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- Convenors:
-
Ulrike Plath
(Tallinn University Estonian Academy of Sciences)
Kadri Tüür (Tallinn University)
Peder Roberts (University of Stavanger)
Send message to Convenors
- Chairs:
-
Kadri Tüür
(Tallinn University)
Ulrike Plath (Tallinn University Estonian Academy of Sciences)
- Discussants:
-
Melanie Arndt
(Freiburg University)
Kati Lindström (KTH Royal Institute of Technology)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Streams:
- Navigating Conflict, Governance, and Activism
- Location:
- Room 1
- Sessions:
- Monday 19 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
Environmental activism and concerns are a part of different political and ideological beliefs, social practices and discourses. In the panel, we propose to focus on the transition periods and the continuities of environmentalism in Eastern Europe during the long 20th century.
Long Abstract:
Environmental activism and concerns are a part of different political and ideological beliefs, social practices and discourses. In the panel, we propose to focus on the transition periods and the continuities of environmentalism in Eastern Europe during the long 20th century.
There is an abundant selection of research on environmentalism in individual countries during certain political periods. We would like to focus on transition periods in a transnational perspective: what happened to environmentalist movements during and after major political shifts? What disappeared, what remained? Who were the people behind these processes? Can we possibly find any narratives of continuation and perseverance in addition to the narratives of disruption and loss? What happened to international contacts as new borders and limitations were implemented - and what were the dynamics of international cooperation when the restrictions were lifted? How did the environmentalist impulses cross national boundaries or seep through the Iron Curtain?
We invite scholars from different disciplines, such as history, visual culture, religion, literature, social science, etc. to join us in thinking about environmentalism from a comparative perspective during the major transition periods in recent European history, such as
- establishing of nation states at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century
- imposing of Soviet rule on formerly independent countries after WWII
- transition toward liberal market societies at the end of the 20th century.
In our panel we want to emphasize the inevitable connections of regional developments in Eastern Europe with global processes.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 19 August, 2024, -Paper short abstract:
The paper analyses an informal group of Prague Mothers, who identified themselves as non-dissident activists in the mid-1980s, who not only challenged dissident actions before 1989 but also shaped the social space after 1989, as each of them fundamentally influenced a segment of Czech social policy.
Paper long abstract:
The Prague Mothers group was an informal group of women who, in the mid-1980s, distinguished themselves as a non-dissident activist group. Charter 77 called for an activist approach in one of its statements, but soon backtracked. Nonetheless, the Prague Mothers profiled themselves as a specific group of environmental activists who stood outside dissent. At the beginning of their actions in 1985, they tried to find out the real state of the environment in Prague, and on the occasion of the conference of European environment ministers in Prague in 1985, they organised children's happenings in the city centre, which they combined with the signing of the first petitions to improve the state of the environment in the CSSR.
The aim of this paper is not only to analyse their functioning and actions before 1989, but also to look at how they influenced the transformation of the social space after 1989, as each of them influenced in a quite fundamental way one of the segments of social policy in the Czech Republic, from urban policy to early childhood care or children's groups.
Paper short abstract:
I will consider the context that frames the activities of climate aware people in post-socialist Estonia.I aim to synthesise the material from studying the processes triggered by responses to and expectations of post- and pre-collapse realities,and propose potential new methods of researching this.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation will consider the context and processes that frame the activities of climate aware people in post-socialist Estonia. The realities that formed after the collapse of the Soviet rule included fragmentations and breakdowns of existing systems and structures holding and/or bringing people together; the persistence of certain "zombies of socialism", limiting the political choices of both the populations as well as the elites; vulnerability to populist, right-wing politics; and socioeconomic realities driving materialist attitudes with reduced capacity for communal values. It is within this context that the Estonian environmental movements have had to evolve along with the shifts to neoliberal capitalism, as well as the increasing "crisis-mode" and green turn.
