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.
A reservoir in Staffordshire after the hottest July on record (Picture: Stephen Craven/Geograph)
Water company bosses are trying to make us all pay for this summer’s record-breaking drought.
Water companies in England and Wales could impose “surge pricing” that factors water scarcity into bills, under plans being considered by the Ofwat regulator.
Surge pricing is the practice of charging more at times of higher demand, such as when taxi drivers raise their fares.
This proposal comes as 70 percent of England is facing drought, following the driest July in 190 years according to the Met Office.
Surge pricing has already been trialled across 14,000 houses in Lincoln and Norwich, in an effort to cut consumption during the drought. Around half of customers were forced to reduce their usage over being made to pay significantly more in summer months.
But campaigners have slammed the plans as creating a “new class of water poor”, with access depending on your ability to pay.
Bosses have been too busy lining their own pockets to make the vital repairs to pipes needed to prevent unnecessary loss of water.
Research by Greenpeace UK found that 2.87 billion litres of water a day seep from leaky pipes in England and Wales. That is enough to fill 1,150 Olympic-sized swimming pools and amounts to a fifth of all water pumped through the network.
Water companies have already been given the go ahead to raise bills to pay for the billions of pounds of extra spending needed for infrastructure and repairs. It has led to Andy Burnham accusing them of treating their customers like a “blank cheque”.
Once again, working class people are being expected to foot the bill for the unfettered profiteering of a few.
People should refuse to pay for the failure of privatisation that has left millions struggling to pay for water.
Council workers in Scotland filling potholes (Pic: Jennifer Petrie)
Robert Jenrick wants a new dawn that he calls “alarm clock Britain”.
The Reform UK treasury spokesperson is planning to compel people on unemployment benefits to work for 20 hours a week in the community.
Jenrick’s “welfare to work” scheme is not just an attack on the unemployed—it is an attack on all council workers.
Anyone out of work for more than a year will have to accept a job or face sanctions.
Jenrick wants them to work for nothing, cleaning up streets and parks, working with children and staffing libraries and community centres.
“If claimants refuse to participate or fail to show up, they will face penalties,” he added. “Let me speak plainly, if people who are capable of working refuse to, they’ll get nothing. That’s fair”, he threatened.
“My message today to those taking everyone else for mugs—under a Reform UK government it’s going to stop,” the far right MP said on Monday.
Reform UK reckons this scheme could involve up to 300,000 people who have claimed Universal Credit for more than 12 months.
Jenrick makes his work gangs sound like a walk in the park, tidying up a bit as you go, or “beautifying neglected places”.
But his plan should send a chill down the spines of millions of council workers, educators and librarians. He wants their jobs to be done by benefit claimants with no choice and no wages.
The plan demands that cash-strapped local councils provide necessary training and DBS checks. And that they supervise workers from an allocation of £3,200 a year per claimant.
Jenrick claims previous attempts to make claimants work for their benefits were abandoned because of lefty lawyers and cowardly politicians. He is determined that his will succeed.
But his plan will be a disaster. He implies that claimants will got little or no choice about the work they must do. And he has zero respect for, or understanding of, what he considers to be low-paid, unskilled work.
Jenrick’s plan is an insult to unemployed people.
He thinks unemployment is a lifestyle choice. His plan states, “Requiring claimants to work will make long-term welfare dependence less attractive as a lifestyle option.”
And it is an insult to the skilled public sector workers whose jobs he wants done for free.
One suggestion from Jenrick’s plan is joining a “Pothole and patching gang”. But that will require a CITB Health, Safety and Environment test and a CSCS Labourer card and a hot materials briefing.
Or, Jenrick suggests, claimants could be forced to work in breakfast and after school clubs, requiring food hygiene and safeguarding training and a paediatric first aid awareness certificate.
You could be told to give “activity and companionship support in sheltered and extra-care schemes”, requiring a Safeguarding Level 1 qualification, dementia awareness and an Enhanced DBS.
The list goes on. Jenrick wants to force people to undergo training they might never use again, for jobs they have no experience of or interest in and that they might find impossible to do.
There are thousands of people who would like to work. But they are shut out of the workplace due to inaccessible workplaces, unpaid caring responsibilities, expensive childcare and transport costs and because their local employers don’t want the skills they have.
