Transformative Visions during the Brezhnev Era

During the 1970s in the USSR, several Soviet republics established national parks. While the Soviet Council of Ministers had to pass a law giving national parks union status before the RSFSR could establish national parks, numerous park projects were conceived throughout Russia during this era. The attention that the Soviet government gave to environmental protection fueled their hopes. At the same time, Russian environmentalists became increasingly frustrated by the slow push toward establishing a law giving national parks union status as they discussed the future form that Russia’s parks would take. Passed by the USSR Council of Ministers in 1981, the law recognizing national parks left many long-debated issues unresolved and laid the groundwork for conflicts between Russia’s national parks and local populations.

For Science or Tourism?

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many countries embraced the national park concept as a way of showcasing their scenic landscapes and developing internal tourism. Many members of the Russian Imperial Geographical Society called for a system of parks in the Russian Empire. However, following the Great October Revolution of 1917, Russian conservationists and game management professionals instead pushed the state to establish zapovedniki dedicated to scientific research as well as some that served as game preserves. As “science for science’s sake” came under more suspicion in the 1930s, many supporters of the zapovedniki promoted tourism in them to make them seem more “useful” to government officials. By the late 1930s, tens of thousands of tourists entered the zapovedniki every year. Even in a climate of fear and xenophobia, some tourism promoters used the example of US national parks as they argued that zapovedniki should accommodate still more tourists.

Protecting the Pechoran Alps?

In the late 1960s, a group of scientists of the Komi Scientific Center conceived a national park to undermine the plan of Soviet engineers to divert the Pechora and Vychegda Rivers south to the Caspian Sea. Without guidance or support from central planning ministries, they conceived a national park in the Nether-Polar Urals that they hoped would reorient much of the region’s economy away from extractive industries and toward tourism. As was the case with other national parks, however, the transformative—almost quixotic—vision for Iugyd Va National Park (established in 1994), coupled with political and economic collapse, sowed the seeds for the park supporters’ disappointment. Pointing to the unrealistic vision of the park’s founders, representatives of the mining industry have repeatedly asserted that the national park has prevented the republic from developing its most valuable economic resource as it sought to pressure government officials to redraw its boundaries.

Introduction

The history of the Russian national park movement spans from the pre-Revolutionary era to the early twenty-first century. The establishment of national parks in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic beginning in 1983 demonstrated environmentalists’ ability to push the Soviet government to make reforms in an era that is frequently misunderstood as one of stagnation. However, since that time, Russian national parks have almost always fallen short of the ambitious goals of their founders and have provided Russian environmentalists with a painful reminder of their state’s weak commitment to environmental protection. More so than any other work in the field of Russian environmental history, this story places Russian environmental protection firmly within the larger story of international environmental protection networks and organizations in the late twentieth century. It contributes to the growing literature on Russian tourism, the international history of national parks, and social movements in the Soviet Union’s last decades.

Russia’s Forgotten Parks and the Crisis of Environmental Protection in the Russian Federation

Since Vladimir Putin came to power, the Russian Federation has continued to establish national parks. However, although there are some exceptions, most of Russian national parks exist in a state of neglect and are mired in conflicts with local populations, unequipped for large numbers of tourists, and frequently unable to clean up litter that has accumulated within their boundaries. At the same time, some remote parks with little tourist traffic still provide the sort of wilderness experience that an infrastructurally-developed park could not. While American environmental historians have suggested that particular cultural traditions in the United States have encouraged Americans to seek out wild places, during the late twentieth century, Russians seemed no less interest in such experiences than Americans. This suggests, perhaps, that seeking out such experience is better explained by the general impulse for people in urban areas to deliberately escape to wild places than by particular cultural traditions.

