Reassembling the Environmental Archives of the Cold War
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
. . Reassembling the Environmental Archives of the Cold War Cold the of Archives Environmental the Reassembling Doctoral Thesis in History of Science, Technology, and Environment Reassembling the Environmental Archives of the Cold War Perspectives from the Russian North DMITRY V. ARZYUTOV ISBN TRITAABEDLT KTH www.kth.se Stockholm, Sweden Reassembling the Environmental Archives of the Cold War Perspectives from the Russian North DMITRY V. ARZYUTOV Academic Dissertation which, with due permission of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, is submitted for public defence for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy on on Friday the 20th August 2021, at 4:00 p.m. through video conferencing. Doctoral Thesis in History of Science, Technology, and Environment KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, Sweden 2021 © Dmitry V. Arzyutov ISBN 978-91-7873-931-8 TRITA-ABE-DLT-2127 Printed by: Universitetsservice US-AB, Sweden 2021 Моей семье с любовью Alla mia famiglia con amore Acknowledgments Producing texts always means producing relations. The present dissertation is not an exception. Its initial idea emerged when I was in the field in Yamal with my Nenets family of Okotetto and Yaungad. It crystallized over the conversations with my supervisors Peder Roberts, Per Högselius and Julia Lajus, and with my colleagues and friends at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. And it ultimately has come to its material form in my home with my Russian-Italian family. The multi-sited life of the text intertwines with life histories of a great number of people whose names I am hardly able to mention here but whose voices, knowledge, and emotions are in this work. The field and archival researches sit at the core of my research. My ethnographic and archival life in Yamal between 2009 and 2018 would be simply unthinkable without the open hearts and warm care of Khadri, Khadri’ nyísya, Gena’ nyebya, Artur nyinyeka, Arsen, Alik, Anisii, dyadya Fedya, Egor Vengo, Roman and Vera Okotetto, Pasha and Kostya Yaptik, tetya Lena Zastavnaya, Stas and Irina Okotteto and many other nomadic friends of mine. They opened to me their Nenets planet that is in continuous movement and I am still orbiting it. My Nenets life has also included the travels to the Kolguev island where I met the wonderful Varnitsyns, Pyrerko, Evsiugins families whose “life on the island” turned my perception of the Arctic upside down and sparked my interest in insularity. During long-term archival and museum journeys in Russia and worldwide I encountered many wonderful people who were ready to help me an infinite number of times: Elena Gruzdeva, Irina Tarakanova, Lyudmila Lipatova, Nailya Galeeva, Aleksei Tikhonov and many others. My Moscow archival research would be a lot worse without the hospitality of my life-long friends Yulya and Max Mokshins. Coming back to my office, I always met a great interest and intellectual support from my colleagues. The GRETPOL (the ERC-funded project “Greening the Poles: Science, the Environment, and the Creation of the Modern Arctic and Antarctic”) team led by Peder with our regular meetings and letter and message exchanges became a homely space for developing the ideas and discussing the research results. I am very grateful to Peder who was able to create that atmosphere and solicitously supervised and assisted me over my ventures. Thank you, Lize-Marié van der Watt, Kati Lindström, Justiina Dahl, Tayana Arakchaa and Roman Khandozhko! The Division provided its doctoral students with a truly unique vibe, an atmosphere of intellectual democracy and “undisciplined” humanities. My conversations with Sverker Sörlin on the Arctic environmental history and history of science, Sabine Höhler on conservation politics and STS, Marco Armiero on political ecology and oral history, Anna Storm on landscape scars, Dag Avango on Svalbard and ANT methodologies, Jacob von Heland on visual anthropology and history are certainly imprinted on my memory and dissertation. The discussions, lectures and seminars with Arne Kaijser, Nina Wormbs, Cecilia Åsberg, Annika Nilsson, Ethemcan Turhan and occasional conversations with Linus Salö, Katarina Larsen, Eric Paglia and David Nilsson were of great importance to me for shaping the text and developing new and revisiting classic ideas. Our seminar rooms and the Division kitchen were the “contact zones” where PhD students spontaneously discussed their ideas which could not but enrich all our texts including the present dissertation. I am grateful to all of you: Jean-Sébastien Boutet, Daniele Valisena and Ilenia Iengo, Irma Allen, Jesse Peterson, Hanna Vikström, Johan Gärdebo, Corinna Röver, Camilla Winqvist, Anne Gough, Ulrika