The start of a truly Marxist ecology

Ilmensky nature reserve, founded as a zapovednik in 1920 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The Russian revolution was one that was intimately concerned with questions of environment, conservation and ecology.

In his 1908 novel Red Star, set on a utopian socialist Mars, the Bolshevik scientist Alexander Bogdanov imagines a conversation between two Martians concerned about an energy crisis.

One Martian, named Sterni, proposes that they simply wipe out the earthlings in order to exploit Earth’s natural resources. Even before the revolution, Netti, Sterni’s fellow martian, reprimands him. Netti tells Sterni that socialists cannot propose to eliminate “an entire individual type of life, a type which we can never resurrect or replace”.

The Russian revolution toppled the Tsarist autocracy nine years later and swept the Bolsheviks into power.

One of the first decrees they passed was a decree that made land common property. Later decrees on forests and wildlife would put restrictions on hunting and forestry.

Vladimir Lenin himself took an interest in conservation, closely reading geographer Vladimir Sukachev’s pioneering research on swamps.

In 1919, as the white army was fighting against the revolution, Lenin took time to meet with conservationists.

Lenin backed Bolshevik education minister Anatoly Lunacharsky’s environmental reforms and made sure that conservation remained part of education.

Lenin also encouraged Lunacharsky to set up the “zapovednik” system. These were nature reserves created almost exclusively for research. These were revolutionary as nature reserves in capitalist countries had existed primarily for recreation.

By 1929, some 61 zapovedniks had been established across Russia, totalling 4 million hectares of land.

Zapovedniks led to a revolution in ecological thought. Before the Bolsheviks, ecology was primarily concerned with the relationship between plants and soils. It was in the zapovednik that scientists began to observe the crucial role that animals play in the ecosystem.

It was through the zapovedniks that Vladimir Stanchinsky, an ecologist academically isolated in pre-revolutionary Russia, was able to begin his pioneering studies of energy.

Stanchinsky theorised that energy is lost at each step of the food chain. Because so little energy survives each transfer, the organisms at the top of the food chain have far less energy available to them, limiting how many predators an ecosystem can maintain.

This theory became the basis for the “trophic ladder”, a model that is foundational to environmental science and archaeology. Stanchinsky’s theories were embraced by the Bolsheviks and he became editor of the Soviet Union’s first ecological journal.

Thinkers like geoscientist Vladimir Vernadsky, who had been unable to secure funding in the West, were supported by the Bolshevik government.

In his work at the Russian Academy of Science, Vernadsky developed the theory of the biosphere. This posited that animals could be viewed as a geological force with the potential to shape the natural world.

Other soviet ecologists such as Alexander Oparin created theories around the origins of life that remain influential to this day. And geneticist Nikolai Vavilov discovered the origins of domesticated plant life.

The story of Bolshevik ecology would end with the rise of Joseph Stalin, his counter-revolution and his promotion of agriculturalist Trofim Lysenko. Lysenko maintained a dictatorial rule over soviet ecology and believed in human dominance over nature, instead of harmony with it.

The zapovedniks were turned into tools for this project—to transform nature, not to study it. Scientists like Vavilov who opposed Lysenko found themselves imprisoned and eventually lying in unmarked graves.

But for a moment, during the Russian Revolution, anything was possible. Scientific possibilities exploded and the barriers of human knowledge were brought down.

The story of Soviet ecology shows that revolutions can liberate not only humankind, but nature as well.