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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.
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| 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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The problem for legislators in successive regimes was to resolve the conflicts between the exploitation and conservation of forests, and between state and local interests. In the last decade of Tsarist Russia, a movement in favor of protection emerged among foresters, who saw the solution in "the establishment of a single, rationally planned national forest economy, utilizing scientific methodologies and technical knowledge, managed in a consensual association between center and localities ..., and based on state ownership" (p. 58). Foresters saw the collapse of the Tsarist regime in February 1917 as the opportunity to realize their plans. The Bolshevik revolution of October 1917 is presented as "more facilitative than creative" with regard to forest legislation (p. 83). The"' Basic Law" of 1918 enshrined the principles of nationalization of forests, centralization of organization, scientific planning, as well as the Bolsheviks' contribution to the agenda: political control over technical experts. The implementation of the law, however, was hampered by the chaos of the Civil War of 1918–1921, shortages of resources, bureaucratic problems, and the continued widescale uncontrolled felling. The 1923 "Forest Code" separated nationally planned state forests and locally planned and managed peasant forests. This was a concession to the peasants in line with the New Economic Policy of 1921. On paper, if not in practice, both the 1918 and 1923 laws envisaged long-term sustainability by seeking a balance between exploitation and conservation. The two laws differed, however, in the relative balance between central and local interests. Bonhomme continues his account down to 1929—the year when Stalin's industrialization drive put the emphasis firmly on exploitation rather than conservation of natural resources. He also discusses Lenin's attitude toward forest protection. |
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In seeking to write for two audiences, historians of Russia and forestry, Bonhomme favors the former by using Russian terminology that would have been better translated in the text and the Russian terms relegated to an appendix. A little too much information, moreover, has been put in footnotes that hamper both the readability and appearance of the text. Nevertheless, this is a worthwhile book on an important subject that merits a specialist audience. |
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David Moon is reader in modern European history at the University of Durham, England, an active member of ESEH, and author of The Russian Peasantry 1600–1930: The World the Peasants Made (Longman, 1999) and The Environmental History of the Russian Steppes: Vasilii Dokuchaev and the Harvest Failure of 1891 (Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 2005). |
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