Bjare, Achim Klüppelberg, Siegfried Evens, Gloria Samosir, Thomas Schrøder, Erik Isberg, Jasmin Höglund Hellgren, Araujo Domingos and many others who visited the Division at that time. I am also very grateful to Roberta Biasillo and Otso Kortekangas for our discussions and collaborations. My special thanks go out to my office-mates Anna Svenson and her flowers and Tae Hoon Kim and his sense of humor. All this would be just nothing without the help and support of Sofia Jonsson, Emilia Rolander, Miia Jylkkä and also Emma Conradsson and Martin Skoglund who made my life as a doctoral student comfortable and easier. The REXSAC project gifted me not only wonderful study trips to various parts of European Arctic but also the encounters with such wonderful people as Élise Lépy, Jón Haukur, Joan Nymand Larsen Christian Fohringer, Anna-Maria Fjellström, Sandra Fischer, and Jasmiini Fransala (Pylkkänen). I am very grateful to Eglė Rindzevičiūtė and Andy Bruno who agreed to review my texts and to help me strengthening the argument and Katarina Larsen who so tactfully orchestrated our Higher Seminars and always asked deep questions. My Helsinki period of life was illumed by the light of my dearest colleague and neighbour Hanna Snellman, spontaneous travels and catch-ups with Alla and Marta Bolotovs, the best ever BBQs and long philosophical conversations with Noora and Jokke Pyyry, the Indigenous studies discussions with Pirjo Virtanen and friendly joyful chats with Ivan Matošić Baguc, incredibly deep Nenets folklore and history conversations with Karina Lukin, microhistorically feministic vision of the past with Josephine Hoegaerts, language, power and anthropology conversations with Elina Hartikainen and Andy Graan, a new discovery of the GULAG history with Mikhail Nakonechnyi and many other great friends and colleagues. Finalizing the papers in Oulu was really joyful thanks to my friends and colleagues: Roger Norum, Vesa-Pekka Herva, Tuuli Matila, Mathilde van den Berg, Hannu Heikkinen, Ferhat Kaya and Anna Heumann. My special gratitude goes to my long-term colleague and friend David Anderson whose advice, provocative questions and irony helped me a lot throughout my research. Discussions with Carlo Ginzburg significantly affected my perception and knowledge of micro- and ethnohistory. Serguei Oushakine was friendly provocative with challenging my texts and helping to improve them. Sergei Kan and Regna Darnell helped me with access to the Franz Boas Papers. I am grateful for the help in my field research and intellectually stimulating discussions to Rob Losey, Tanya Nomokonova and Masha Amelina. I also would like to thank Vladi Vladimirova for her interest in my research and friendly conversations in Stockholm and Uppsala. I am grateful to my colleagues and friends in different institutions who helped me with their advice, access to rare publications and archival documents: Sergei Alymov, Roald Berg, Petr Boyarskiy, Volodia Davydov, Dima Doronin, Natalya Fedorova, Marie-Theres Fojuth, Valentin Gusev, Sasha Kasatkina, Katya Kapustina, Natasha Komelina, Galina Orlova, Marina Lyublinskaiya, Elena Miklashevich, Masha Momzikova, Sveta Podrezova, Maria Pupynina, Misha Solonenko, Igor Stas’, Viktor Tolkachev, Lena Volzhanina, and Zhenia Zakharova. My research also included papers at seminars and conferences. I am thankful to Mikko Saikku, Viktor Pál, Dolly Jørgensen, Pirjo Virtanen, Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, Irina Sandomirskaja, Myram Adjam, and Vladi Vladimirova for inviting me to discuss the results of my research with their colleagues and to get a valuable feedback. I am very grateful to Amber Lincoln, Peter Loovers, Lotten Gustafsson Reinius, and Martin Schultz for giving me an opportunity to contribute to their wonderful Arctic museum exhibitions and for consulting me with a number of questions about material culture of Arctic Indigenous peoples. This work would never been finished without constant support, love and help of my dearest wife Laura, who was ready to listen to my stories from the field and archives, discuss the fragments of in-progress papers always being patient with my impatient thoughts. The support of my parents Irina and Vladimir and my famiglia – Miretta, Giuseppe, Elena, Alessandro and our wonderful Agata meant more than love to me. I cordially dedicate my dissertation to you all! * * * All Russian words and titles in all five papers are transliterated with ALA-LC (Library of Congress) Romanization with Diacritics, while Nenets words are transliterated according to the system of Tapani Salminen. Summary and keywords (English) To what extent the environmental history of the Arctic can move beyond the divide between Indigenous peoples and newcomers or vernacular and academic ways of knowing? The present dissertation answers this question