Environmental World History Essay

Communism & Ideology

Agenda

• Lecture
• Discussion board post
• Consulting/questions about final paper

• HW: Marks, pgs. 161-184
• HW: Reading Comprehension Quiz #10 DUE TMRW
• HW: discussion board post due Thurs at 11: 59 pm
• HW: rough draft due in 3 weeks

• Have clear argument
• Three sub-arguments to support
• 2 primary sources
• Use materials from Weeks 1-12

Communism: Early Decades

Compare/contrast Mao and Stalin’s early priorities.

Communism’s Rise

• 1912: Dr. Sun Yatsen, Nationalist Party of China

(Guomindang)

• Three principles: nationalism, democracy, livelihood

• 1917: Lenin led Bolshevik Revolution against

provisional Russian government

• 1918-21: Civil War, establishes USSR
• 1923: Stalin takes over (after Lenin dies)

• 1919: Chinese Communist Party established
• 1920s: Nationalists purge Communists from

military institutions and labor movements

Goals:

• Soviets want to overthrow European and American imperialism/colonialism

• pursue AUTARKIC policies (economic self- reliance)
• 1929: Mao Zedung focuses on rural strategy

• soil depletion and erosion  problem with food production
• deforestation = soil erosion, accumulated alluvium = flooding

Soviets Overcoming Nature

• Goal: create a second “planned” nature

that

followed Soviet plans

• Great Stalin Plan: afforestation project (planting trees) to transform great steppes (arid) into more hospitable land for farms

• Hoped to battle droughts that affected steppes

• 1930s: scientific studies  food

production and tree belt placement

• 19th century: metaphorical struggle

between Russian forests and the “Asiatic steppe”

Collectivization

• Moved peasants to large farms
• Used tractors to plow large tracts of steppes
• 1932-33: drastic reduction in crop production
  • Possibly 11 millions people starved to death
• Failed to produce massive food, but:
  • controlled peasants
  • gave leaders a sense of progress

Compare/contrast Mao and Stalin’s early priorities.

War and Ecological Damage

What were ecological effects of fighting? Human or nature-induced?

Nationalists vs. Communists vs. Japanese

• 1930s: decades of

warlordism in China • 1937: Japan invades

northern China

• 1938: Nationalists

destroy dike on Yellow River

(Henan) to stop

Japanese

• 1 million people

drown

• 2 million dislodged

http://www.disasterhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Screenshot-4.png

Nationalists vs. Communists vs. Japanese

• River flood influenced

war for years

• farmland flooded
• sunbaked land = hard

• Millions of refugees fled

west to escape Japanese

• Agriculture in the mountains = eroded

and depleted soil

• 1942: El Niño Event

http://www.disasterhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Screenshot-4.png

Soviets at War

• Soviets destroyed landscape:

• hydroelectric dams
• Flooded mines

• Germans invaded so quickly,
  • verextended supply line
    • Scavenged from countryside
• Sept 1941: 871-day siege of Leningrad starved residents
  • Hygiene services (garbage, sewage) stopped
  • Disease broke out

Destruction in the War

• Wholesale exploitation of nature for war effort
• Deforestation for fuel and agricultural land
• Mining of minerals and metals for industry  especially weapons
• Massive pollution from increased number of factories

• Destroyed air and water quality

• Invasions/imperialist goals of gaining crucial land for food
  • r mineral production
• Resources become militarized
• People become exploited laborers

What were ecological effects of fighting? Human or nature

induced?

Postwar Plans

How did Communism’s plans for nature develop after WWII?

Problems Facing Mao’s China  intensive irrigation 

salinization and waterlogging

Wet-rice agriculture reached peak

yields in 18th century

most soils lacks crucial nutrients,

especially nitrogen

Decision to support North Korea = U.S. embargo on artificial fertilizers & farming tech

Without agricultural surpluses –

can’t feed industrial workers

The Great Leap Forward (1959-62)

•

1949: 80 million hectares of agricultural land, 40% rice

• no artificial fertilizers forced collectivization • • Cut down forests, reduced paddies Mao wanted more food hillside coverage: •

• Communists leaders saw nature as an enemy (“Man must conquer nature”)

• reinstated in 1960s

• Soviet agronomists REJECTED Western European notions of evolutionary biology Influence of Soviet Theory

• transform nature with radical new ideas

• 1952: Mao’s “transform nature”

ideology

• Effect: distrust of Western sciences

Disease

• Mao China emphasized public heath

• This was important to Communist victory

• Four Pests campaign  kill source
  • f diseases

• Unintended consequences

• Also targeted syphilis as a “moral stain”

Post-Mao

need for trees  “Great Green Wall”

decades long initiative

Subsequent leaders  is big population

good?

 1953: almost 600 mill, 1976: more than

800 mill

Birth control and One Child Policy

followed

Soviets’ Cold War Exploitations

•Mining for nuclear material and minerals

• Chemical, industrial, and nuclear by-products dumped into water supplies
• Nuclear testing
• Energy: river dams
• Lake Aral  Cautionary Tale

Postwar Plans

How did Communism’s plans for nature develop after WWII?

Post to Blackboard Discussion Board

First Question, Today’s Lecture, Second Question, Thursday’s Lecture, Response

1. Soviet Compare Union and affect contrast the how environment Communist [8 points] ideologies in China and the

• Describe two detailed goals that Mao and Stalin had and how those goals affected nature

2. How did the Cold War exacerbate [worsen] decolonization struggles? [8 points]

• How did the international situation affect the fighting?
• What were direct and indirect ways that fighting affected the land and people?

3. Respond to a classmate [8 points]

• Comment impact on nature if you think than the your goals colleagues and fighting – why scenarios or why not? you discussed had a larger
• that it How at you all? did Or think your can you colleague’s you understood clarify presentation something more clearly? to of help the your material classmate change understand your understanding something of

• HW: Marks, pgs. 161-184
• HW: Reading Comprehension Quiz #10 DUE TMRW
• HW: discussion board post due Thurs at 11: 59 pm
• HW: rough draft due in 3 weeks

• Have clear argument
• Three sub-arguments to support
• 2 primary sources
• Use materials from Weeks 1-12