Acknowledgments

I have been fortunate to have been able to spend considerable amounts of time living and researching in the Soviet Union and its successor states. For that I am indebted to the generous support of a number of granting agencies and foundations that have had faith that this project would one day see the light of day. A trip to the USSR in 1986 was supported by the National Academy of Sciences. IREX and the National Council for Soviet and East European Studies (contract 806–28), a Title VIII program, generously funded a key second research trip for ten months in 1990–1991 plus summer support. From June to August 1991 I had the good fortune to be a fellow at the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., allowing me to reflect on the materials I had just acquired and also to obtain other materials at the Library of Congress. To its director, Dr. Blair Ruble, to the administrative assistant, Monique Principi, to my research assistant, Jason Antevil, and to the Kennan's entire staff, my enduring thanks. The Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy under its former director, Helen Ingram, and its deputy director, Robert Varady, provided a warm and stimulating atmosphere where the writing continued. Finally, the Spencer Foundation (grant no. 9500933) generously provided the opportunity for me to complete the writing of this book during my sabbatical year, even as I began yet another book project with that foundation's kind support. Each of these funding sources has my deep and sincere gratitude.

As a result of liberalization within the Soviet Union and its successor states, I was able to use a vastly larger range of sources than I could have (and did) ten years ago. Owing to the kind efforts of the then Soviet minister for environmental protection, Dr. Nikolai Nikolaevich Vorontsov, I became the first foreigner to use the archives of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Republic, housed in the former TsGA RSFSR (Central State Archives of the

RSFSR). I am glad to report that the exceptionally warm atmosphere set by Tat'iana Gennadievna Baranchenko, Natal'a Petrovna Voronova, and Liudmila Gennadievna continues to this day. Additional archival sources include: GARF (State Archives of the Russian Federation, formerly TsGAOR), RGAE (State Archives of the Russian Economy, formerly TsGANKh, with special thanks to its deputy director, Valentina Ivanovna Ponomarëva), TsKhDMO (Center for the Preservation of Documents of Youth Organizations, formerly the Komsomol Archive), ARAN (Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, both the Moscow and St. Petersburg branches, and its photo lab LAFOKI), RTsKhIDNI (Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Recent History, formerly the CPSU Archives), TsKhSD (Center for the Preservation of Contemporary Documentation, formerly the Central Committee CPSU Archives), the Archives and Library of the Moscow Society of Naturalists (MOIP), The Ukrainian Central State Archives, the Library of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, the Russian State Library (Saltykov-Shchedrin), the Russian Federation Library (formerly the Lenin Library), and the Library of the Russian Geographical Society. The archival staffs have been generous and supportive far beyond the norms of professional courtesy. I am indebted to these women and men beyond words. To Nina Vladimirovna Dem'ianenko of the MOIP Library and Archives, my special thanks.

Documentation was supplemented by numerous interviews with veterans of the movement conducted in Russia, Ukraine, and Estonia. Some of these were conducted in zapovedniki , or nature reserves (Prioksko-Terrasnyi, Tsentral'no-Lesnoi, Askania-Nova). To my informants, Academy of Sciences vice president Aleksandr Leonidovich Ianshin, Ksenia Avilova, Tat'iana Leonidovna Borodulina, Galina Borisovna Chernousova, Nelia Efimovna Dragobych, Iurii (Georgii) Konstantinovich Efremov, Oleg Kirillovich Gusev, Dmitrii Nikolaevich Kavtaradze, Viktor Masing, the late Andrei Aleksandrovich Nasimovich, Vitalii Feodos'evich Parfënov, Evgenii Makarovich Podol'skii, Linda Poots, Evgenii Arkad'evich Shvarts, Vladimir Vladimirovich Stanchinskii Jr., Vadim Nikolaevich Tikhomirov, the late Mikhail Aleksandrovich Zablotskii, Iurii Andreevich Zhdanov, and Sergei Vladimirovich Zonn, I owe a huge debt of gratitude. Konstantin Mikhailovich Efron has given me encouragement and friendship as well as the gift of his inestimable knowledge and wisdom.

The wisdom and friendship of my colleagues in Eurasia greatly assisted me to a more sophisticated understanding of the materials I had collected. They have given me more than I can ever hope to repay. Daniil Aleksandrovich Aleksandrov has played an immense role in encouraging me, among other things, to distinguish clearly between civic and scientific activism. This advice has been invaluable. Feliks and Nadia Shtil'mark, as always, have been the truest friends and most knowing commentators on the history of Rus-

sian nature protection. For those who seek a definitive history of the zapovedniki as institutions, there is only one book, and that is by Feliks Robertovich Shtil'mark. Vladimir Evgen'evich Boreiko also deserves more than mere mention. A man of big vision, he has been a creative and encouraging coexplorer in these relatively uncharted waters who has unstintingly shared his findings with me. Owing to his selfless desire to get the truth out, he has given collegiality a new dimension. I salute him. Competing with Boreiko for top prize in collegiality is Oleg Nikolaevich Ianitskii, the foremost authority on the modern environmental movements of Eurasia, who has also enriched my understanding with his. Others who have actively helped with this project are my friends and colleagues Aleksei Enverovich Karimov, who provided camaraderie during my last archival blitz, Anton Iur'evich Struchkov, Eduard Nikolaevich Mirzoian, who more than once gave me an institutional home in Moscow, Eduard Izraelovich Kolchinskii, who did the same in St. Petersburg, Viktor Kuz'mich Abalakin, Nelia Drogobych, Elena Vsevolodovna Dubinina, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Formozov, Mikhail Vladimirovich Geptner, Tat'iana Gerasimenko and Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Volkov, Elena Kriukova, Aleksei Vladimirovich Iablokov, Elena Alekseevna Liapunova, Nikolai Daniilovich Kruglov, Nina Trofimovna Nechaeva, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Kirill Rossiianov, Ol'ga Leonidovna Rossolimo, Veronika Vladimirovna Stanchinskaia, Hain Tankler, Marshida Iunusovna Treus, Vladimir and Svetlana Zakharov, and countless other friends too numerous to mention. I owe special thanks to Aleksandr Sergeevich Rautian, who single-handedly saved the invaluable Viazhlinskii collection of photographs of conservation activists from the 1920s through the 1950s and who allowed me to reproduce them.

Colleagues on this side of the ocean also helped to clarify my thoughts and challenge dubious assertions. I am indebted to Valery N. Soyfer and to Stephen Kotkin for insisting as strongly as they did that the scientists' professions of Soviet patriotism might well be genuine and that it was impossible not to be, at least in small part, a "Soviet" person. The recommendations of Loren R. Graham, my lifelong friend and quondam mentor, have also found their way into this book. A conversation with Mike Urban led me to examine rhetoric as positioning, and even further incisions followed a generous critique of the introduction by my colleague Hermann Rebel. Upstairs in the sociology department, Elisabeth Clemens, truly a magician, read part of the manuscript and offered great recommendations for tightening it. Janet Rabinowitch valiantly read it twice, offering key suggestions, and Susan Solomon provided valuable guidelines for framing the story. To executive editor and publishing magician Howard Boyer go my heartfelt thanks for believing in this book and championing it. Erika Büky shepherded the manuscript through its production with a swift and sure hand, while Madeleine Adams's elegant copyediting made it infinitely more readable.

Finally, my thanks to those who have stood by me all these obsessive years—my wonderful friends, Mars (the world's leading cat), and my loving parents. Finally, I would like to thank you, the reader, who risked inguinal hernia and other bodily harm to pick up this too, too solid tome.