I would like to discuss what in this context has happened with the environmental movement, including the nationalist dimensions in environmentalism, but also, how has the global shift from localised environmentalism to the focus on climate change affected the already existing environmental groups. I would like to ask whether the new climate groups have merged with the "old environmentalists", given their seeming affinities. I would try to add to the mix the emerging phenomena of self-help communities, some of which have a long history of crisis awareness, keeping an eye on the climate-driven collapse on the horizon. I will consider also the potential methods of addressing such changes, including collecting "memories of the future" and "prospective interviewing" to understand the juxtapositions and contrasts of post-and pre-collapse socialities and the sensibilities of those living such periods.
Paper short abstract:
This paper is centering transboundary river issues around Czechoslovakia with a focus on the Oder river (shared with Poland), and the Danube (shared with Hungary) and it focuses on the analysis of politico-scientific, as well as popular discourses in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Paper long abstract:
Transboundary river basins shared by two or more East-Central European (ECE) countries experienced increasing water stress in late communism and during the early 1990s . Although there has been extensive interest from the environmentally focused social sciences to study specific “hot spots” such as the Gabčíkovo–Nagymaros Barrage System, yet the scientific community knows little about how issues of transboundary rivers; most notably pollution, regulation and utilization were discussed and coordinated in East-Central Europe in the 1980s-1990s.
This paper is centering transboundary river issues around Czechoslovakia with a focus on the Oder river (shared with Poland), and the Danube (shared with Hungary) and it focuses on the analysis of politico-scientific, as well as popular discourses.
The paper hypothesizes that there is a specific ECE-based ecological dichotomy in late communism in which the “official” scientific and political discourses created strong parallel realities regardless of the actual ecological situations.
Paradoxically, actors of the politico-scientific discussions in late communism were seeking intensively to incorporate conservationists’ theories, many of which were rejected by the mainstream in the West. Hence, gradual growth of “unofficial”, grassroots ecological movements managed to facilitate the “official” dialogue, which in return sought such facilitation, and opened up to incorporate new eco-agenda.
These two-way dynamics, proposed to be specific in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, are analyzed in the last years of communism and in the early 1990s in this paper.
Paper short abstract:
A Cold War collaborative program in nature protection between the United States and the Soviet Union involved environmental scientists and ran from 1973 to the collapse of the USSR. This talk explores the meaning of the program as usable past for politics, science diplomacy, scientists, and nature.
Paper long abstract:
The 1970s saw not only an ascending environmental movement but a rise in U.S. environmental sciences. The newly created, fast-moving Environmental Protection Agency built its own system of research facilities to monitor pollution and investigate threats industry posed to nature and humans themselves. In recognition of the global impact of environmental hazards, the White House struck agreements with several nations to perform joint research and “promote a global environmental ethic.” Interestingly, the first of these bilateral accords was with the Soviet Union.
The environmental card was actively played in the 1970s-1980s to various ends. At the top level, there was entanglement of collaborative environmental research in international politics, Cold War diplomacy, and East-West policy struggles for leadership in approaches to the environment. On the ground, despite this entanglement (and occasionally because of it), a different conversation was going on among American and Soviet researchers. They were tasked with finding ways of working together and producing research results in unchartered territories, sometimes literally. They had never worked together, knew little about one another professionally or otherwise, and had no common problems to solve or a common language to speak. Or so they thought at the beginning. What motivated these scientists? What happened to this program during and after the dissolution of the Soviet system? Drawing on archival research in both the U.S. and Russia, this paper discusses their professional interests and goals to approach a distinct, less explored issue: how much of this large-scale environmental research program was about environmentalism?
Paper short abstract:
Estonian ornithologist Heinrich Veromann serves as an excellent example of someone who developed an environmental consciousness in postwar Estonia before nature conservation became an official focus of Soviet propaganda in 1956.
