Ecological Urbanism in a Single Place: Forest Management in Novosibirsk Akademgorodok in the 1960’s–1980’s

. The article examines the history of green space management in the Novosibirsk Scientific Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences (Akademgorodok). In order to identify methods for managing green spaces in Akademgorodok, the author analyzes the work of botanists from the Central Botanical Garden of the Branch, first of all, the work of the long-term director of the Forest Protection Experimental Station Ivan V. Taran. During the research, the author used the concept of “environing nature” developed by S. Sörlin and N. Wormbs, which makes it possible to see the steps towards the actual transformation of the preserved nature into something new essentially approaching the environment in the works of Novosibirsk botanists. The case of Akademgorodok is interesting because scientists tried to solve the problems of forest conservation and integration of forests into the fabric of an urban settlement. The botanists of Akademgorodok with their images of the forest are placed in the context of broad historiographical discussions about the peculiarities of Soviet environmental policy, especially in the late Soviet era. On the basis of careful study of the scientists’ arguments, it is possible to assert that in their ideas there was a system for delimiting the forests Akademgorodok and a certain idea that the task of forest management was to maintain their “natural” state. This shows the ambivalence of the forest for the botanists of Akademgorodok: it must be returned (or preserved) to its natural state, the maintenance of which is impossible without the active intervention of scientists. Such a comprehensive environmental program could only be implemented with significant funding. The post-Soviet state of the forests of the academic center indicates that under the current economic conditions they are under pressure from the logic of further urbanization of Akademgorodok and various development project as well as projects of extension of the University’s territory (building a new campus). The future of the forests of the Novosibirsk Akademgorodok in such circumstances with the absence of a large-scale program comparable to the program proposed by I. Taran looks rather pessimistic.


Introduction
The scientific center of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences near Novosibirsk, better known as Akademgorodok, was founded in 1957.One of the distinctive features of this part of Novosibirsk is the proximity of Akademgorodok to the Siberian taiga.Anyone who has been to Akademgorodok will notice that it is surrounded by forests and, moreover, trees partially grow right inside residential neighborhoods.Almost since the moment of its appearance, this feature of Akademgorodok has become the most important part of the local founding myth: supposedly, the forest was specially preserved by the builders of the city of science, and all these years it has been carefully protected by the efforts of its inhabitants.The idea of the founding myth, as F. Corney understands it,1 assumes that any community is constructed around a mythologized history of its origin.The preserved taiga forest, the care for it, the paths through the thicket between the institutesall this should support the history of the exclusivity of the city of science built in Siberia.Like any founding myth, the history of the forest in Akademgorodok combines various omissions with even more exciting facts.
However, when we begin to go deeper into the forest, its paths lead us to slightly different scenes.The myth of Akademgorodok, as far as it concerns the forest itself, tells only about the movement of the Central Botanical Garden of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences to Akademgorodok and creation of the Forest Protection Experimental Station at it and their activities are mainly described as the conservation of the Siberian taiga.But if we pay more attention to specific narratives, various remarkable stories may open up for a curious person.The Forest Protection Experimental Station (hereinafter FPES) was founded almost immediately after the establishment of the Siberian Branch, that is on November 11, 1957.As the name suggests, the main task of this division of the Botanical Garden was to protect the forests of Akademgorodok.However, before considering the history of the FPES and the green spaces of the scientific center, I would like to outline the framework of interpretation that will help the curious traveller not to get lost on their winding paths.

