Douglas Weiner's Essay: To Russia with Vitriol

A: What nation on Earth is most like Heaven?
B: The Soviet Union.
A: How is that?
B: We have nothing to wear, we have only apples to eat, and they tell us it is paradise.

That joke was apparently popular among citizens of the Soviet Union, and, in his positively scathing essay on the "predatory tribute-taking state," Douglas Weiner strives to let readers know just how far removed the Soviet Union of reality was from the "paradise" of theory for workers and the very environment both. The USSR is indubitably the target of most of his venom, but the czarist Russian Empire of yore and the unsettled "democratic" Russia of today garner more than enough criticism of their own for it to be said that they, too, are victimized by diatribes. I believe that there have been several works of history stressing the remarkable preservation of "ancien regime" practices after the violent changeover from absolutism to Bolshevism, relating to politico-military matters. To the best of my knowledge, Weiner's essay is the first to highlight environmental aspects of that peculiar reliance on the familiar amid rhetoric of convulsive change, that consumption of "old wine in a new bottle". And he goes even further, saying that the stance of Russia's rulers toward subjects and resources has never, from the Viking invasions that laid the groundwork for the first Russian states to this very moment, undergone true alteration, always being a blight-- of ravenousness and unsustainability-- on humanity's record.

Weiner treats Russia across history as a reckless gambler, rushing into damaging projects which were sometimes irrationally Brobdingnagian in scale (especially under the Soviet Union) and only rarely bore enough fruit to validate having been pursued in the first place; I do not know how exactly the death-wish "game" Russian roulette got its name, but it appears as if Russian leaders have, in Weiner's view, been playing it as regards their environmental policy for over a millennium-- playing the much more pernicious version, in which five chambers are loaded with one empty, instead of the reverse. It seems hard to me to periodize the history presented in the essay, since Weiner's whole argument is that there have been no fundamental, epoch-making changes in Russian "environmentalism" at any time-- and to this argument of constancy the fact that the first 75% of the essay is together as one section is almost certainly related. That said, individual projects seem the best way to get at the specific content of Weiner's work. I found the section about the Aral Sea (which is still being depicted on world maps as having the same size it did generations ago but, as Weiner says, will likely have to be removed from them as a body of water altogether within twenty years) to be grippingly tragicomedic and, based on my conversations with a Kazakh person I knew when I was an undergraduate, who spoke of the "Aral Pond," absolutely accurate. I had no idea about the biological weapons storehouses in environmentally degrading locations before perusing the essay, and I only hope that the chances of the facilities being disturbed (with outbreaks ineluctably following) are not as high as Weiner suggests. If Stewart Brand is to be believed at all, however, Chernobyl was not that much of a catastrophe and the surrounding area is now little different from other temperate, forested ones, with Weiner of the more traditional opinion that the meltdown was an abomination and the vicinity ought to be quarantined for centuries to come; Brand gives hard science in support of his viewpoint while Weiner does not even attempt as much, so it would be ill-advised to take everything the latter states about the retired plant-- "Ukraine's shame"-- at face value.

To offer some more criticism, I think Weiner should have tried to work some direct talk of culture, which should easily be recognized as one contributor to the predatory governance he alleges has been in place in Russia from the outset, into this. Did Russians who were not giving orders themselves have attitudes destructive to the environment? Whether they did or they did not, could you, Mr. Weiner, take a stab at telling us the why and the wherefore? My own definition of culture (by which even individuals living shoulder-to-shoulder in the same locality may be said to differ culturally) is "pattern of production". In light of that, I would have been sure to integrate discussion of Russian culture into any such account of depraved depredations. By the way, my definition of class (in which, obviously, even individuals living shoulder-to-shoulder in the same locality differ) is "pattern of consumption"-- and the "pattern" only rarely changes over the course of one's life, as Mike Tyson, who was born into a "lower class" situation of living hand-to-mouth, i.e., spending basically all that he had acquired as soon as it had been acquired, and continued to burn through his earnings rapidly even after his income skyrocketed, by purchasing an albino tiger as a pet, throwing a $400,000 birthday party for himself, etc., leading him to cry bankruptcy once he was no longer a force between the ropes, helps to demonstrate. Some class analysis definitely would have enriched this essay as well. The maneuvering to build a "classless society" (which, by my definition, would mean a society in which there would be little variation in clothing and diet and little stimulus for the development of genuine personality-- limitations of which socialist regimes have in actuality been accused, in the joke appearing above and elsewhere) under Marxism should have justified some major, perhaps misguided efforts toward fast development because the early Soviet leaders knew only too well that Russia was not where Marxism (according to the theory itself) should have become the guiding light of the state first, in consideration of its underdevelopment, but Weiner displays no such understanding, no such sympathy. At the end of the essay, I was expecting some mention of the environmentalism (or the neglect thereof) of the Commonwealth of Independent States, but Weiner never even mentions that organization, only treating "successor states" individually. Finally, I would like to proffer some factoids that I think would have strengthened Weiner's essay had he included them: to buttress the claim that Russia is currently in dire social straits, that the difference in life expectancy between men and women there (14 years) is greater than it is anywhere else in the world and that former serfs had to pay heavy taxes in the first years after their emancipation to compensate the "bereaved" boyars, to show just how rotten-to-the-core some of Russia's rules and rulers in truth have been.