Tags: Benefits, Reform UK Posted in Anti-racism, News |
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The debt crisis could throw Trump’s plans off track (Pic: Reuters)
The federal government debt in the US is massive and is posing an increasing threat to the world economy.
That debt now stands at around 100 percent of US GDP—the total value of goods and services produced and sold annually.
This is higher than at any other time since the Second World War. The national debt has built up over years of budget deficits. The current budget deficit stands at over 6 percent of GDP.
This is unprecedented when the economy is not in recession but is actually growing—as it is now. This year the deficit is likely to be $1.9 trillion, with the interest payable on the total debt more than $1 trillion. That’s more than the current US military budget.
These huge deficits are the direct product of low profitability, low and no growth, the financial crisis of 2008 and the Covid-19 lockdown of 2020.
The government finances its debt by persuading investors to buy government bonds, known in the US as treasuries. Bonds pay interest, usually fixed at a specific level.
If the supply of bonds is very large and the demand for them relatively weak, they require a higher rate of interest to attract investors.
Treasuries are normally considered to be as safe as houses by rich individuals, corporations and governments.
They are a cornerstone of the world economy. The supply of and demand for US treasuries determine interest rates not just across the US economy, but across the world.
It is the security of US treasuries that has allowed the US government to run up such a huge debt and still attract investors. Even if things go a bit pear-shaped, investors are confident that the Federal Reserve—the US central bank—will step in to prop up the system.
However, there are limits. Investors fear that the debt is destined to carry on growing and will ultimately prove unsustainable.
And the debt crisis could throw Donald Trump’s plans off track. The president has, for example, cut taxes for the rich and wants to increase military spending by 50 percent.
Several factors show this growing fragility. First, there was the unprecedented intervention by the US treasury to support the value of the Japanese yen. The US bought up large quantities of yen in an attempt to push up its value.
The yen has been falling in value, making imports to Japan more expensive and fuelling inflation there. Japan is the largest external holder of US bonds.
If Japan sells US bonds and raises interest rates to support the yen, then the price of US bonds could go down. This would force up US interest rates.
Second, US bonds have mostly been held by long-term institutional investors, including the governments of Japan and China. But more and more of the debt is now held by hedge funds.
Hedge funds make big bets and expect short-term gains. This can bring more volatility to the market for treasuries if circumstances suddenly change.
If the economy grows, tax revenues will increase. But it would take unprecedented rates of economic growth to resolve the US debt problem.
In 2025, the Fiscal Lab research centre estimated that the economy would have to grow at over 4 percent for the next ten years to eliminate the deficit.
Such sustained growth has never been achieved in the history of US capitalism.
Other governments around the world have also run up huge debts—Japan over 200 percent of GDP, Italy 137, France 112 and Britain 104.
This debt is pushing up interest rates worldwide, especially with the prospect of rising inflation from the war on Iran and the growing climate disaster.
This is putting massive pressure on governments to cut spending and raise taxes to try and reduce debt levels. But this will also have an adverse effect on economic growth.
These debt levels also mean that governments have less capacity to counter a severe downturn in the world economy by spending more.
US and global economic fragility is growing fast.
Tags: Economics, Trump Posted in Comment, The SW View |
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Exam board workers on the picket line in Manchester
Unison union members at AQA, Britain’s largest exam board, voted overwhelmingly to accept a pay deal and claimed victory.
Around 400 members struck from May to July in a determined fight for pay restoration.
The workers, who are based in Manchester, Guildford and Milton Keynes, have forced AQA to commit to become a real living wage accredited employer.
They have won an average 5.5 percent increase, rising to around 13 percent for the lowest‑paid workers. While they did not win pay restoration for all workers, the deal does represent an above inflation wage rise for everyone.
Laura, an AQA worker and Unison member, told Socialist Worker, “This deal was accepted by a large majority of our members.
“We know that 10 percent of workers at AQA were using food banks, so this pay increase represents real change for our lowest paid members,” she said.
AQA has also agreed to bring forwards an independent equalities review to the end of this year.
The current performance‑related pay scale means workers who go “above and beyond” at work take home higher pay. But proportionately fewer workers from an ethnic minority background receive these outstanding ratings.
