Socialist Valuation of Nature: Political Economy, Environmental Regulation, and Coal Mining in the Soviet Union

Abstract

Socialist Valuation of Nature: Political Economy, Environmental Regulation, and Coal Mining in the Soviet Union examines how nature was turned into an economic category in the USSR. I argue that the theories and practices that allowed for this transformation were deeply rooted in the specific political economy of Soviet socialism. They were neither imported from the West, nor discovered in the extensive writings of Karl Marx. Rather, Soviet theories and practices of nature valuations were produced in the uneasy, unfinished, and contradictory attempts to create a just socialist society and an efficient planned economy. My research, thus, subverts the traditional chronology of the Soviet history demonstrating that the most groundbreaking forms of the socialist valuation of nature developed in the post-Stalin era which we tend to consider as the stream of the failed attempts to reform the ossified socialism. On the contrary, I interpret the theories and practices of nature valuation of the 1950–80s as elements of the emergent socialist mode of reproduction. Engaging with a set of innovative pragmatic economic theories and drawing on national and regional archival documents and journals, Socialist Valuation of Nature explores the following forms of valuation of nature. First, I study the discussions among Soviet economists about natural rents tracing them back to the 1920s. Second, I examine practices of pricing of natural resources developed by the Institute of Prices and a few other agencies. Third, I delve into the extensive archives of the State Committee on Planning (Gosplan) to show how its network created calculative spaces which turned pollution and waste into resources. Fourth, to demonstrate how valuation of nature unfolded on the ground I zoom in on the regional and local levels: I consider the conflicts in the sphere of land management, which the rapid expansion of surface mining provoked in Kuzbass, Soviet major coalfield. Tracing these topics, Socialist Valuation of Nature seeks to contribute to environmental and economic histories of the USSR as well as to the wider discussions around the concepts of the Anthropocene and Capitalocene.