History of the forest: a view from the Soviet Union
The history of the forest in Akademgorodok is only a part of a larger narrative about the relationship between Soviet society and its forest resources.Recently, more and more research works have been published that mark the place of forests in the cultural landscape of various societies. 2A number of authors explore the role of forests in the policies of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union.Some researchers turn to the history of the forest as a resource, in particular, E. Kochetkova analyzes in detail the problems of the forest industry of the USSR in her articles. 3However, S. Brain is the only author who has written a "cultural history" of forests based on the Soviet material, considering them in the context of Russian and Soviet culture and placing the narrative about forestry in the 1920s-50s within the framework of a historiographical discussion about principles of the Soviet environmental policy and its practices. 4he abovementioned works also consider the contexts of interaction between society and the forest as a natural object that humans colonize and use as a resource for industry.At the same time, as part of the development of the "garden city" idea in Soviet urban planning, the thought of creating cities in forests appeared at a certain point in time.In one of our articles, my colleagues R. Bugaev, M. Piskunov, and I have already considered the broad context of the Akademgorodok's "forest city," 5 therefore I will not dwell upon the conceptual issues in this article.Akademgorodok was not the only territory in the USSR where an attempt was made to integrate forest ranges into the fabric of the city, but the instance of Siberia is perhaps the most famous one.Urban forests similar to those of Akademgorodok represent an extremely interesting subject for study, primarily as a material embodiment of the Soviet view on the possibility of coexistence of an industrial city and the natural environment, a socialist version of ecological urbanism.The works devoted to ecological urbanism in the USSR that hasve been published so far, as a rule, consider the inclusion of forests in the city structure from the point of view of urban planning ideas, without delving into the question of what happens to the forest ecosystem after its combination with urban space. 6The specifics of landscaping practices in the context of the of new science cities are analyzed in a recent publication by Alexandra Kasatkina.Based on the example of Obninsk, Kasatkina puts forward the idea that the discourse of the "garden city" was a way of forming a new identity of citizens. 7In the Novosibirsk Akademgorodok, the forest, apparently, also plays an extremely important role in the self-identification of its residents.
In this article, I nurture a plan to understand how late-Soviet ecological urbanism was implemented in practice in a single place, which is Akademgorodok, and for this I propose to consider how the leadership of the FPES and the Botanical Garden cared for the forests entrusted to them.As mentioned at the very beginning, the myth that the remains of the Siberian taiga grow in the territory of Akademgorodok the science city and that during construction the forest here was preserved on the initiative of Academician M. Lavrent'ev is extremely important for Akademgorodok.Local environmental activists largely continue to defend the forest against logging, positioning it as Lavrent'ev's heritage and an original natural part of the city's landscape.However, it should be borne in mind that Akademgorodok's myth practically ignores the great work that has been done by botanical scientists to manage the forest surrounding Akademgorodok.
Deconstruction of the myth and reconstruction of the history of forest management in Akademgorodok is possible through the use of the ideas of S. Sörlin and N. Wormbs about the technologies for transforming the surrounding nature into the environment. 8These authors propose to distinguish between the concepts "nature" and "environment," the latter denoting the objects that bear the stamp of interaction between humans and the landscapes adjacent to them.Moreover, nature is always transformed by man into the environment through certain "technologies."The abovementioned authors understand the concept of technology quite broadly.Among other things, it means a description of certain features of nature that transform it into environment.The technologies associated with direct physical interaction with nature are designated by Sörlin and Wormbs by the word "shaping."Of interest for this article is the fact that these technologies also include the entire range of practices associated with forestry.
The main sources used for the analysis of technologies shaping the environment in Akademgorodok and the practices of ecological urbanism are scientific publications and memoirs of the FPES director Ivan V. Taran.He headed the station in 1965, and the twenty years of his leadership of the station weree the most active period of forest management work.I did not resort to an analysis of scientific discourse in Taran's works, but rather tried to reconstruct examples of what I call technologies for shaping the environment, following Sörlin and Wormbs, be it descriptions of the Akademgorodok forests of a list of activities to "shape" them.Within the framework of the article, only a few of Taran's works will be analyzed.However, it should be noted that there are significantly more of them, and a careful reading of the complex of works of the scientist shows that the key ideas on forest management of the scientific center are generally repeated from one work to another.Even the memoirs published in 2015 combine in some sense the traditional genre of memoirs, reflecting the meetings and communications of I. Taran with people central to the history of Akademgorodok (M.Lavrent'ev and V. Lavrent'eva, and E. Ligachev) and genre of scientific monograph, when presenting Taran's ideas on the possibility of creating and maintaining green spaces in Akademgorodok.