P.S.: Speaking of Russian roulette, I have been trying to come up with a way to combine it and solitaire into a single game. Can anyone help?

what had to be cut from my speech

Sub-Saharan Africa as it is constituted as I speak has limited potential to develop nationalisms that will conduce to stability within states and, later, harmoniousness between them, if one follows either of the two dominant theories of instilling nationalism in populations. The aforementioned kowtowing to Ethiopia through the national standards tells me, loud and clear, unmistakably, that to an extent the "high culture" of the concerned African countries is an Ethiopian one. Ernest Gellner, in his famed writings on nations and nationalism, asserts that constructing and celebrating a "high culture" is the key component of inculcating a sense of nationhood in peoples, and in his writings he actually touches on the failings of African states to legitimize themselves, by saying that the "high cultures" African states generally applaud are those of their respective former colonizers, rather than ones built from the abundant materials present in Africa itself. Wangari Maathai echoes that sentiment in her book. Formulating and then strengthening "high cultures" should be considerably easier and appreciably more successful if state lines are ever redrawn in such a way that only peoples that are genuinely akin to one another or at least give the international community ample reason to believe that they are capable of pacific cohabitation live side-by-side. That a state like the Sudan can exist is a joke, with a genetic and cultural chasm separating the peoples of its north and its south, who have been warring uninterruptedly since the end of imperialism, who would be quickly divided from one another by state lines under the plan I am proposing, with some resource-sharing concessions worked out in the interest of forestalling further war between the areas. When it comes to the other major theory of nationalism, pivoting on "print capitalism," the tragically low literacy levels in several African states means that much general educational work must first be done before there can be any real possibility of Africans coming to imagine communities in the manner Benedict Andersen delineated. I am convinced that a more logical parceling of Africa's land, in line with its ethnic and ecological realities, will help with literacy and serve to strengthen a sense of community and oneness with the environment to such an extent that Africans may not even have to do much imagining to view themselves as belonging to nations-- environmentally viable ones at that.

And if anything else need be said to illustrate that the African countries of today cannot even rightly be called "nations," look to the lectures of Ernest Renan, the leading intellectual definer of the nation in late nineteenth century Europe when it as a concept was still in utero. To quote Renan: "A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things, which in truth are but one, constitute this soul or spiritual principle. One lies in the past, one in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form". Outside of the past 150 years, starting with European subjugation and the trauma inextricably linked thereto, few African peoples now resident in the same state can claim that they have a considerable complex of "shared memories," and commentators like Wangari Maathai would likely be appalled at the results of plebiscites asking Africans if they wholeheartedly consent to living in the same states as certain other peoples. On a side note, even though the United States does not pass either of Renan's tests with flying colors, there is incredible plenty here unknown in any sub-Saharan African country, and Gini coefficients tell us that that incredible plenty is rather equitably spread, so the social issues born of the less-than-ideal national community here are nowhere near as damaging as those in African countries where there is generalized indigence, wealth tending to make people more cosmopolitan and the belief that wealth can be attained through honest, hard work, not just through inheritance and rapacity, tending to make people more productive and less rebellious.

"Human Perceptions of Connectedness to Nature"

The following is a link to a PDF of an article in the "Human Ecology Review" from 2008 that discusses human perceptions of their place in nature and how those perceptions affect human-environment interactions. The article is interesting as a work of primary research, where the authors conducted three surveys or respondents in the United States, and analytically evaluated their answers to understand the correlation to environmentally-responsible behavior. The authors claim to have conducted this investigation to "gain a better understanding
of the complications of managing our natural areas" (pg. 10). I think this is extremely relevant to the argument the I.G.Simmons was making, particularly regarding how/why humanity has responded to conditions such as climate change, and the tendency for humanity toward dominate behavior.

http://www.humanecologyreview.org/pastissues/her151/viningetal.pdf

The Environmental Turn in Literary and Cultural Studies"

Just in case not everyone has checked their email, thought I should post this on the blog as well...

"The Environmental Turn in Literary and Cultural Studies"

A colloquium with Lawrence Buell, Harvard
Ursula Heise, Stanford
Karen Thornber, Harvard

Thursday, April 8, 6:15 p.m., Barker 114 (12 Quincy Street, near Lamont
Library), Harvard - 5 minutes from Harvard T station

What can be gained from cross-pollinating the environmental arts and
humanities with other fields across the social and natural sciences?

How can environmental-humanistic attention to interpretive inquiry help
address today's crises of pollution, environmental justice, species
endangerment, and climate change?

Earth Hour 2010

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100326-earth-hour-2010-record-landmarks/

Don't know if you guys have heard about this...another great benefit of cities: if we all turn our lights off at the same time, people notice!

Stuart Brand on On Point

For anyone who really enjoyed Stuart Brand, he was interviewed on NPR's On Point back in October, along with Amory Lovins. It helps that Tom Ashbrook asks great questions.

It looks, too, like that interview is followed by a discussion with Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature.

It's worth listening to!

http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/10/stewart-brands-ecopragmatism

- Sarah