Katja Bruisch (Dublin): Extraction and the making of place: How the peat industry transformed a central Russian region

Beginn: 18:30 Uhr

Vortrag: Katja Bruisch (Dublin): 
Extraction and the making of place: How the peat  industry transformed a central Russian region

Veranstaltung im Berlin-Brandenburger Colloquium für Umweltgeschichte im Wintersemester 2022/23
Veranstalter: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in Kooperation mit dem Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung

Das Gesamtprogramm des BBC im WS 2022/23 finden Sie auf der ZZF Website hier und in der pdf im Anhang.

Zum Vortrag von Katja Bruisch:
The extraction of peat for the generation of heat and power is a largely forgotten chapter in the history of Russia’s fossil economy. This talk will look at the different ways in which peat extraction reconfigured the physical, economic and social geography of central Russia from the late 19th century until the end of the Soviet period. Focussing on infrastructure, workers’ experiences and narratives of place and belonging I point to the fundamental tension created by the use of peat in Russia’s industrializing economy. While massively degraded from an ecological point of view, peatlands became increasingly habitable for the people who exploited them. Peat, moreover, was much more than a fuel. Over time, it became the bedrock of place-based identities in communities that emerged through a history of extraction and that have struggled to come to terms with multiple social and environmental problems after extraction ended in the late Soviet period.

Zur Referentin:
Dr Katja Bruisch is Assistant Professor in Environmental History at Trinity College Dublin. Before, she was a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute in Moscow. Her current project on the history of peat fuel in 19th and 20th century Russia centers on actors, places and energy sources at the margins of Russia’s rising fossil economy. She is the author of Als das Dorf noch Zukunft war: Agrarismus und Expertise zwischen Zarenreich und Sowjetunion (Cologne: Böhlau, 2014). Other publications include “Nature Mistaken: Resource-Making, Emotions and the Transformation of Peatlands in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union” (Environment and History 2020) and “The State in the Swamps: Territorialization and Ecosystem Engineering in the Western Provinces of the Late Russian Empire” (Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 2019). With Liesbeth van de Grift she co-authored “Reclaiming the Land: The Drainage Paradigm and the Making of Twentieth-Century Rural Europe” (forthcoming 2022 in Living with the Land: Agricultural and Rural Actors in Twentieth-Century Europe, eds. Liesbeth van de Grift, Dietmar Müller and Corinna Unger.