The Oak and the Larch: A Forest History of Russia and Its Empires

A majestic cultural and environmental history that reveals how forests have made—and resisted—Russia’s many empires.

From the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Arctic to the steppes of Central Asia, Russia’s forests account for nearly one-fifth of the world’s wooded lands. The Oak and the Larch is the first-ever English-language exploration of this vast expanse—a dazzling environmental history of Russia that offers an urgent new understanding of the nature of Russian power, and of Russia’s ideas of itself.

Inspired by the majestic oak, which towers over the country’s western heartland, and the hardy Siberian larch, an emblem of survival in the east, award-winning scholar Sophie Pinkham’s magisterial account spans centuries, revealing how forests have nourished ancient Siberian indigenous societies, defended medieval Slavic settlements from Mongol invasion, and served as both an essential natural resource and a potent cultural symbol for Russia in all its incarnations, from the days of the tsars to the Soviets to Putin’s Federation.

By examining the country from the forest’s perspective, Pinkham pushes far beyond the contemporary political environment in Russia. She draws on literature, history, and art to connect the expanse of the Russian wilderness and the nature of Russian culture, with indelible portraits of the diverse figures who have inhabited and celebrated these forests: the legendary indigenous guide Dersu Uzala, giants of literature like Tolstoy and Chekhov, political thinkers like Kropotkin and even Stalin. She confronts the forest’s role in Russia’s long history of imperial conquest, and in resistance to this conquest.

Gorgeously written and surprising at every turn, The Oak and the Larch offers a vision of Russia rarely seen in the west, as a land defined by its wilderness, shaped by its encounters with the frontier, and—much like our own—ultimately beholden to nature’s whim.