Vortrag von Tetiana Perga (Berlin): Waste, Power, and Ideology: Recycling in the Early Soviet Ukraine

Vierte Veranstaltung des Berlin-Brandenburger Colloquiums für Umweltgeschichte (BBC) im Wintersemester 2025/26, das zu vier Terminen von Oktober 2025 bis Februar 2026 einlädt. Die Veranstaltung findet auf Englisch statt. 

Veranstalter: Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam in Kooperation mit dem Forschungsschwerpunkt "Umwelt, Klima, Energie"

Montag, 9. Februar 2025 | 18-20 Uhr 

Abstract
This paper explores the features of the early Soviet waste regime in the Ukrainian SSR during the 1920s and early 1930s, examining waste recycling as a survival strategy for enterprises, institutions, private entrepreneurs, charitable organizations, and ordinary citizens amid chronic raw material shortages, forced industrialization and collectivization, social transformations, the project of forming the “new Soviet person,” and the Holodomor of 1932–1933. How did they compete for this limited yet valuable resource during the “waste fever” that swept across Ukraine at the time? What practices did they employ in this intense competition? Which factors determined success and failure for businesses and individuals? The sheds light on how everyday survival strategies, competition, ingenuity, ambition, and practical knowledge shaped the functioning of the waste collection and recycling system in early Soviet Ukraine and it is built on a wide range of primary sources. 

Short Bio
Tetiana Perga received her Ph.D. from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine, and has worked at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine for over 30 years. She has participated in international research programs funded by DAAD, DFG, the Volkswagen Foundation, the Max Weber Foundation, the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture (Germany), and the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Currently, she is affiliated with the Technical University of Berlin. She is a member of the European Society for Environmental History and the Leo Baeck Institute Research Group in Jewish Environmental History, serves as an expert for the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and a member of editorial boards of two Ukrainian academic journals. She is also a participant in UGHI, where she is working on the excremental history of Ukraine. Tetiana Perga has presented at numerous international conferences and is the author of 140 articles, co-author of eight books, and author of two monographs, focusing on diverse aspects of environmental history.