I propose to consider all the actions of foresters and botanists of Novosibirsk Akademgorodok through the prism of two technologies -"description" and "shaping," since Taran and his colleagues practiced these very technologies: they described the state of the forest that came under their jurisdiction and carried out a whole range of forestry works that was then analyzed in their numerous publications.As a result, a kind of sequence of actions emerged: Description 1 ↔ Shaping ↔ Description 2. First of all, let us address Description 1, within the framework of which Taran and his colleagues outlined their understanding of forest in the city and how it needs to be dealt with.

Forest as a resource and an asset
Before starting to describe the activities of FPESs in a number of their works, Taran and his colleagues explain the natural and human value of the forest and the need for its conservation specifically in cities.Their works suggest the division into natural and human, although the terms themselves are conventional, of course.
An example of how Taran and his colleagues understood the value of forests is the monograph Ustoichivost' rekreatsionnykh lesov [Sustainability of recreational forests].It was written by the director of the FPES in collaboration with Vladimir Nikolaevich Spiridonov, another employee of the station, and published in 1977.This is what they write at the very beginning of their work: The accelerated development of the national economy in our country, the increase in living standards, and the balance of free time of the population have significantly changed the relationship between man and nature.Under these conditions, forests as the main component of the planet's green cover are given great importance, including recreational importance.9 Literally from the very beginning, a certain framework for considering the usefulness of forests including natural ones is set: they become important' in connection with the development of industry.Apparently, here Taran and Spiridonov capture an important feature of the industrial society of their time, i.e. the increase in the value of nature as urbanized and industrialized landscapes encroach on the natural ones.Another important thing that the authors pointed out but modern researchers do not always pay due attention to is that with the growth of the urban population and the improvement of working conditions, some representatives of the working class had more free time, which city residents preferred to spend out of town but not far from it.In a later work devoted to the green spaces of Novosibirsk in general, Taran would write that the increase in population mobility in the early 2000s leads to an everincreasing load on forests, which were becoming more accessible thanks to many railways and highways, and even build a classification of anthropogenic load based on this accessibility.10In Taran's rhetoric, the importance of forests increases precisely because of the growth of the urban population; "In these conditions, forests are given great importance, recreational importance among other aspects." Further in the monograph, Spiridonov and Taran pay quite a lot of attention to what I propose to call the "natural" usefulness of the forest.In fact, the entire first chapter of their book is devoted to it.Already in the introduction, they distinguish between the "natural" and the "human": In the era of the scientific and technological revolution, the versatility of the usefulness of forests is steadily increasing.Forest is a source of various raw materials for many sectors of the national economy.At the same time, it performs protective, water protection, anti-erosion, balneological, aesthetic, recreational, and other useful functions, united in forestry science into the general concept of "intangible benefits of the forest." 11e first group of "benefits" of the forest is related to the national economy and the authors do not touch upon it, since they are most interested in what is associated with also a technology for shaping the environment, since plants declared "useful" or "valuable" are more likely to be saved from cutting down than those considered "not valuable."Taran confirms the influence of this division, noting that the least valuable aspen groves were cut down during construction.

Forest description technologies
In addition to the general description of the usefulness of urban green spaces, which were to lead the reader to the idea of the need to preserve them, Taran also itroduces the forest that was under the jurisdiction of the Forest Protection Experimental Station in Akademgorodok.As noted above, both "shaping" and "describing," if we follow the thought of Sorlin and Wormbs, coexist as practices of transforming nature into the environment.Accordingly, before analyzing the forest management carried out by FPES employees, it is necessary to justify its necessity by describing the situation that developed in the surrounding forests during the construction of Akademgorodok.
