Hello, I am a historian interested in the roles that materialities and ideals of progress have played in making modern societies in Europe during the Anthropocene. I conduct research on the history of technology, the environment, and the economy, with a particular emphasis on state socialism from a transnational perspective. My teaching also centers on environmental history, the Cold War, decolonization, and post-colonialism.
I hold my PhD in Social Sciences (Social and Economic History) from the University of Helsinki (2017). Between 2015 and 2022, I worked at the HSE University in Saint-Petersburg. In 2021, I was a fellow at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg. Currently, I am an Associate Professor in Modern European Economic History at the University of Bergen (UiB), Norway.
I also serve as a member of the Executive Committee of the Society for the History of Technology (2025-2027) and a board member of the journal Environment and History (2024-2027).
My first book, entitled The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology, was published by the MIT Press in 2024, drawing off part of my doctoral dissertation. It examines the relationship between nature and humans under state socialism by looking at the industrial role of Soviet forests and introduces the notion of industrially embedded ecology to the scholarship. The book explores how specialists working in the forestry industry viewed the present and future of forests contributing to sustainability. When faced with the prospect of wood shortages, it argues, these specialists came to develop new industry-ecology paradigms. The book looks at the materiality of Soviet industry through forests and wood to reconsider the dominating narratives – ecocide and environmentalism – to argue that past experience of modern dictatorships produced a specific industrial ecology aimed at more efficient exploitation of nature.
My current research explores how modern chemistry sought to alter the materiality of food in order to address national and global food shortages, while also contributing to the development of large-scale industrial food manufacturing capacities.
This study examines the role of food science in the industrialization of food systems and highlights how food chemists have demonstrated a strong commitment to creating sustainable food options. I investigate the contributions of science and technology in the production of synthetic food as a response to economic shortages and the challenges posed by the Anthropocene era. I am particularly interested in how, in response to growing Western concerns about climate change, Soviet scientists proposed solutions to global environmental challenges and examined the environmental causes of food crises, as well as the risks these posed to the country.
By discussing the aspirations and implementation of industrially manufactured food within the context of the strong techno-modernist nature of state socialism, and by comparing this with Western research, my current book project develops the concept of food modernity. This concept is framed as a scientific-technological perspective that is underpinned by experimentation with the materiality of food, aiming to make its production independent of natural resources.
My secondary research interests focus on the role of Russian regional libraries in shaping collective memory regarding the Second World War. I am particularly interested in Northern Russia, specifically the border region of Pechenga (Petsamo), as it offers valuable insights into the interplay between materialized knowledge and the memory politics of regional libraries.
REVIEWS
*Timm Schönfelder, Ab Imperio (№ 4, 2024).
*Michael Corsi, H-Environment (September, 2024).
*Laurent Coumel, The Russian Review, Volume 83, Issue 3 (July 2024): 479-480.
*Choice Book Reviews for Academic Libraries: recommended as the top 75 Community College Titles (July 2024).
BOOK TALKS
2025 Book Talk: New Books on Modern Histories of Forests and Society Across the Globe, Annual Meeting of the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH), April 9.
2025 Presentation of the book The Green Power of Socialism, the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe in Leipzig, January 8.
2024 Presentation of the book The Green Power of Socialism at the Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book Talks, the Stavanger University, December 2.
2024 Presentation of the book The Green Power of Socialism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), Environmental History Today, the Project of the European Society for Environmental History, February 29.
2023 Nature and Industry in Late State Socialism. A History of Soviet Forests, University of Oslo, December 13.
PUBLIC OUTREACH
2025 H-Environment Roundtable “The Green Power of Socialism”, organized by Stephen Milder, Spring.
2024 Podcast with the New Books Network. Presentation of the book “The Green Power of Socialism”, 3 June. Available at https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-green-power-of-socialism
2024 Podcast “The Eurasian Knot”, the project by the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, 15 May. Available at https://shows.acast.com/eurasian-knot/episodes/6744b7bcc11fbabc61b781bd
2024 Forest and Industry in the Late Soviet Union. Conversations in Forest History of the Forest History Society, 14 May. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcHsMyNtmUQ
PUBLICATION
Books
2024 The Green Power of Socialism: Forest and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Peer-Reviewed Articles
2024 “Being Together, Growing Affluent: Institutions of Integration and the Making of Technological Power in the Comecon,” Europe-Asia Studies 76:10, pp. 1503-25, co-authored with Aleksei Popov.
2024 “Making Food Modernity: Science and Technology in Late Soviet Nutrition and Food Production,” Contemporary European History 33:2, pp. 583-98.
2024 “Quality and Mass Consumption Goods in Late Soviet Society,” Perm University Herald. History 62:3, pp. 149-62, co-authored with Julia Lajus et al. (in Russian).
2022 “Performing Inventiveness: Industrial and Technical Creativity in the USSR, 1950s-1980s,” The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 49:3, pp. 249-73.
