The current issue of ZfO presents findings of the project "Polesia as a Landscape of Intervention: Space, Rule, Technology and Ecology at the European Periphery, 1915-2015", carried out at the University of Siegen, Justus Liebig University in Gießen and at the Herder Institute for Research on East Central Europe―Institute of the Leibniz Association in Marburg.
In their entirety, the contributions illustrate that Polesia experienced a series of structural interventions of varying scope and intensity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in addition to the military interventions of the First and Second World Wars. However, it is not always possible to speak of an "Landscape of Intervention." The driving force behind the campaigns, which were generally communicated as initiatives to modernize the country, was the state’s interest in safeguarding, dominating and economically exploiting the peripheral region. But it was only during Soviet and post-Soviet times that these interventions were accompanied by an increase in the material standard of living for those affected.
The vast majority of people showed themselves as willing to pay the price of a radical change in their natural environment. Dust storms and atomic clouds, which spread out beyond the administrative borders, showed that new enviro-technical systems were emerging and revealed the limits of humans’ ability to control their own acts of intervention.
INHALT
Aufsätze
Anna Veronika Wendland, Diana Siebert, Thomas BohnPolesia: Modernity in the Marshlands. Interventions and Transformations at the European Periphery from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-first Century (Introduction) (319–344)
Katja BruischThe State in the Swamps: Territorialization and Ecosystem Engineering in the Western Provinces of the Late Russian Empire (345–368)
Diana SiebertLandscape Interventions? The Draining of Wetlands and Other Modernization Initiatives in West Polesia from 1921 to 1939 (369–400)
Artem KouidaLand Melioration in Belarusian Polesia as a Modernization Factor in the Soviet Periphery (401–418)
Thomas M. Bohn and Aliaksandr DalhouskiNature Conservation in the Belarusian Marshland: The Pripiat National Park as Timber Source and Hunting Paradise (419–444)
Svetlana BoltovskaLocal Identities in Ukrainian Polesia and Their Transformation under the (Post-)Soviet Nuclear Economy (445–476)
Natalia Otrishchenko, Iryna Sklokina, with Anna Balázs, Lívia Gažová, Yulia Harkusha, Lea Horvat, Ksenia Litvinenko, Daryna Ozhyganova, Daryna Pyrogova, and Jordan SkinnerSlavutych: Urban Practices, Memories and Imagination. Research Report of the Studio at the Summer School “The Idea of the City: Reality Check” (477–500)
Besprechungen
Martin Homza: Mulieres suadantes – Persuasive Women. Bespr. Dániel Bagi (501–503)
Verflechtungen in Politik, Kultur und Wirtschaft im östlichen Europa; Handbuch einer transnationalen Geschichte Ostmitteleuropas. Bespr. Stefan Dyroff (503–506)
Zwischen Region und Nation. Bespr. Ines Ellertmann (506–508)
Neuer Nationalismus im östlichen Europa. Bespr. Maciej Górny (508–509)
Heimat zwischen Deutschland, Polen und Europa. Bespr. Michal Turski (509–510)
Stanislav Balík, Vít Hloušek, Lubomír Kopeček, Jan Holzer, Pavel Pšeja, Andrew Lawrence Roberts: Czech Politics. Bespr. Klára Pinerová (511–512)
The Great West Ukrainian Prison Massacre of 1941. Bespr. Kai Struve (512–513)
Der Holocaust. Neue Studien zu Tathergängen, Reaktionen und Aufarbeitungen. Bespr. Klaus-Peter Friedrich (513–515)
Heimatzeitschriften. Funktionen, Netzwerke, Quellenwert. Bespr. Maik Schmerbauch (515–517)
Die deutsche Minderheit in Polen und die kommunistischen Behörden, 1945–1989. Bespr. Kornelia Kończal (517–518)
Anzeigen (519–520)