The concept of anthropogenic load is one of the most important descriptive tools in Taran's and his colleagues' works.The forest in Akademgorodok was located directly near the city or within its boundaries, and therefore human impact was the key factor in the processes the forest underwent.But what does the term "anthropogenic load" imply?In 1959, during the early stages of the construction of Akademgorodok, the FPES began counting the damage to forests caused by construction workers. 16Moreover, this activity was immediately brought into the public spacethe leadership of the FPES planned to give lectures on forest protection and publish an article in the Akademstroevets newspaper of the builders of Akademgorodok.Measures to influence the builders included a threat to issue no cutting permits unless "forest violations" stopped.17However, builders continued to violate the existing forest protection boundaries, in particular, during the construction of the hospital, trees were damaged by cranes.The contractor refused to name the persons who had broken the rules.Outraged by the situation, the FPES employees dubbed everything that was happening "forest banditry." 18This story from 1959 shows that in many ways the story about preserving the forest in Akademgorodok silences the opinions of the actors who had a different attitude to the green environment of the city than the FPES.The builders in this story did not have a voice of their own, which would be reflected in archival documents, and therefore we do not know how they felt about the forest and the possibility of preserving it.Only the view of the botanists on "forest violations" is known to us.The myth of Akademgorodok, as can be assumed from this small story, seems to expel some groups (for example, builders) from its structure and represent the activities of others (botanists) as universal ones.Be that as it may, the activity of FPESs at this stage fits perfectly into the logic of nature conservation rather than into the "Promethean" idea of its transformation.
In their works, Taran and Spiridonov did not in any way reflect the above story about tree felling and violations of forest protection zones.The authors strive to create a picture of the maximum possible preservation of trees.However, they also note a significant change in the forest landscape that occurred during construction: Before construction, there were three forest areas separated by arable land from the continuous forest within the boundaries of the territory under survey.During the construction works, the plants were divided into small areas and separate groups of trees by buildings, streets, and driveways (167 areas in total).The majority of the newly-formed forest areas (78.4%) do not exceed 0.3 hectares in size.The forest situation on them has changed dramatically, which, in turn, led to disruption of the growth and general condition of the trees. 19 the above quotation, Taran states the deterioration of the condition of the forest and links it with a significant reduction in the size of forest areas resulting from construction.The director of the FPES proposes a technology for creating an environment from the forests of Akademgorodok by identifying forest plots and delimiting them by area.Why was the size criterion important?Taran believed that only a continuous forest with an area of at least 1 hectare is capable of functioning as a forest, at least in miniature, and smaller plots become areas where the growth and condition of trees are disturbed.It remains not entirely clear whether Taran considered small-sized areas to be parts of the forest (albeit incapable of preservation) or, in the scholar's mind, they acquired a different status.Such delineation of areas was necessary in order to develop a plant management program suitable for a specific area in the first place.
I consider it advisable for the FPES employees to conduct a detailed examination of the preserved areas. . .with an assessment of their condition and the 19 Taran, and Spiridonov, Sustainability of Recreational Forests, 39; I.V. determination of a system of silvicultural measures to increase their sustainability. 20st active forest management began when Taran headed the FPES in 1965.The first steps to shape the Akademgorodok's environment resonate with certain provisions of Sörlin's idea of "shaping."The very measure taken by Taran in his new position was a month examining the condition of trees (including single trees) in Akademgorodok and treating pines along Morskoi Prospekt.By 1965, it had become clear that the trees planted there were weakening, and Taran took a number of actions to save them, such as increased fertilizing.21Practical work on tree care was associated with the technology of "description."According to Taran's memoirs, following the results of the month, it was decided, first of all, to speak to the Presidium of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences with a report on measures to preserve forests and to prepare a general outline for urban forests arrangement and landscaping of Akademgorodok.
Any technology and program for shaping the environment required resources, and in this matter Taran received patronage at the highest level from Academician M. Lavrent'ev, the founder of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, who approved the main vector of activities of the FPES and, most importantly, a threefold increase of the station's budget. 22Taran was now invited to report to the meetings of the Presidium.In 1966 and 1967, resolutions were adopted confirming the direction of the FPES's work.Thus, the description, shaping, and description again were inextricably linked and presupposed an entire program within the framework of which the management of urban forests was to be carried out.

