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A lacuna that clearly needs to be filled and remains among various topics of the ecological history of the First World War is the Eastern front theme. The authors of this historiographical essay attempt to analyze various papers and monographs on the ecological history of the First World War, such as works on ecological history and history of technologies, works on socio- and cultural-ecological aspects of the Great War, as well as publications on the experience of military occupation at the Eastern Front and its impact on the ecosystems of different regions. A critical analysis of the achievements and limitations of modern historiography allow the authors to emphasize thematic fields of perspective research. The authors notice that the Eastern front is still obscure and largely ignored by English-speaking scholars. The historiography includes a wide variety of thematic fields. Most of them are related to environmental changes in West European war theatre, as well as in colonial landscapes. Such a view deforms the general picture of the Great War. So, the reconstruction of the military impact on the landscapes of the Eastern front, attempts to economically organize the war space by different armies on the same territories, as well as the transformations of local population's management practice, seem to correct the idea of the universality of the Western front processes and phenomena.

Based on an analysis of modern Cold War historiography, the article considers current discussions, topics, and perspectives in the chosen research landscape. Taking into account the modern circumstances, the author concludes that in the latest publications, there is a tendency to reconsider the dichotomic model “Sovietisation vs Americanisation” and, instead, take a closer look at the representations of socialism and the structures and actors of cultural diplomacy in Eastern Europe. Referring to propaganda projects of socialist integration and intercultural spaces, the author demonstrates what was specifically socialist about the forms and instruments of representations of the Eastern Bloc, the conflicting spheres of collaboration, and independent initiatives of people’s democracies in the sphere of cultural diplomacy. The author concludes that at the end of the Second World War, the propaganda system in the Soviet Union was integrated into a larger scheme of presenting the world system of socialism where the Eastern European states became symbolically appropriated spaces and promising symbolic resources. The cultural initiatives of the socialist countries of Eastern Europe at the international level testify to the cultural pluralism in the Eastern Bloc. The independent steps the countries of the socialist camp took for self-realisation on the international arena testify to this cultural pluralism. The effectiveness of their symbolic messages was facilitated by the geographical proximity to borders, integration into the contexts of western culture, and better developed information resources. In the article, the author’s own analysis is preceded by a review of materials thematically related to the section of the journal on the cultural diplomacy of socialism. Articles referred to in the study and devoted to the projects of the socialist camp prove the thesis that the Eastern Bloc that emerged during the Cold War and the hybrid identities developed under its influence survived the breakdown of the bipolar order and are important for modern culture.

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The spatial and environmental dimension of WWI has recently taken the central place in academic debates on the military history of the “short twentieth century”. At present, the large-scale conflict of humanity and nature under totalized warfare is recognized as no less significant to the existential experience of combatants and civilians than actual battles. Functioning as a demiurge, the Great War created and re-molded landscapes, accelerated development trends shaped during the industrial era, triggered the construction and demolition of infrastructure, and determined the resource policy, economic practices, and language constructs of national communities during subsequent historical periods. Textual and visual narratives of the war feature the following three dimensions of the environment: a subject and adversary (sometimes even more dangerous than the real enemy); an object of destruction, invasion, and ordering; and an anthropological construct defining behavioral strategies and the memorial culture relating to the conflict. Modern researchers share a unanimous opinion that the pivotal role of the clash between humanity and the environment during WWI for subsequent historical development is paradoxically at odds with the degree to which the clash has been studied. This may be linked with the fact that the multidimensionality of militarized landscapes would require a research methodology incorporating elements of military history, ecology, anthropology, archaeology, geology (landscape studies), and cultural geography. Such a creative symbiosis has become possible only recently, owing to the adoption of the interdisciplinary approach by military historians. The gradual uptake of innovative study techniques has resulted in the uneven development of the spatial and environmental history of the First World War as a research field: at present, the best-studied locations are confined to the western front and, partly, the colonial periphery. This publication presents a review of the recent conceptual publications by authors developing this research avenue and seeks to identify the heuristic potential of the concepts “Anthropocene”, “belligerent landscapes”, “landscape biographies”, and “layered landscapes”, including their applicability to the history of the Eastern Front of the First World War.