Protesting Destruction in Chapaevsk: Green Politics in a Late Soviet City

Abstract

This provincial case study demonstrates the diversity of political movements mobilised by environmental anxieties, particularly outside of Moscow, in the final years of Soviet Russia. By focusing on the emergence of green politics that promoted ecosocialism, the analysis takes up the call proposed by scholars of the Anthropocene by exploring late Soviet Russia as a place of political possibilities, where environmentalism-as-politics became a force for change. The failure of the green movement after 1990, in light of their successes before the dissolution of the USSR, offers new insights into the effectiveness of green politics in the Russian provinces prior to the disintegration of the USSR.