Source
r/AskHistorians•
Onemoagain

What was the evolution of the ecological impact on russian agriculture through their different political stages?

Hi all. I saw today an article that found that a main river in Cuba had better nitrogen levels than the Mississipi, indicating that the intensive capitalist & industrialized agriculture of the US was taking a larger toll on the land than the subsistence farming of Cuba. It got me thinking. Where could we find good comparisons between different modes of agriculture under different systems? Well why not Russia? From feudal empire to collectivist socialism to fall and crisis to modern capitalism.

So Im wondering what the effect of these different systems was on the land throughout the ages. Perhaps with similar comparisons to western european nations during the same periods?

Thanks. If you have better formulations of my question, feel free to correct me and respond accordingly!

Posted Feb 5, 2020, 3:39 PM UTC

23
AutoModeratorMODHistory of Robotics•

Welcome to r/AskHistorians. Please Read Our Rules before you comment in this community. Understand that rule breaking comments get removed.

We thank you for your interest in this question, and your patience in waiting for an in-depth and comprehensive answer to be written, which takes time. Please consider Clicking Here for RemindMeBot, using our Browser Extension, or getting the Weekly Roundup. In the meantime our Twitter, Facebook, and Sunday Digest feature excellent content that has already been written!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1
LBo87Modern Germany•

Not to discourage further answers of course, but this older thread concerning the ecological record of the eastern bloc might be of interest to you. I wrote a bit on the situation in East Germany there. That doesn't cover your whole question though, but you could start there.

To sum up briefly, the ecological record of the command economies was pretty atrocious given the historical focus of most socialist regimes on heavy industrialization. Their intensive agricultural policies had a disastrous ecological impact too, see for example the vanishing of the Aral Sea as a result of the Soviet-attempted Great Transformation of Nature. Plus, at least in the East German case, civil environmentalism was mistrusted by authorities and treated as politically dissident and subject to surveillance and persecution.

1
OnemoagainOP•

Cool, Ill check this out, thanks.

1