“This issue mobilised people and increased the number of people who were in the union,” said Laura.
“It was the equalities issue that lit a fire under people.”
She explained that workers are prepared to strike again if bosses don’t hold up their side of the bargain.
“We’ll keep the dispute open until these are delivered.
“We have a mandate for a year, so we could still go back out on strike if they go back on anything,” she said.
There are important lessons from the AQA strike that are vital for other workers.
“First, don’t be scared to have an argument with members about the need to escalate action,” said Laura.
“You have to keep up the momentum and not call off strikes when bosses make it a requirement for negotiations.
“That’s how you turn a good win into a massive victory,” said Laura.
“Second, our strike was not just about one workplace. It was much bigger than that.
We brought in a lot of external support and invited other union branches to meetings and picket lines.
“But it’s also good for other branches to visit picket lines and see people doing something about pay. People go away thinking, ‘Why don’t we do that?’”
It is an inspiring example that other trade unionists should try to replicate around the country as the cost of living crisis continues to hit.
Escalation in frame for Scottish gallery workers
Ahead of their final day of strikes this Thursday, PCS union members at the National Galleries of Scotland are planning to escalate their fight against job cuts.
Edinburgh striker Alan told Socialist Worker, “Members understand that we need to escalate.
“Management can manage four days of strikes spread out,” he said. “But if we went for extended action, the galleries would have to be closed at all times.
“If we were disturbing all the shifts for multiple days in row, they couldn’t cope.”
Alan said, “There’s a real mood to keep fighting on this.”
Members are in discussion over future action.
“We’re really lucky to have such a strong branch—we have a 90 percent union density now—and the support of the union,” said Alan.
“We know that this is just the first cut. If this goes through, they’ll be coming for other jobs and other sectors too.”
Visit the picket lines on 20 August, 8am, National Gallery, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
Bosses taking advantage of Manchester health workers
Hundreds of theatre workers for the Northern Care Alliance NHS trust in Greater Manchester are set to return to picket lines next week.
They plan to walk out on Monday, Wednesday and Friday for 24 hours. The last of next week’s actions will mark their seventh day of strikes so far.
The Unison union members are furious at bosses who are refusing to pay the nationally agreed time and a half overtime rate.
Instead, the trust is using the NHS Professionals in-house agency to organise overtime at rates often lower than even normal pay. It means some workers are missing out on more than £80 a shift.
A local health activist told Socialist Worker that many staff agree to work overtime to help out on their own or neighbouring wards when they are desperately short-staffed.
But the bosses are taking advantage of their kindness and refuse to pay them properly.
Picket lines are set for Salford Royal, Fairfield, Rochdale Infirmary and Royal Oldham hospitals and run from 7.30am till 11am.
Local trade unionists should attend picket lines and invite strikers to speak to their branches.
Strikers from all four hospitals have organised a joint march, picket and rally in Salford on Wednesday 26 August. Gather outside Salford Royal at 11.30am
University crisis deepens
The financial crisis in universities could be catastrophic for Andy Burnham’s Labour government.
At the University of Exeter, all teaching in geography at the Penryn campus in Cornwall has been cancelled.
The announcement means there will be no undergraduate geography degrees for the whole county of Cornwall.
The university chose A Level results day to make the announcement, when many school and college leavers would have been celebrating their results and planning their move to Exeter.
University managements have pointed to the drop in the number of student visa applications.
But university workers are asking why the bosses’ first response to a crisis is always to cut workers’ jobs.
UCU union branch members at Exeter are balloting for strikes. The union says it has submitted 50 counter‑proposals to the bosses’ plans for cuts.
Meanwhile, parents of students at Goldsmiths university in south east London have called on university bosses to resolve a dispute with workers.
UCU members started a marking and assessment boycott in April in response to £22 million of planned cuts.
They have been on indefinite strike since June. It has left some students facing the prospect of being unable to graduate.
Lifeboat workers won’t be moved
Workers on the Isle of Wight who make lifeboats for the RNLI Lifeboat charity struck last week. They are set to walk out this Wednesday and next Tuesday.
The Unite union members are fuming that charity bosses want to close the site and relocate them all to Poole, in Dorset.
The workers say they cannot afford to move to Poole and that bosses haven’t addressed the impact on their families and personal lives from forcing them to move.
