рус eng
«IZVESTIYA IRKUTSKOGO GOSUDARSTVENNOGO UNIVERSITETA». SERIYA «ISTORIYA»
«THE BULLETIN OF IRKUTSK STATE UNIVERSITY». SERIES «HISTORY»
ISSN 2222-9124 (Print)

List of issues > Series «History». 2026. Vol 56

Before the 1958 Baikal Discussion in Connection with the Construction of the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill: The Parties and Their Positions

Author(s)

M. I. Maklakov

Tyumen State University, Tyumen, Russian Federation

Abstract
The article investigates the discursive and institutional construction of Lake Baikal within Soviet expert communities from the 1920s to the late 1950s, situating this inquiry within the broader historiography of Soviet environmentalism. While existing scholarship has concentrated on the “Baikal debate” – the public controversy surrounding the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill (BPPM) – the longer prehistory of competing knowledge claims and institutional alignments that conditioned that controversy has received comparatively little attention. This study addresses that lacuna by reconstructing the expert frameworks, institutional arenas, and representational strategies through which Baikal was rendered meaningful prior to the debate's emergence. The analysis is grounded in the Social Construction of Technology framework, employing the concepts of obligatory passage points and interpretive flexibility to account for the co-existence of mutually incompatible constructions of the same object. Four thematic domains are examined: the formation of early institutional nodes (the East Siberian Geographical Society; the Baikal Limnological Station); the positioning of Baikal research within the regional science infrastructure of the East Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences; the “Siberian storehouse” discourse in industrial planning and the Cold War imperatives driving the BPPM decision; and popular-science strategies of lake representation. The article demonstrates that by 1958 two structurally distinct images had solidified: “lake-as-resource”, deeply embedded in Soviet planning rationality and capable of enrolling powerful institutional allies, and “lake-as-image”, articulated through genres marginal to state decision-making. The asymmetry between these two constructions accounts for the conservationist position's institutional weakness and illuminates why translating environmental concern into political leverage required sustained effort over three subsequent decades.
About the Authors
Maklakov Mikhail Igorevich, Junior Research Scientist, Department of International Relations, Foreign Regional Studies and Tourism Tyumen State University 38, Lenin st., Tyumen, 625003, Russian Federation e-mail: maklakovm-99@yandex.ru
For citation
Maklakov M.I. Before the 1958 Baikal Discussion in Connection with the Construction of the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill: The Parties and Their Positions. The Bulletin of Irkutsk State University. Series History, 2026, vol. 56, pp. 120-129. https://doi.org/10.26516/2222-9124.2026.56.120 (in Russian)
Keywords
Baikal, BPPM, Soviet science, environmental history, history of Siberia, Baikal discussion, expert community.
UDC
930.2
DOI
https://doi.org/10.26516/2222-9124.2026.56.120
References
  1. Vereschaguin G.Yu. Baikal: nauch.-popul. ocherk [Baikal: Popular Science Essay]. Moscow, Gos. izd-vo geogr. Lit. Publ., 1949. 228 p. (in Russian)
  2. Vernadskii V.I., Yanshina F.T. Nauchnaya mysl kak planetnoe yavlenie [Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon]. Moscow, Nauka Publ., 1991, 270 p. (in Russian)
  3. Grigorii Ivanovich Galazii: rytsar Baikala [Grigory Ivanovich Galazy: Knight of Baikal]. Collected articles. Ed. G.V. Matyashenko. Novosibirsk, SB RAS Publ., 2004, 183 p. (in Russian)
  4. Dameshek L.M. Muzei VSORGO: istoriya formirovaniya kollektsii i vystavochnaya deyatelnost (1851-1931 gg.) [Museum of VSORGO: History of Collection Formation and Exhibition Activity (1851-1931)]. Irkutsk, Irkutsk State Univ. Publ., 2013, 82 p. (in Russian)
  5. Kozhov M.M. Sezonnye i godovye izmeneniya v planktone ozera Baikal [Seasonal and Annual Changes in the Plankton of Lake Baikal]. Trudy Baikalskoi limnologicheskoi stantsii [Proceedings of the Baikal Limnological Station], vol. 15, Moscow, Leningrad, 1955. (in Russian)
  6. Korytny L.M. Ekho ekologo-ekonomicheskikh skandalov [Echo of Ecological-Economic Scandals]. Novosibirsk, SB RAS Publ., 2011, 325 p. (in Russian)
  7. Kochetkova E.A. Diskurs modernizatsii v lesnoi ekonomike pozdnego SSSR [Modernization Discourse in the Forest Economy of the Late USSR]. Sotsiologiya nauki i tekhnologii [Sociology of Science and Technology], 2023, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 51-65. (in Russian)
  8. Kupershtokh N.A. Zapadno-Sibirskii filial Akademii nauk SSSR: proekty i realii pervoi poloviny XX v. [West Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences: Projects and Realities of the First Half of the 20th Century]. Vestnik TGU. Istoriya [Bulletin of TSU. History], 2014, no. 2 (28), pp. 32-40. (in Russian)
  9. Materialy Konferentsii po izucheniyu proizvoditelnykh sil Irkutskoi oblasti: 4-11 avg. 1947 g. [Proceedings of the Conference on the Study of Productive Forces of the Irkutsk Region: August 4-11, 1947]. Irkutsk, Irkut. obl. izd-vo Publ., 1947, 136 p. (in Russian)
  10. Sarkisyan S.G. Baikal. Moscow, Geografgiz Publ., 1955, 80 p. (in Russian)
  11. Sukhodoloff A.P. Byt li gorodu na Baikale? [Should There Be a City on Baikal?]. Novosibirsk, Nauka Publ., 1996. (in Russian)
  12. Sukhodoloff A.P. Tsellyulozno-bumazhnaya promyshlennost Baikalskogo regiona [Pulp and Paper Industry of the Baikal Region]. Novosibirsk, IEiOPP Publ., 1995. (in Russian)
  13. Khoroshikh P.P. Vodopady Baikala [Waterfalls of Baikal]. Priroda [Nature], 1949, no. 11, pp. 48-49. (in Russian)
  14. Shagzhievich Sh.K. Baikalskaya diskussiya i ee znachenie v okhrane ozera [The Baikal Discussion and Its Significance for Lake Conservation]. Vestnik BGU. Filosofiya [Bulletin of BSU. Philosophy], 2012, no. SB, pp. 284-287. (in Russian)
  15. Bassin M., Ely C.D., Stockdale M.K. Space, Place, and Power in Modern Russia: Essays in the New Spatial History. Northern Illinois University Press, 2010, 268 p.
  16. Bruno A. The Nature of Soviet Power: An Arctic Environmental History. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016, 406 p.
  17. Kochetkova E. The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2024. 258 p.
  18. Bijker W. E., Hughes T. P., Pinch T. (eds.). The Social Construction of Technological Systems. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2012, 425 p.

Full text (russian)