Institute of Advanced Studies

How muddy roads and small cows created autocracy: Environmental determinism in Russian history

by Dr Mark Edele, History, UWA

Russia is an inhospitable place.

Harsh winters and hot summers, often poor soil, thousands of miles of woods and steppes, rivers flowing in the ‘wrong’ direction to serve as effective means of communications, poor soil and a lack of natural boundaries to bar foreign invasion – all these factors combined to challenge rulers and ruled alike for centuries. Given such a setting, it might be unsurprising that historians are often seduced into environmental determinism, claiming that the ‘Russian national character’ in general, and a presumed propensity to autocracy and dictatorship in particular, can be explained by this natural setting. This lecture analyses several ‘grand theories’ of Russian history which focus on the environment as a causal factor, or maybe even an agent, in the history of this society.