fundy has been given serious consideration for over 60 years. There has been a long history of productive interaction between environmental scientists and engineers durinn the many feasibility studies undertaken. Up until recently, tidal power proposals were dropped on economic grounds. However, large-scale development in the upper reaches of the Bay of Fundy now appears to be economically viable and a pre-commitment design program is highly likely in the near future. A large number of basic scientific research studies have been and are being conducted by government and university scientists. Likely environmental impacts have been examined by scientists and engineers together in a preliminary fashion on several occasions. A full environmental assessment will be conducted before a final decision is made and the results will definately influence the outcome.

PIOPLE. INFORMATION. DEGRADATION

2019 ◽  
pp. 44-53
Author(s):  
Andrey Varlamov ◽  
Vladimir Rimshin
Keyword(s):  
Information Theory ◽  
Mathematical Theory ◽  
Maximum Information ◽  
Building Models ◽  
Man And Nature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nature And Society ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Link Information ◽  
The Relationship

Considered the issues of interaction between man and nature. Noted that this interaction is fundamental in the existence of modern civilization. The question of possible impact on nature and society with the aim of preserving the existence of human civilization. It is shown that the study of this issue goes towards the crea-tion of models of interaction between nature and man. Determining when building models is information about the interaction of man and nature. Considered information theory from the viewpoint of interaction between nature and man. Noted that currently information theory developed mainly as a mathematical theory. The issues of interaction of man and nature, the availability and existence of information in the material sys-tem is not studied. Indicates the link information with the energy terms control large flows of energy. For con-sideration of the interaction of man and nature proposed to use the theory of degradation. Graphs are pre-sented of the information in the history of human development. Reviewed charts of population growth. As a prediction it is proposed to use the simplest based on the theory of degradation. Consideration of the behav-ior of these dependencies led to the conclusion about the existence of communication energy and information as a feature of the degradation of energy. It justifies the existence of border life ( including humanity) at the point with maximum information. Shows the relationship of energy and time using potential energy.

Socialism and Socialist Intellectuals in French History

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Wright
Keyword(s):  
French History ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Capitalist State ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Socialist Movement ◽  
Relationship Of

This chapter sets out the specific historiographical basis for a new study of the French socialist movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It argues that one particular framework—that of the reluctant relationship of socialism with power in the capitalist state—has dominated our approaches to writing the history of French socialism, and suggests that a new focus on temporalities, particularly exploring the clash between revolutionary, future-focused socialism, and present-minded socialism, opens up a new range of cultural, intellectual, and biographical sources for understanding the French socialist movement. It provides the specific intellectual context for understanding how historians in France today are seeking to rethink their intellectual inheritance from left-wing writers of earlier generations.

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