| Book Review | Environmental History, 11.4

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 11.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Forests, Peasants, and Revolutionaries: Forest Conservation and Organization in Soviet Russia, 1917–1929. By Brian Bonhomme. Boulder, Colorado: East European Monographs, 2005. 252 pp. Footnotes, tables, selected bibliography. Cloth $50.00.

In this solidly researched and detailed book, Brian Bonhomme gives a generally negative assessment of the first twelve years of Soviet forestry which, he concludes, "brought no obvious benefit to the peasantry, only slightly more to the majority of foresters, and more apparent harm than good to Russia's forests themselves" (p.235). The book examines forestry legislation from the Tsarist "Statute on the Safeguarding of Forests" of 1888, through the Bolsheviks' "Basic Law on Forests" of May 1918, to the "Forest Code" of 1923. The author analyzes these laws' origins, contents, implementation, and consequences. Throughout, the author relates his analysis to wider developments in Russian history. He also notes the steady destruction of Russia's vast forests over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The collapse of authority in 1917, moreover, resulted in an orgy of tree felling by peasants that continued into the 1920s.

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