| Book Review | Environmental History, 13.1

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 13.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Nature and National Identity after Communism: Globalizing the Ethnoscape. By Katrina Z. S. Schwartz. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006. xvii + 288 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. Paper $27.95.
Communism was a mixed blessing for Latvia, a small Baltic land that endured Soviet occupation from 1940 to 1991. Collectivization of agriculture and attempts to implement the "Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature" scarred and sometimes destroyed traditional rural landscapes and communities. But ironically, the inefficiencies and paranoia of the Soviet regime left significant portions of Latvia undeveloped, including important bird habitat along the Baltic coast.	1
With Latvia moving toward membership in the European Union in the 1990s, environmentalists and pro-Europe forces, both in Latvia and internationally, saw Latvia's "biodiversity" as a substantial asset for Europe. Accordingly, international funds began to flow into Latvia to promote biodiversity and sustainable development. But other Latvians were wary of projects that would cut into traditional agrarian land use practices in the name of biodiversity. As many Latvian nationalists claimed, the carefully cultivated countryside, with its intertwined nature and human culture, was central to Latvian national identity. Entry into the globalizing economic and ideological community of Europe, they feared, threatened to destroy Latvia's distinctive culture.	. . .

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