Encountering soviet geography: oral histories of British geographical studies of the USSR and Eastern Europe 1945–1991

Abstract

Encountering British geographical studies of the USSR and Eastern EuropeThe dissolution of the USSR at midnight on 31 December 1991 marked the passing of an episode in the disciplinary history of post-war human geography. For geographers that studied the Soviet Union and its satellite states, the disappearance of the object of study-a social, economic and political system and, in the cases of the USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, individual states-had a particular resonance. John Dewdney, of the University of Durham, who published textbooks and an atlas on the USSR, saw the end of the USSR in terms of the evolution of his own career: 'it ceased to exist at just the right time as far as I was concerned because it was the year I retired'.1 This paper presents material from a research project on the practices and cultures of British soviet geography, addressing the nature of research on these states during the Cold War. Oral history has been central to the project, enabling an appreciation of the distinctive circumstances through which such geographical knowledge was produced. We have so far interviewed thirty-two figures, the majority of whom were involved in the production of academic geographical knowledge concerning the USSR and Eastern Europe between the end of the Second World War and the dissolution of the USSR.2Succinctly phrasing the field of study is awkward, in terms of defining the group of geographers whose work we have scrutinized, and the geographical area with which they were concerned. The term 'soviet geography' can act as useful shorthand, and yet can mislead in suggesting a concern only for the USSR, or a concern for geographers from the USSR, or a focus on a particular political structure. A more complex yet accurate definition of our work is that of studies by British-based geographers of the USSR and those East European countries within the 'Soviet bloc', plus Yugoslavia and Albania.Our project finds strong methodological parallels in Trevor Barnes' use of oral history to explore the emergence of spatial science within geography in the 1950s and 1960s (Barnes 1998(Barnes , 2001(Barnes , 2002(Barnes , 2004a(Barnes , 2004b. Using interviews with thirty-six geographers alongside documentary and archival sources, Barnes has sought to understand the place of geography's quantitative revolution in terms of the geography and sociology of scientific knowledge (Barnes 2004a). Barnes employs a distinction between 'lives lived', the narrative of 'a scientist's final accomplishments ' (Barnes 2001: 410), and 'lives told', emphasizing 'the processes producing science' (Barnes 2001: 412), with the latter especially accessible through oral history. Biography thereby becomes a means to unsettle orthodox accounts of the progress of spatial science. While our subject matter has less retrospective disciplinary status than that studied by Barnes, and lacks equivalent subdisciplinary narratives of the products of 'lives lived' to put into question, oral history nevertheless broadened and challenged our sense o...

A continuity of ideas? salme nõmmik, edgar kant and the development of economic geography in soviet estonia

“…To this body of work more recent accounts have been added, setting much of the previous work in perspective. This includes Matless et al (2007) and Shaw and Oldfield (2007, 2008a, 2008b. All in all, these contributions capture well the general state of (economic) geography in the Soviet Union, but they have not taken into account the fact that several regions of the Soviet Union (especially the Baltic countries) during the inter-war years developed independently of Soviet Russian science.…”

“…Barnes and Farish 2006) and the development of contacts between western and Soviet geography (e.g. Matless et al 2007Matless et al , 2008.…”

Geographically touring the eastern bloc: British geography, travel cultures and the Cold War

“…Thus it is fair to say that while David Fox's Odessa account allows us to open up questions of geographical travel that run through the paper, his contribution to British geographies of the eastern bloc is minor compared to, say, Frank Carter or Judith Pallot, neither of whom feature strongly here 5 . The material here must also be understood against a distinction between those kinds of field research, often archival based, which entailed residence in the host country for a period of several weeks or months, and on which we have written elsewhere (Matless et al . 2007), and those more passing forms of travel which could serve as observational devices or the means to glean textbook material.…”

“…Twenty interviewees were British‐based geographers studying the USSR and Eastern Europe; one was the widow of a British geographer who studied Eastern Europe; one was a British geographer who taught for a number of years at a university in Poland; two were North American based geographers studying the USSR; three were geographers in Moscow who subsequently emigrated and took up academic positions in the USA; three were prominent figures in British geography; and two were non‐geographers involved in Slavonic and East European Area Studies. For a fuller discussion of methodology see Matless et al . (2007).…”

“…The role of travel in his work came through strongly in an interview with his widow Krystyna in May 2003; see also Clout (2005). Pallot's experience as a researcher in the USSR is discussed in Matless et al . (2007).…”