Keeping up the energy of strikes
Workers for the Ofgem energy regulator are set to take action this month in a long-running dispute over job security and conditions.
Three strike days have been announced to coincide with the announcement of the new price cap—which limits how much energy supplies can charge a household.
The PCS union members will be on strike on 24-26 August.
Strikes develop at foreign office
Workers at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) will be on strike on 26 August.
Last week more than 100 members of the PCS union were out against a planned restructure that could lead to compulsory redundancies.
The union is confident the FCDO will move on their demands.
Join the picket line on 26 August at King Charles St, London SW1A 2AH and FCDO, Abercrombie House, Eaglesham Rd, East Kilbride G75 8EA from 8-10am
Scientists being bled dry by bosses
Blood scientists at two teaching hospitals in Lancashire have escalated their strikes—and withdrawn from an emergency agreement with their NHS trust.
The Unite union members are in dispute over unpaid holiday pay and bosses’ failure to honour an earlier employment tribunal ruling.
Some workers are owed thousands of pounds.
Workers first walked out in June and have struck on every weekday since.
The union says it has now withdrawn from a special arrangement that allowed some strikers to continue providing critical services, including emergency blood tests and transfusions.
Unite said the trust was trying to undermine the strike.
It was giving staff routine work to do on the shifts they are working during the walkout—instead of the “life and limb cover” agreed.
Through re-telling Greek myths, Hadestown is a damning condemnation of capitalism
As London was about to go into its fifth heatwave this year, it felt fitting to enter the apocalyptic world of Hadestown.
This re-telling of Greek myths is a damning condemnation of capitalism. Hadestown combines the stories of Orpheus and Eurydice and Hades and Persephone into a powerful theatre production.
It takes on some of the biggest issues of our day—climate change, racism, poverty and the brutality of capitalism.
The use of blues, folk and jazz music along with the production design is reminiscent of the Great Depression—a time of great poverty and suffering that was followed by the slaughter of millions.
The reference to the 1930s resonates today with the rise of the far right, economic crisis and war.
Eurydice, who is living in poverty, is convinced by Hades that her only escape is by selling herself to him.
She travels to the underworld with him, where she discovers hell as a factory floor in which the workers are both alienated from themselves and from the nature above. The industrialisation that sees both workers and nature crushed by capitalism is a theme throughout.
Hades is both the factory manager and the leader of the underworld.
The parallels with Donald Trump are apparent, particularly when Hades asks “Why do we build the wall, my children?” The reply from the workers—“Because we have and they have not / Because they want what we have got / The enemy is poverty / And the wall keeps out the enemy / And we build the wall to keep us free.”
This description of why workers are pulled by right wing ideas is counterposed to collective action.
Eurydice’s love interest Orpheus attempts to break her out but fails, until the other workers realise their chains and join them in their struggle against Hades.
Hades agrees to let Orpheus, Eurydice and the workers go with one caveat—that Orpheus must not look back.
Hadestown, written in the shadow of the Iraq war, highlights the brutality of capitalism.
The system tears the joy out of life and forces both nature and people to succumb to its relentless pursuit of profit. We must all look forward, not back, to a new world built out of the ashes of the old.
Hadestown is on show at the Lyric Theatre, 29 Shaftsbury Avenue, London W1D 7ES
This exhibition’s Panafrica exists in a post-modernist relationship with the tradition of Pan-Africanism
The exhibition Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica mixes artworks alongside artefacts from more than a century of Pan‑Africanism in a sometimes beguiling jumble.
It contains many fascinating and exciting works both from various African countries and the African diaspora.
These include all six of the monumental mural series The Art of the Negro by Hale Aspacio Woodruff, produced in 1950-51 for the historically black Clark Atlanta University in pre-civil rights Georgia. These proudly place black artists and culture at the heart of wider world history from ancient Egypt onwards.
The exhibition has an impressive desire to foreground women, like British artist Lynette Yiadom‑Boakye, with her specially produced portraits.
Traditional Kenyan kanga cloths have been repurposed by Kawira Mwirichia to defend LGBT+ rights.
It is dotted with display cases featuring items from the history of the Pan-African movement. Pamphlets, books and portraits feature thinkers and leaders including Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, Amy Ashwood and Frantz Fanon. But why they are significant is only hinted at.
