Soviet geographers and the Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945: Lev Berg and Andrei Grigor'ev
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always seemed cheerful and unwearied. No-one knew when he slept; one could always find him at work in the director’s office; it was always possible to go to him for help and advice ’. Summing up, Doskach describes his attitude, including ‘his certainty that victory would be ours ’, as providing ‘great moral support’ to his colleagues at such a threatening time. Entirely contrary assessments of Grigor ’ev’s character were provided by others, however. For example, N.N. Baranskii, the economic geographer at MGU, and K.K. Markov, physical geogra- pher firstly at IGAN and then MGU, were extremely critical of Gri- gor ’ev’s scientific and political pretensions and of his domination of the institute. But these criticisms relate mainly to the dif ficult post- war period. 60 One of the first demands made of IGAN in the very first days of the war was to make an urgent assessment of alternative regions that might assume the role of the USSR ’s breadbasket to replace the rich lands of the forest-steppe, and steppe lands of the southern part of the European USSR which were now being occupied by the enemy. Beginning in July, therefore, and continuing into October the institute organized a ‘complex Kazakh expedition’ under the supervision of Grigor ’ev and the economic geographer P.V. Pogor- el ’skii with the aim of mobilizing the republic’s land resources. 61 The
first results of the expedition were presented to USSR GOS- PLAN and GOSPLAN of the Kazakh SSR before the end of October in the form of maps, and texts. They received a high commendation. It may have been on the basis of this work, and of some pre-war studies, that in October 1941 it was decided to evacuate the greater part of the institute to Kazakhstan as the German armies menaced Moscow. In Kazakhstan, despite the dif ficulties of main- taining communications with the capital, the geographers could continue their work undisturbed, thus making a valuable contri- bution to the war effort. According to Doskach, Grigor ’ev had no wish to leave Moscow but was constrained to do so by government order on the night of 15 e16 October. He was accompanied by col- leagues as well as by academicians and members of other Academy institutes. 62 Once established in Alma Ata, Grigor ’ev was able to organize the Kazakhstan expedition to achieve two major goals: firstly, to in- crease the amount of arable land available to both non-irrigated and irrigated agriculture; and, secondly, to evaluate and to make recommendations for increasing the amount and productivity of grazing land not only to provide for the republic ’s own livestock but also for that evacuated from the war-threatened regions. The institute was tasked with a detailed survey of the republic ’s agri- cultural lands, focusing in the first instance on the six north-eastern oblasts (regions) which were those with the best potentials for non-irrigated agriculture. An interesting example of the kind of work produced by these detachments is P.I. Koloskov ’s text on The agroclimatological regionalization of Kazakhstan, published in 1947. 63
fieldwork and also statistical data provided by the republics and local bodies, the author gave a detailed analysis of climatological (including microclimatological) and agroclimatological factors for the region, including bioclimatic indicators for no less than 41 field cultures. He was then able to subdivide the republic into four agroclimatological zones, obviously a valuable basis for the future agricultural colonization of the re- gion. 64
’s work in northern Kazakhstan during the war provided the basis for Khrushchev ’s much-publicized Virgin and Idle Lands agricultural campaign in the 1950s, although this fact does not seem to be widely known among Western scholars. 65 Grigor
’ev himself, as well as overseeing the work and output of the expedition in general terms, busied himself on a detailed physico-geographical regionalization of Kazakhstan which gave rise to later publications. 66 Grigor
’ev and IGAN returned to Moscow at the end of 1943 where he continued to supervise the institute ’s work, including its reorientation towards the revival of the economies and infra- structure of war-damaged cities and regions. Clearly, given the di- versity of his activities during the war (not all of which are detailed above), Grigor ’ev had only very limited time for his own research. Nevertheless, he was able to undertake a little, notably some theoretical work on his concept of ‘the physicalegeographical process
’, and to publish two significant books just after the war’s conclusion: his seminal work on the Subarctic, and a centenary volume dedicated to V.V. Dokuchaev and his links with geography. 67 Aftermath: Soviet geographers and the onset of the Cold War (1945 e1953)
