Mastering Nature through Science: Soviet Geographers and the Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature, 1948–53

The article considers the role played by Soviet geographers in the Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature which was proclaimed by the Soviet government in October 1948. The Stalin Plan was designed to ensure ‘high and stable harvests’ in what was then the USSR's breadbasket, the forest-steppe and steppe regions of the southern part of its European territory. The plan envisaged the implementation of a series of grandiose environmental measures including the planting of major shelter belts across the region and of many minor belts around state and collective farm fields, measures to combat soil erosion, to augment irrigation, adopt appropriate cultivation practices and many others. For the geographers the plan represented a unique opportunity to boost their science by demonstrating its usefulness to the regime, particularly by acting as a synthetic discipline drawing other, more specialized sciences together to fulfil the plan's goals. The geographers own writings, however, suggest their doubts over whether they would be able to meet such aspirations in reality as well as the considerable theoretical and practical difficulties they faced. The article argues that the plan's cancellation in 1953 resulted from a whole series of issues, among which a deficiency in the available science was not the least important.