Much of the most engaging art is about specific experiences. Liz Johnson Artur’s video installation explores growing up black in south London over the past 60 years.
Bertina Lopes’s 1974 painting Fear Out of Memory evokes the horrors of Mozambique’s independence war. But you have to know the history to identify this.
Most historical works aren’t labelled with the artist’s country of origin, removing them from the events and experiences that inspired them.
The exhibition features lots of fascinating art from the African diaspora, but the confusion is reflected in its awkward title—what does Panafrica mean? It relates somehow to the Pan-African movement that grew from a series of congresses starting in 1900. This peaked with the call by
Kwame Nkrumah, first leader of independent Ghana, for African states to politically unite against imperialism.
This exhibition’s Panafrica exists in a post-modernist relationship with these projects, apparently embarrassed by the Pan-Africanists’ grand dream of changing the world.
It would never be possible to follow all the multidirectional cultural references from the African diaspora, but this exhibition sometimes seems to revel in making them obscure.
The Art and Culture of Panafrica is on until 6 September at the Barbican, Silk St, London EC2Y 8DS
Over 30 union members attended negotiations in person
Monday
The day starts at 8am setting up the picket line at the Chelsea site.
Banners and flags go across the front of the building so staff and the public can see the strike is ongoing.
We get plenty of support from passing bus drivers—fellow Unite union members—which keeps morale high.
At 11am we wrap up and head to Bloomsbury.
Chris Molloy, an ICR trustee and now CEO of the UK BioIndustry Association, is not pleased to see us inflate Scabby, the twenty-foot rat, outside the entrance while we hand out flyers explaining his role in the dispute.
After a quick lunch, we return to Chelsea for 3pm negotiations. Over 30 union members attend in person and more than 50 attend online.
Paul Norris, the ICR CFO, insists the pay offer cannot be improved, despite admitting it will cost £25 million over five years while £72 million sits unallocated.
There is clearly room for better.
Tuesday
Pickets lines again at 8am in both Chelsea and Sutton.
Without escalation actions, these days are ideal for talking to colleagues who haven’t yet joined the strike.
It’s important to show that joining now still matters—the longer the strike grows, the greater the pressure on management.
People are always keen to hear updates from negotiations and often shocked by how casually management treats them.
Wednesday
A group of us travel to Cambridge South Biomedical Campus to build solidarity.
We meet members of Unite South Cambridgeshire Engineering, the Cambridgeshire branch of the NEU union and some university students.
The NEU members are particularly interested, given their upcoming ballot.
Later, we protest outside the offices of Cancer Research UK (CRUK), who are the ICR’s largest funder.
Although they claim they can’t influence management, our presence makes clear that escalation will continue and won’t be confined to London.
Thursday
Picket lines begin again at 8am in 30+ degree heat. Today’s theme is “The house is on fire!”—a nod to both climate change and the pressure we’re building on management.
Themes help keep energy up and combat picket fatigue.
Afterwards, we protest at the William Harvey Research Foundation, where Dame Julia Buckingham also serves as a trustee.
Scabby is back, music is loud, and although police are called they take no action.
The message is clear—we will keep showing up. Later, an all-staff meeting is held to update colleagues.
Management and trustees are invited but do not attend, reinforcing the sense that they are avoiding accountability.
ICR strikers visiting a bus worker picket line (Photo: Dave Gilchrist)
Friday
No picket line for me today. Instead, we travel to Wood Green to support Unite bus drivers on their first day of strikes.
One driver shows me a thermometer reading 48 degrees inside his cab—a stark reminder of why safe temperature limits are urgently needed.
In the evening, we hold a fundraising event with live music and DJs.
Actor Jenny Agutter speaks in support and, for a few hours, we switch off, dance and recharge for the week ahead.
What you can do
Use the collection sheet to do a collection at work, or at a union or campaign meeting.
Organise a donation from your trade union branch. Reference: ICR-Strike Fund. Account name: Unite LE/524 Branch. Sort Code: 608301. Account number: 30010808
Invite ICR strikers to your next meeting.
Organise for strikers to come to your town or city in a delegation. Set up meetings for them in your workplace.
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.
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