Paper long abstract:
Birdwatching is the cornerstone of modern nature conservation in Estonia. It marks the establishment of the first nature reserve in the Baltics in 1910. In 1923 the Estonian Ornithological Society initiated the first citizen science project on birds. These kind of initiatives were interrupted by the Soviet occupation in 1940. The environmentalist social movement took on new forms again when nature conservation became official propaganda in the Estonian SSR in 1956. The intermediate period, however, provides examples of social and individual practices of interest and care for the environment. As an example, this paper focuses on a self-taught ornithologist, Heinrich Veromann (1926–1991), who sought refuge in the forests of South-West Estonia after the war and imprisonment as a very young man. There, he became acquainted with birding. From 1956, he became actively involved in nature education and biology. His biography still reveals some peculiarities: in 1975, he graduated from Tartu State University as a German philologist, and in 1984, in Leningrad, he defended a candidate in biology. He achieved a great deal as both a scientist and a conservationist, even breaking through the Iron Curtain. Veromann also became a teacher with his own following. However, his first environmentalist impulses appear to be a narrative of grassroots continuation despite disruptions, losses, and even danger. Ornithology also seemed to have provided him with the opportunity to express himself and convey his way of thinking as accurately as possible, with minimal distortion.
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates the changes and continuities in the environmentalism of the post-socialist transformation period through the prism of Estonian art and visual culture.
Paper long abstract:
This paper investigates the changes and continuities in the environmentalism of the post-socialist transformation period through the prism of Estonian art and visual culture. In the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, both the Eastern European art scene and environmentalism witnessed dynamic or even dramatic changes. Nevertheless, I would argue that next to ruptures, also forgotten continuities with the late Socialist period deserve attention. While it has been often argued that in Eastern Europe, including Estonia environmentalism lost its social relevance and resonance, the local environmentalists themselves often recall the 1990s as a particularly dynamic period. The environmentalism of this decade may not have the appeal of the 1980s perestroika-period mass movements, but it experienced major institutional reorganizations and new conservation initiatives in pair with relatively greater freedom from bureaucracy, as well as the changes in the very environment itself due to the closure of several industries and the introduction of new norms and technologies. Art practitioners tend to remember the 1990s with a similar nostalgia for creativity, freedom, and new opportunities despite the challenges of neoliberal capitalism. What these (hi)stories often tend to lack still is the acknowledgment of earlier local environmental practices and experiences in the face of the Western authorities of environmentalism and eco-themed art. Thus, examining the handling of environmental issues in the Estonian artworks, exhibitions, and other events of the 1990s and early 2000s, I also seek to investigate the forgotten connections with late Soviet art and environmentalism.
Paper short abstract:
The environmentalism of 1970-1990 in Soviet Latvia was closely tied to the development of nationalist and other political movements. The environmentalist activities had several layers of meanings. Discourses of cleaning illustrate the multi-layered character of environmentalism and its discourses.
Paper long abstract:
In the final decades of the Soviet Union, the ideological stance of the Communist Party towards environmental problems changed substantially. They were acknowledged as existing, important, and something to be reckoned with in the modernization process of Soviet society. Despite industrial and agricultural practices remaining largely intrusive and oblivious to environmental concerns, the ideological shift allowed for the raising of ecological issues in public debates.
These changes in ideological stance allowed environmentalism to develop on the ideological, institutional, and popular level but also made the environmental issues attractive as a partially legitimate way of protesting against and even resisting the regime. Therefore, it is impossible to clearly separate the evolution of environmentalism in Latvia from the development of nationalist and other political movements in this period. The environmentalist activities often had several layers of meanings that the participants of these processes were aware of and that discursive articulation of these activities both hid and revealed.
Discourses of cleaning illustrate well the multi-layered character of environmentalism and its discourses of this period. Popular movements that had environmentalist aspects were concerned with “neglect” and a “mess” that were considered to be all around. That included contamination of the sea and rivers, for example, but toxic discourse was just one among others. According to these discourses, landscapes, gardens, homesteads, and parks had to be “cleaned up”, and trees had to be “liberated” from the undergrowth. And, no doubt, cleaning up was never just about the natural environment.