It is therefore evident that the particularities of the Soviet Union ’s war experience provided its geographers with considerable scope to contribute to the war effort. The openness of the Soviet Union ’s western borders to invasion, the relocation of signi ficant parts of the country ’s economic production to the east, and the need to trace and evaluate strategic natural resources in order to support the front line, all required major input from geographers. To a large extent, the geographers were successful in rising to this challenge, producing a considerable volume of strategically important data in order both to facilitate military action and to address the consid- erable strategic issues on the home front. Nevertheless, in spite of this apparent success, the early post-war years were not straight- forward for Soviet geography; indeed, by 1948 e1950, the disci- pline ’s war exploits were sidelined as it came under attack from Party ideologues who questioned geography ’s overall direction and purpose. Much of this can be explained by the relatively rapid shift in the status and position of Soviet science more broadly in the years following the ending of the war. This shift was precipitated above all by the breakdown of the wartime alliance with the West and the onset of the Cold War. As documented by Krementsov, 68 this led to the emergence of a ‘new, strident ideological campaign’ in the 60 See Shaw and Old field, Scientific, institutional and personal rivalries (note 24 ); also K.K. Markov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia geografa, Moscow, 1973, 54 e55. 61 Doskach, Akademik A. A. Grigor ’ev (note 58 ), 62 ff. 62 Doskach, Akademik A. A. Grigor ’ev (note 58 ), 61 e62. 63 P.I. Koloskov, Agroklimaticheskoe raionirovanie Kazakhstana. 1. Tekst. Trudy po izucheniiu zemel ’nykh fondov Kazakhskoi SSSR. Pod obshchei redaktsii akad. A. A. Grigor’eva i prof. P. V. Pogorel ’skogo, MoscoweLeningrad, 1947. 64 N. Bova and N.N. Koloskov, Agroklimaticheskoe raionirovanie Kazakhstana, Izvestiia Akademii Nauk: seriia geogra ficheskaia i geofizicheskaia 12 (1948) no. 6, 567e568. 65 Zabelin, Puteshestvie (note 59 ), 62; Doskach, Akademik A. A. Grigor ’ev (note 58 ), 63. With regard to Western scholars, Martin McCauley, for example, although alluding to the pre-war scienti fic studies which provided scientific input to the Virgin and Idle Lands campaign, makes no reference to the wartime work of IGAN. Martin McCauley, Khrushchev and the Development of Soviet Agriculture, 1953 e1964, London, 1976. 66 For example: A.A. Grigor ’ev, Prirodnye usloviia Kazakhstana, MoscoweLeningrad, 1944; A.A. Grigor’ev (Ed), Kazakhstan: obshchaia fiziko-geograficheskaia kharakteristika, Moscow
eLeningrad, 1950. 67 A.A. Grigor ’ev, Subarktika. Opyt kharakteristiki osnovnykh tipov fiziko-geograficheskikh sredy, MoscoweLeningrad, 1946; A.A. Grigor’ev (Ed), V. V. Dokuchaev i geografiia. K 100-letiiu ego dnia rozhdeniia, Moscow, 1946. 68 Krementsov, Stalinist Science (note 10 ), 129; also Pollock, Stalin (note 10 ).
field / Journal of Historical Geography xxx (2014) 1e10 8 Please cite this article in press as: Shaw DJB, Old field JD, Soviet geographers and the Great Patriotic War, 1941e1945: Lev Berg and Andrei Grigor
’ev, Journal of Historical Geography (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2014.06.002 immediate post-war period, driven forward by Andrei Zhdanov in order to reassert Party control across society. This shift would end up having a marked in fluence on Soviet science. Thus, according to von Mohrenschildt, 69 the Party orchestrated an ‘attack’ on what were termed ‘survivals of capitalism’ including ‘individualistic tendencies ’ and ‘profiteering’ amongst other aberrations. 70 With speci fic regard to the scientific community, a key area of concern was the scientists ’ alleged ‘slavish’ attachment to Western science and culture, a concern that would effectively undermine the development and maintenance of the USSR ’s international scien- ti fic links. 71 Inevitably the geographers were unable to escape the consequences. It is instructive to focus on the fate of IGAN during this period. According to Kotliakov, discussions in geography, precipitated to a large extent by the contemporaneous debates within biology over Lysenkoism, quickly transformed themselves into much wider and potentially damaging clashes over the fundamental character of geography and its contribution to society. 72 A flurry of publications appeared which developed this theme and criticized the current focus of geography within IGAN as well as the leadership role of Grigor
’ev (who subsequently lost his position as IGAN’s director). Thus there was a re-emergence of the pre-war debate over the character and role of geography in a socialist society, at the centre of which were Berg and Grigor ’ev. 73
