Conservationists and Industrialists in the Soviet North

My comments will focus on the entangled connections between conservation and industrial development on the Kola Peninsula in northwest Russia. I will emphasize the malleable and evolving set of allegiances and conflicts that characterized the historic relationship of planners, scientists, amateur enthusiasts, and the local population. How did the specific circumstances of the Arctic shape these interactions, in what ways did they follow global trends, and to what extent did they reflect unique features of Soviet development? I will also more broadly consider the possibilities and potential perils of writing environmental histories of the north in a transnational perspective.