Julia Herzberg, Andreas Renner, and Ingrid Schierle (eds.) The Russian Cold: Histories of Ice, Frost, and Snow. New York: Berghahn books 2021. ISBN 978-1-80073-127-1

 

View Table of Contents: https://www.berghahnbooks.com/downloads/tocs/HerzbergRussian_toc.pdf

REVIEWS

“This collection foregrounds one of Russia’s most distinctive natural features: the cold. Together the contributions advance comparative climate history in new directions by attending not only to place, period, and politics, but to an even more fundamental condition of the human experience.” • Andy Bruno, Northern Illinois University

“This diverse collection provides interesting and important studies on how the cold climate in Russia was experienced, studied and imagined by various actors in different periods of its history.” • Alla Bolotova, Aalto University

DESCRIPTION

Cold has long been a fixture of Russian identity both within and beyond the borders of Russia and the Soviet Union, even as the ongoing effects of climate change complicate its meaning and cultural salience. The Russian Cold assembles fascinating new contributions from a variety of scholarly traditions, offering new perspectives on how to understand this mainstay of Russian culture and history. In chapters encompassing such diverse topics as polar exploration, the Eastern Front in World War II, and the iconography of hockey, it explores the multiplicity and ambiguity of “cold” in the Russian context and demonstrates the value of environmental-historical research for enriching national and imperial histories.