Paper short abstract:
From around 1970 onwards, people around the Baltic Sea began to worry about its ecological state - especially the quality of bathing water. This paper traces the interconnectedness of the protests in East and West and their trajectories until the end of the century.
Paper long abstract:
The man-made ecological problems of the Baltic Sea became most evident for the millions of tourists who, from around 1970 onwards, could no longer be sure whether it was a healthy venture to plunge into its waters. The image of the sea as a toilet bowl spread along its coasts. Despite the great differences in framing public opinion, the discourses on the ecological state of the Baltic Sea were surprisingly consistent in the liberal democracies and the state socialist societies. In the 1980s, bathing was banned on more and more popular beaches, and waves of protest erupted in Scandinavia, Germany, Poland, and the Baltic Soviet Republics. The policies of Perestroika offered activists in the Soviet Union new opportunities, such as a human chain that was being formed along the coast, termed "Prayer for the Baltic Sea" in August 1988, or cooperation with Western activists such as Greenpeace, which undertook a bus tour to the beaches of the Baltic Republics the same year. However, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, this activism quickly waned. Several interrelated factors such as economic hardships, decentralisation, Western consumerism, and a general weakening of civil society played a role in its decline. The tourists, however, lost sight of the still tremendous ecological problems of eutrophication, environmental toxins, dumped munitions, and nuclear waste, after new sewer systems reduced the bacterial load of the bathing waters in the early 1990s. And so did civil society.
Paper short abstract:
There was an active animal welfare movement in Estonia which was banned when Estonia was occupied in World War II. This presentation discusses the reasons behind the movement's prohibition and provides a short overview of Estonian animal welfare, focusing on World War II.
Paper long abstract:
There was an active animal welfare movement in Estonia before World War II. In 1934, there were 22 animal welfare organizations in Estonia, along with several animal welfare journals, shelters, and animal clinics, among other initiatives. The members of the movement were numerous and active, working diligently to combat animal abuse and promote the ideology of animal welfare through various means.
The end of the movement came suddenly in 1940 when Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union. Animal welfare organizations were shunned by the Soviet Union, as they were viewed as bourgeois, elitist and sentimental organizations which had no place in the communist society. The movement was banned, and its leaders were prosecuted.
This presentation will give an overview of the reasons behind the prohibition of the animal welfare movement in Soviet Estonia. It will also look into the events that followed the prohibition of the movement, including the attempts by animal welfare activists to re-establish the movement during German occupation. Furthermore, it will examine the post-war developments by exploring the biographies of the movements leaders.
Paper short abstract:
The paper will discuss different ways of dealing with ecological disaster. The research material will be the plans of urban planners and the works of ecologists, and novels, reportages, memories, films, and photographs articulating the semiotic opposition of black and green Silesia.
Paper long abstract:
The Upper Silesian Coal Basin is one of Europe's oldest and largest industrial districts. Industrialization, which had been ongoing since the end of the 18th century, led to enormous pollution already at the end of the 19th century. Many researchers diagnosed an ecological disaster in the second half of the 20th century. This paper will discuss different ways of dealing with this catastrophe. Engineers, architects, urban planners, and ecologists proposed the first group of methods. The first great plan was the deglomeration of the industrial district, blocking the development of the most polluted areas, where harmful industries were to operate even more intensively, and at the same time, building new cities on the outskirts of the industrial zone. This plan was partially implemented. The second bold plan was to build a Forest Protection Belt around the industrial district. The second group of ways of dealing with the environmental disaster consists of various narratives presenting life in a degraded environment and the industrial landscape. It was also often a literary response to implementing plans to reconstruct the industrial district. We will reconstruct the common semiotics of these two perspectives to see how the governance of the space of ecological disaster and life in the industrial landscape was connected. The research material will be, on the one hand, the plans of urban planners and the works of ecologists, and on the other hand, novels, reportages, memories, films, and photographs articulating the semiotic opposition.