with the publication of an article by A.M. Smirnov in the in fluential
journal Voprosy Filoso fii [Questions of Philosophy] in 1950 entitled ‘The Bases of Geographical Science’. 74 Smirnov argued that geog- raphy ’s recent achievements had fallen short of expectations because geographical theory had failed to address practical issues in a
‘purposeful’ manner. 75 Furthermore, he accused the geogra- phers of basic weaknesses in both theory and methodology and of a continued adherence to ‘bourgeois views and opinions.’ 76 In the context of late Stalinism, such denunciations were serious. They pointed to the discipline ’s theoretical shortcomings (including an implied failure to abide fully by the canons of dialectical materi- alism) and its inadequate contribution to the reconstruction of socialist society. In Smirnov ’s view, geography had an important part to play in facilitating the ‘transformation of nature’ which had emerged as a central component of Soviet society ’s construction of communism. At the heart of the transformation of nature rhetoric at this time was the 1948 decree which became known as the Great Stalin Plan for Transformation of Nature. 77 Although the plan would ultimately be cancelled following the death of Stalin in 1953, it was a massive undertaking. The geographers were destined to have a key role in its implementation because of their collective expertise in areas such as climatology, hydrology and soil science, and in their ability to synthesize complex findings.
78 It was the uncertainties and dif ficulties which the geographers encountered in attempting to contribute to this plan which fuelled the debates of the period. The crisis in Soviet geography in the post-war period was in effect a continuation of the same issues that stemmed from implementation of Stalin ’s ‘Great Turn’ in 1930. The Great Patriotic War of 1941 e1945 represented an interlude of crisis of a slightly different kind. The key issue throughout was the extent to which the geographers were able to make practical, scienti fic contribu- tions to society, and, perhaps more pertinently, to persuade the politicians that they had the skills to do so. Thus, whereas, in Barnes ’ words, American geography was ‘shaped by approaches to war ’, Soviet geography was shaped through a crisis, of which the Great Patriotic War was only one part. Conclusion This paper has been able to provide only a very partial view of the activities of Soviet geographers, and of the two individuals who are the focus of our study, during the Great Patriotic War. Much more research is required before a full picture can be provided. At the same time, reviewing the available sources, one is struck by un- certainties over whether such a full account can in fact ever be given. Perhaps more than any other type of episode in human history, war and accounts of war seem pervaded by emotion and ideology. Thus Soviet and Russian accounts are suffused by patriotic sentiment and nationalist rhetoric. All the participants in the war are bold, determined, and entirely loyal to the Fatherland. Little or no space is allowed for the fears and ambivalences which some individuals must inevitably have felt. Likewise one is struck by the silences in the sources. The Nazi enemy is naturally excoriated for its brutality, including its anti-Semitism. But nothing is said about the brutality of the Stalin regime, including the anti-Semitism which characterized Stalin ’s latter years. It is a sobering thought that Berg himself might have suffered in consequence of the latter, had he lived longer. Hence a balanced account of the period seems all but impossible. But this is surely true of episodes involving war in every country. A.E. Fersman argued that the war had promoted the prestige of geography as a major contributor to the war effort. 79 Ackerman
made much the same point with regard to geography in the USA, thus underlining the close connections between geography and war. 80
’s claim with respect to the Axis powers, the links between geography and the military seem to have been tenuous in every case in the pre-war period. 81 Only with the outbreak of war did geographers become involved in military intelligence and similar activities, and even then it took several years for them to become fully integrated. Detailed administrative arrangements differed
in different 69 D. von Mohrenschildt, Postwar Party line of the All-Union Communist Party of the USSR, Russia Review 9 (1950) 171 e178 (172e174). 70 Von Mohrenschildt, Postwar (note 69 ), 174
e175. 71 Krementsov, Stalinist Science (note 10 ), 129
e183. 72 Kotliakov, Institut (note 35 ), 20
e22. 73 Shaw and Old field, Scientific, institutional and personal rivalries (note 24 ), 1397 e1418 (1413e1415). 74 A.M. Smirnov, Ob osnovakh geogra ficheskoi nauki, Voprosy Filosofii 2 (1950) 83e103. 75 Smirnov, Ob osnovakh (note 74 ), 83
e84. 76 Smirnov, Ob osnovakh (note 74 ), 84.
