Soviet Climate Change Science: Domestic Debates, International Collaboration and Future Climates(Routledge Studies in the History of Russia and Eastern Europe)

Soviet Climate Change Science explores the character and range of Soviet contributions to the emerging understanding of large-scale anthropogenic climate change during the post-1945 period. More specifically, it examines the role of Soviet scientists in helping to shape the debate, both domestically and on the international stage, and with a particular focus on the period 1960s-1980s. The book details the institutional underpinnings of Soviet activity in this area, the main scientific debates evident within key centres of climate-related science, and the activities of Soviet scientists with respect to a range of international collaborations such as the 1972 US-USSR Agreement on Cooperation in the Field of Environmental Protection, the early work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the Greenhouse Glasnost initiative which included the world’s first teleconference on climate change. It concludes with a reflection on the extent to which Soviet scientific legacies continued to shape Russian approaches to climate change post-1991. This book will be of interest to those working on the historical and socio-cultural aspects of climate change, providing the first detailed assessment of Soviet involvement in this critical area of scientific activity.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 Soviet science and the challenge of climate change Chapter 2 Institutional underpinnings of climate science in the Soviet Union Chapter 3 Soviet scientific debates concerning climate change Chapter 4 Cold War climate science: collaboration and competition, 1945-1991 Chapter 5 Greenhouse Glasnost Chapter 6 Soviet climate science, its legacies and climate politics Chapter 7 Conclusion

About the Author :
Jonathan D. Oldfield is Professor in Russian environmental studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. His current research explores Soviet and Russian understandings of climate science, geoengineering, and society-nature interactions. Vladimir Janković is Reader in History of Science and Atmospheric Humanities at the University of Manchester, with his main area of research focused on the cultures of weather and climate since the 1700s. He is Chair of the History Group of the Royal Meteorological Society. He has previously published Reading the Skies (2001) and Confronting the Climate (2011) and is currently writing on the bilateral approach to climate research during the Cold War. Katja Doose is Junior Professor, Department of History, at Lumière University Lyon 2. She works on the environmental history of the 19th and 20th centuries and history of the earth sciences. Nina Kruglikova was a postdoctoral researcher on the ‘Soviet climate science and its intellectual legacies’ project at the University of Birmingham and an Honorary Research Associate in Oxford University's School of Geography and the Environment. She is currently a Research Associate at the University of Manchester. Denis J.B. Shaw was an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham, UK, where he had formerly been Reader in Russian Geography. His most recent book, published posthumously, was titled Reconnoitring Russia Mapping: exploring and describing early modern Russia, 1613–1825 (2024). Julia Lajus is a Researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland. In 2023 she was a Visiting Associate Professor at Columbia University in the City of New York where she taught the history of the Arctic and the history of climate science. She publishes on the history of marine and polar environments and sciences.