Forest Management Program
The FPES program was designed for a decade and included a set of activities aimed at studying and "describing" the state of Akademgorodok's forests and their further management (or "shaping").Taran wrote: the following tasks were set: 1) to identify the main factors influencing the growth, sustainability, and condition of recreational plantings; 2) to study the intensity of the impact of these factors on the composition and structure of phytocenoses as a whole and their tiers; 3) based on the research results and taking into account production experience, to develop measures to preserve and recreational impact.Located at a distance of more than 800 m. from the building boundary 3. Forest areas with moderate anthropogenic load.500-800 m away from the residential area.4. Forest areas with high recreational load.They are located 200-500 m from the building boundary; some of them are located inside residential areas.5. Plantings with very intensive recreational use.Adjacent to a residential zone or located within its boundaries. 26e mentioned five categories of forest plantations, in turn, were distributed across three large zones: residential, urban forests, and suburban.It is noteworthy that both zones and categories of forests were defined not only according to their botanical classification (for example, birch trees) but also according to other criteria: the degree of human impact on forest plantations, the proximity to residential buildings in the city, and the intensity of recreational impact.Moreover, the space of urban forests exists in two variations: the further away from residential buildings, the less the load on the plants becomes, and vice versa.The last category of forests is actually adjacent to residential districts; it is located in the residential zone.
Mapping was not the only element of the program that described and marked the territory of Akademgorodok.Two other important objects of study in the city were its soils and grass cover in the forest.Why were these particular objects identified by scientists?The fact is that the state of forests is influenced by the connection of trees with other components of a complex forest ecosystemsoils and cover.Temperature, humidity, and the degree of compaction of the soil promote or inhibit the growth of tree roots, which helps them obtain nutrients.Undergrowth and grass cover, in turn, serve as an indicator of the forest's ability to reproducenew trees have nowhere to appear if there are no young shoots sprouted from seeds or cones.In one of his works, Taran gives the stages of change of herbaceous vegetation when trampling paths.The trees may appear healthy at first glance, but analysis of the soil and cover reveals the beginning of the transformation of the forest into a parkland.Visual evidence of grassland transformation could also be used as an example of positive change.In his works, Taran provides a number of illustrations in which the grass cover in areas of vegetation isolated by the FPES's employees is designated precisely as corresponding to a forest rather than a park. 27Forest management in this particular case implied the restoration of a certain natural quality, while the fact was disregarded that only humans could maintain this quality (by adding fertilizers, loosening soil, and fencing areas of plantings).

Research
The idea of fencing the forest sometimes evoked completely unexpected associations.This is the story cited by I. Taran in his memoirs: "Mikhail Alekseevich (Lavrent'ev.-T.R.), restoration of forest landscapes of the demarcation strip in Microdistrict A is very complex and expensive... To restore it, it is necessary to put them on a three-year rest with complete isolation from recreational use." "How do you intend to do this isolation?""Fencing is the only way." "What kind of fencing?With barbed wire?. . .We won't create a Gulag for the forest at the Science Center. .."32It is not entirely clear why Academician Lavrent'ev associated fencing of the forest with a barrier with the Gulag.Recalling the same conversation with the academician, Taran points to another proposed technology of warning, hanging throughout the forest the posters saying "Forest on vacation.Please do not walk."Taran's memoirs contain the photographs of forest areas before they were isolated and excluded from recreation and several years later, designed to demonstrate successful restoration of grass cover to the reader.

