What is it about?
We assert that the term “econationalism” could be applied to the Soviet village prose. It is true that the village prose became a significant vehicle for ecological thinking in the Soviet Union in 1950–1990. However, we show that behind any public environmental concern of “villagers” one would find nationalistic motives.
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Why is it important?
Scholars of Soviet literature recognized substantial contribution of the “villagers” in art and environment protection while regret for their later nationalistic rhetoric. However, it was nationalism that made their art so passionate, sincere and different from sterile “kolkhoz literature”. The “villagers” were cautious to articulate nationalistic or anti-Marxist ideas in their novels and essays while environmental themes were relatively safe to publicize. Besides the “villagers” discovered that environmental themes expanded readers’ contingent far beyond nationalistically anxious Soviets. This popularity among democratic intelligentsia was quickly waning in the 1990s when key figures of the Soviet village prose switched on pure nationalistic publicistic.
Perspectives
For me this publication is about not only the Soviet past but low profile of environmentalism in contemporary Russia. We should distinguish “true environmentalism” and other forms of environmentalism including that fed by nationalistic passion. When Russian nationalistic ideas could be publically articulated they do not need “environmental camouflage”. Russian environmentalism is dead because of absence of appropriate ideological ground.
Nikolai Dronin
School of Geography of Lomonosov Moscow State University
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This page is a summary of: Econationalism in Soviet literature, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, July 2017, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/18763324-20171260.
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