2022 “Abandoned, But Not Forgotten Heritage: Former Industrial Enterprises in Cultural and Urban Russian Landscapes,” Heritage and Society 15:3, pp. 277-98, co-authored with Anna Petrova.
2022 “A Socialist Construction for Siberia: Comecon and Ust`-Ilimsk Forest Industrial Complex in the USSR, 1970s-80s,”Journal of Contemporary History 57:2, 479-98, co-authored with Aleksey Popov.
2021 “Technological Inequalities and Motivation of Soviet Institutions in the Scientific-Technological Cooperation of Comecon in Europe, 1950s–80s,” European Review of History: Revue europeenne d’histoire 28:3, 355-73.
2020 “Challenging Europe: Technology, Environment, and the Quest for Resource Security,” Technology and Culture 61:1, 282-294, co-authored with Matthias Heymann et al.
2019 “Soviet Industrial Production and Waste Dispersal: A Case Study of Pulp and Paper Plants on the Karelian Isthmus, 1940s-1980s,” Scandinavian Economic History Review 67:3, 269-82, co-authored with Pavel Pokidko.
2019 “An Ecological Controversy: Soviet Engineers and the Biological Treatment Method for Industrial Wastewater in the 1950s and 1960s,” Ab Imperio 1, 153-80 (in Russian).
2019 “Milk and Milk Packaging in the Soviet Union: Technologies of Production and Consumption, 1950s-70s,” Russian History 46:1, 29-52.
2018 “Between Water Pollution and Protection in the Soviet Union, mid-1950s-60s: Lake Baikal and River Vuoksi,” Water History 10:2-3, 223-41.
2018 “Emerging Scholars in the Age of Uncertainty: Goals and Plans of ESEH Next Generation Action Team in 2018–19,” Environment and History 24:4, 579-81, co-authored with Viktor Pal et al.
2018 “Industry and Forests: Alternative Raw Materials in the Soviet Forestry Industry from the mid-1950s to the 1960s,” Environment and History 24:3, 323-47.
2018 “’A Shop Window Where You Can Choose the Goods You Like’: Finnish industrial and trade fairs in the USSR, 1950s–1960s,” Scandinavian Journal of History 43:2, 212-32.
2016 “Seeing the Forest and the Trees: Western Forestry Systems and Soviet Engineers, 1955-1964,” Technology and Culture 57:3, 586-611.
2015 “A History of Failed Innovation: Continuous Cooking and the Soviet Pulp Industry, 1940s-60s,”History and Technology 31:2, 108-32.
Book Chapters
2026 “The Ideals of Rationality and Development in the Late Soviet Political Economy,” The Yearbook for the Global History of Development, ed. by Corinna Unger, Iris Borovoy and Ismay Milford (forthcoming).
2024 “The Achilles Heel of a Big Player: Technology and Modernity in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and Russia (19th to 21st Centuries),” In Global History of Technology, ed. by Liliane Perez et al., co-authored with Julia Obertreis, Brepols, pp. 195-218.
2023 “Soviet Technological Aid and the Technopolitics of Hydropower in Africa during the Cold War,” In Transplanting Modernity, ed. by Jenny. Leigh Smith and Thomas Robinson. University of Pittsburg Press, 146—64, co-authored with David Damtar et al.
2021 “Machinery, Cookers, and Cellulose: Analysis of Soviet Technologies during the Cold War”, In New Time, New Field: Changing World of Qualitative Research and New Technologies, Olga Zvonareva et al., eds. St. Petersburg: Aleteia, pp. 283-314 (In Russian).
2021 “Baikal Waters: Industrial Development and Institutional Debates, 1950s–1970s,” In: Place and Nature: Essays in Russian Environmental History / Ed. by David Moon et al. White Horse Press, Ch. 13, pp. 292-312.
2017 “A Sign of Good Neighborliness”: Images of the Saimaa Canal in the Soviet Union,” In: Waterways and the Cultural Landscape / Ed. by Francesco Vallerani and Francesco Visentin. Routledge, Ch. 4, pp. 44-59.
I have taught a wide range of topics and historical methodologies, including the history of the Cold War, the history of science and technology, environmental history, European and global history, and decolonization and post-colonialism. Additionally, I have supervised students' internships, project work, and fieldwork.
I teach from an interdisciplinary perspective and have worked with students from diverse backgrounds and interests. My courses have been attended by students from programs in history, political science, social sciences, engineering, and computer science.
Among the public outcomes of my students' work are:
*The exhibition prepared by my students and me following a research trip to Lake Baikal, where we examined the interactions between the lake and humans.*
HSE University, 2021 (as shown in the right picture)
*Website showcasing the completion of students' project work on the urban histories of the Cold War from 2019 to 2021.*
As part of my hobbies, I offer private Finnish lessons online to adults.