77 See Pravda and Izvestiia, 24 October, 1948. 78 For a discussion of the way in which those geographers working in the area of climate and climate modi fication responded to the changed socio-political environment post-1945, see J.D. Old field, Climate modification and climate change debates amongst Soviet physical geographers, 1940se1960s, WIREs Climate Change (2013). http://dx.doi. org/10.1002/wcc.242 . 79 Abramov, Geogra fiia voiskam (note 27 ), 71.
80 Ackerman, Geographic training (note 3 ), 121.
81 See Abramov, Geogra fiia voiskam (note 27 ), 72 e75; Ackerman, Geographic training (note 3 ), 121 ff. For Germany, see Smith and Black, German geography (note 28 ); Troll, Geographic science (note 28 ). For the UK, see W. Balchin, United Kingdom geographers in the Second World War: a report, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 8 (1983) 14 e26.
D.J.B. Shaw, J.D. Old field / Journal of Historical Geography xxx (2014) 1e10 9 Please cite this article in press as: Shaw DJB, Old field JD, Soviet geographers and the Great Patriotic War, 1941e1945: Lev Berg and Andrei Grigor
’ev, Journal of Historical Geography (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2014.06.002 countries and need not detain us. But it is an important comment on the skills which the geographers were able to bring to military problems (or were not able to bring, as detailed by Ackerman and Barnes for the US, though there is no such parallel commentary for the USSR) that in all cases geographers became involved in similar work: map analysis; the production of new kinds of maps for military use; terrain, marine and hydrographic analysis; meteoro- logical studies; the production of intelligence handbooks for both the home and foreign fronts, and so on. It took several years for geographers to adjust to the demands of wartime but some important scienti fic advances were made as a result. The longer- term implications for geography in the US have been examined by Barnes in some detail, but unfortunately no such studies exist for the USSR. This is more the pity as the USSR does provide some cases of wartime experiences which were unique in the European context, notably the geographers ’ engagement with resource mobilization in some of the remoter regions of the country, and the evacuation of key scientists to places hundreds or even thousands of miles behind the front. Soviet geographers therefore had op- portunities for furthering their research which were not easily paralleled elsewhere on the continent. Ethan Pollock has argued that, under Stalin, ‘science for science’s sake was not good enough; all science had to play a role in socialist construction ’. 82 A weak, descriptive geography, irrelevant to the issue of nature transformation, was unlikely to survive after Stalin ’s ‘Great Turn’ at the beginning of the 1930s. Thereafter Soviet ge- ographers needed to strive for scienti fic rigour, even if they did not always attain it. The situation was thus very different from that in the USA where, in Barnes ’ words, ‘approaches to geography were shaped by war ’. In the USSR, it was the Stalin era as a whole, rather than the Great Patriotic War only, that was crucial to the emerging character of the discipline. Indeed, what is perhaps remarkable is that the ideological and scienti fic cleavages and tensions between the geographers came to the fore in the 1930s and with the onset of the Cold War rather than during the war itself. These cleavages helped shape the character of Soviet geography for the future and were at least as signi ficant in this regard as the war itself. The ef- fects of the war, in other words, varied from country to country. Perhaps even more profoundly, the actual experience of war almost certainly varied from geographer to geographer. Acknowledgements Arts and Humanities Research Council UK (ref. no. AH/G011028/1 [The
Landscape Concept
in Russian
Scienti fic Thought, c1880 e1991] and the Economic and Social Research Council UK (ref. no. ES/G027196/1 [The USSR and its Contribution to Global Environmental Scienti fic Understanding, 1945e1991]), who funded the research upon which this paper is based. 82 Pollock, Stalin (note 10 ), 59.
D.J.B. Shaw, J.D. Old field / Journal of Historical Geography xxx (2014) 1e10 10 Please cite this article in press as: Shaw DJB, Old field JD, Soviet geographers and the Great Patriotic War, 1941e1945: Lev Berg and Andrei Grigor
’ev, Journal of Historical Geography (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2014.06.002 Document Outline
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