Conclusion
Did the forest managed by the FPES turn out to be manageable and sustainable?In the framework of this article, the activities of Novosibirsk botanists were examined through the prism of Sörlin's and Wormbs's idea about the transformation of nature into the environment.The specifics of the forests of Novosibirsk Akademgorodok are well explained by this model.Green spaces that once had the character of a natural forest were included into the fabric of Akademgorodok's residential districts during development or became an active area of suburban recreation.Academgorodok botanists faced the non-trivial task of not just caring for a park or a garden but with the need to maintain the forest ecosystem and regulate the use of the forest for recreational purposes.The forest of Akademgorodok was presented to scientists as an object in need of maintaining its naturalness. 33hen describing the forest management technologies used, Taran and his colleagues highlighted the idea that they were trying to return the forest to some kind of its natural state.Isolation of forest areas, soil loosening, applying mineral fertilizers, cutting and treating treesall this was supposed to maintain a certain state of the forest, which in fact was not natural.In this case, the forest acquired the features of a sociotechnical imaginary as S. Jasanoff understands it. 34At the same time, all the described technologies fit well into the transformative "Promethean" logic of human interaction with nature.A distinctive feature of late-Soviet "Prometheanism" in Akademgorodok was that it was understood not as the conquest of nature to serve human needs but rather as a desire to regulate the relationship between city residents and their forest.
However, in one of his works, Taran himself stipulated that the development of a modern city still cannot be stopped and the industry strives to destroy nature.This confession captures the main tension in the relationship between Akademgorodok and its forest.M. Lavrent'ev's memoirs repeat the same idea: when designing Akademgorodok, an error was made in calculating the estimated population, and already in the 1960s, the actual number of residents exceeded the projected figures.This contradiction persisted in the post-Soviet years, getting even worse with the changes in the socio-political situation in the country.
The logic of urbanization and the development of Akademgorodok towards a "dormitory" area, the residents of which are not necessarily related by occupation to the Academy of Sciences, requires the allocation of new areas for the expansion of residential development.Another important actor influencing the fate and condition of the forest is Novosibirsk State University.In July 2022, environmental activists of Akademgorodok organized a series of pickets against the construction of buildings of two new scientific centers, implemented as part of the NSU campus development project.The protesters are trying to defend the inviolability of forest areas, but neither the university nor Akademgorodok have any other suitable sites for development other than forest areas, which stimulates additional tension in the situation.
Part of the scientific community of Akademgorodok, at least botanists and biologists, adhere to the opinion that the forest largely fell into disrepair during the 1990s-2000s: not only planting of trees and shrubs stopped, but even maintenance of the territory; there was a rapid uncontrolled overgrowth of the upper zone, and the surrounding forests began to turn into garbage dumps. 35esearch T.N.Rakov.Ecological Urbanism in a Single Place: Forest Management in Novosibirsk Akademgorodok in 1960's-1980's   Historia Provinciae -the Journal of Regional History, 2024, vol.8, no. 2 ISSN 2587-8344 (online) 684 In the above quote, it is worth paying attention to the indication that the forest is now left to its own devices ("uncontrolled overgrowth").In addition, a new species (the American maple that has appeared inside residential areas and in forest plantations) is perceived as a weed.In one of his last publications, I. Taran reproduced a mythologeme, which is common in Akademgorodok and says that its forest is the legacy of Academician Lavrent'ev, while assessing the state of the forest as catastrophic. 36Akademgorodok botanists still see a way out of their situation in technologies for shaping the environment.However, in modern conditions, they should rather be reoriented towards maintaining the established ecosystem where people will preserve forests in residential neighborhoods and implement a set of measures to maintain the forests adjacent to the territory of residential neighborhoods. 37Whatever measures are proposed, scientists still link the fate of the forest to the technologies that are in the hands of people.
The future of the Akademgorodok forest hardly seems to be bright.The large complex of technologies and practices that can be reconstructed in the works of I. Taran and his colleagues is possible only within certain limits.These frameworks can be described as both financial and ideological (which is no less important).Under the leadership of Taran, the FPES was supported with funds from the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and at the ideological level, late-Soviet relations with nature also stimulated large-scale greening of the urban environment.In the current situation, these most important frameworks are virtually absent, and without them, individual technological measures to maintain forests are unlikely to bear significant fruit.