Berghahn Books In the Name of the Great Work: Stalin's Plan for the Transformation of Nature and its Impact in Eastern Europe: 10 (Environment in History: International Perspectives, 10)

Product Description Beginning in 1948, the Soviet Union launched a series of wildly ambitious projects to implement Joseph Stalin's vision of a total "transformation of nature." Intended to increase agricultural yields dramatically, this utopian impulse quickly spread to the newly communist states of Eastern Europe, captivating political elites and war-fatigued publics alike. By the time of Stalin's death, however, these attempts at "transformation"-which relied upon ideologically corrupted and pseudoscientific theories-had proven a spectacular failure. This richly detailed volume follows the history of such projects in three communist states-Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia-and explores their varied, but largely disastrous, consequences. Review "The book makes a valuable contribution to the understudied environmental history of Central and Eastern Europe." - H-Soz-Kult "This is a necessary book... the first monograph dedicated entirely to how [Stalin's parallel] plans played out in the 'people's democracies' of Eastern Europe during Stalin's lifetime and beyond... Olsakova's work is thus a significant addition to extant literature on environmental history and the twentieth century history of Eastern Europe." - Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe "By focusing on the Eastern European experience, this book offers an original angle on the 'Stalin Plan.' Its case studies are substantial, covering a considerable amount of ground and presenting new empirical findings." - Jonathan Oldfield, University of Birmingham About the Author Doubravka Olšáková is a senior researcher at the Institute for Contemporary History at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, where she leads a working group on environmental history. Her publications include the book Science Goes to the People! (2014), which examines mass indoctrination and the dissemination of science in communist Czechoslovakia.