Soviet Industrial Ecology

 The Soviet economy used a lot of wood. For fuel, construction, consumer products, even in military weaponry. Wood could be shaped and transformed. But wood was also finite–and trying to balance the demand with the supply in forests was a delicate dance. The Soviet forestry industry understood this, and developed a unique form of industrial ecology—a practical approach toward natural resources for the economy and society to extract wood in a sustainable way. This ecological sustainability is not about preserving the natural world, like we think today. Rather, Soviet sustainability was about maintaining supply for production. What did this mean in theory and practice in the Soviet economy? How was it applied to cutting of forests, especially the so-called virgin forests of Siberia? To learn more about the Soviet world of wood, the Eurasian Knot turned to Elena Kochetkova to learn about her book The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology. Guest: Elena Kochetkova an Associate Professor in Modern European Economic History at the Department of Archeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion at the University of Bergen. Her first book is The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology published by MIT Press. Send us your sounds! https://euraknot.org/contact/  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/euraknot  Knotty News: https://eurasianknot.substack.com/ The Knot’s Nest: https://eurasian-knot.sellfy.store/  Website: https://euraknot.org/