The Vision and the Reality in the Taiga of Karelia and the Arkhangelsk Oblast

As the spirit of reform pulsated throughout the Soviet Union, an idealistic college student from the Ukrainian SSR named Oleg Cherviakov took a fateful trip down the Ileks River into Vodlozero Lake in Arkhangelsk Oblast and Karelia. Entranced by the area’s beauty and intrigued by traditional Orthodox Christian culture, Cherviakov envisioned a national park that he believed not only would protect the region’s forests but would bring about a regional religious revival. After serving as Vodlozero National Park’s director for nearly fifteen years, Cherviakov realized that few wanted to go back to the old ways. Moreover, he concluded that tourism’s economic benefits would never materialize when few tourists wanted to come to this region and with the state little interested in developing the park’s infrastructure. Vodlozero National Park’s history marks perhaps the apotheosis of utopian proposals for parks conceived during a time of national transformation and the nadir of disillusionment among park founders.

Taking the “Best” from the West?

Under Nikita’s Khrushchev’s policy of “peaceful coexistence,” Soviet scientists started attending conferences of the International Union of the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) where they became more familiar with national parks. Meanwhile, the less repressive cultural environment emboldened many concerned environmentalists to make bold suggestions on how the state could improve its environmental protection practices. Some high-ranking officials, including Khrushchev, publicly stated that accessible tourism was one of the advantages of living in the USSR. In turn, environmentalists argued that national parks could help the USSR meet growing tourism demands in a way that minimized its environmental impact and promoted economic development. As tourism in the zapovedniki became an even bigger problem, several different groups conceived national parks that they hoped would take pressure off of them. They frequently invoked the success of national parks in the United States, even as the Communist Party took some more reactionary positions following Khrushchev’s ouster.

Paddling Upstream

The Samara Bend region on the Volga River experienced rapid industrial growth in the two decades after World War II. Uncertain about the future of the Zhiguli Zapovednik after the government had twice eliminated it (it was re-established after being eliminated the first time) and wanting to expand the area of Samara Bend under protection, some environmentally concerned citizens conceived a national park that they hoped would transform the regional economy. From its establishment in 1984, Samara Bend National Park was mired in conflicts with local populations whose uses of the land were made illegal and industries that had long operated in the park’s territory. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a young radical environmentalist named Sergei Fomichev staged a protest against continued illegal mining and gained the support of many of the park’s supporters who had become deeply frustrated about what they saw as the indifference of government officials to the park.

The “Shield” of the Sacred Sea

During the mid-1960s, industrial development on the southern shore of Lake Baikal raised grave concerns among scientists, writers, and the general public. These concerns prompted geographers, architectural institutes, economists, and others to develop plans for national parks (or a single park) on Baikal’s shoreline. Although the ideas for Baikal’s parks varied, their supporters believed they would orient the regional economy to tourism and stave off future industrial development. In the years after the establishment of Zabaikal’skii and Pribaikal’skii National Parks in 1986, the USSR’s political and economic crisis resulted in the neglect of these parks. Supporters of Baikal’s parks turned to foreign support, especially after the USSR’s collapse, only to realize that without state support it would yield minimal results. While few planned Russian national parks were more ambitious in scope, perhaps none were more disappointing to a broad swathe of Russian environmentalists than those around Lake Baikal.

Disappointments and the Persistence of Grandiose Visions

Not long after the RSFSR started establishing parks in the mid-1980s, environmental concerns became mainstream in the Soviet Union as Gorbachev’s reforms encouraged Soviet citizens to discuss a variety of problems more openly than at any time previously in Russian history. In turn, national parks were often touted for their potential to transform the economy of entire regions and the lifestyles of their inhabitants. While the state could not provide the funds for parks to carry out their most basic functions, park supporters placed hopes in attracting foreign tourists and new opportunities to collaborate with international organizations. This chapter uses several case studies—Elk Island National Park, ideas for parks on the Kamchatka Peninsula, and the proposed Beringia International Park and a park in the Altai Mountains—to demonstrate how park supporters used the national park idea to guard against development and future environmental threats.