Russia’s Contemporary Environmental Movement

Abstract

Laura Henry's book, Red to Green: Environmental Activism in Post-Soviet Russia, explores the evolution of Russia's environmental movement post-1991. It is grounded on extensive interviews and associated fieldwork activity in various regions of Russia. The main empirical focus of the book encompasses the late 1990s and early to mid-2000s. The book is a welcome addition to the existing literature in this area, helping to confirm, as well as augment, current understanding via a detailed analysis of environmental activism in Russia. More specifically, the book's findings build purposefully on the earlier work of authors exploring the nature and character of environmental movements and related democratic trends following the fall of socialist regimes in 1989/1991 (e.g., Fagan and Jehlicka 2003). In view of the size and significance of Russia as a global environmental actor, there has been relatively limited critical engagement with the country's environmental movement in the Western literature post-1991. Exceptions include the historical work of Mirovitskaya (1998), the earlier work of Henry (2006), in addition to regional work by Crotty (2003) and, more recently, chapters by Henry and Metzo in the edited collection by Julian Agyeman and Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger. Furthermore, the work of the Russian sociologist, Oleg Yanitsky, has provided significant and influential insight from the Russian perspective (e.g., Yanitsky 1999, 2001). In general, this body of work captured the emergence and protracted reconfiguration of Russia's environmental movement during the uncertainties of the 1990s and early 2000s. Henry's monograph is particularly useful in developing the findings of this literature in order to establish an understanding of both national and regional trends within Russia. The analytical and empirical focus of the work is strengthened further by its specific engagement with a period of growing state antipathy towards the activities of independent social movements; a trend that was particularly marked in the case of environmental organisations.