Guest: Mariia Koskina on Siberian industrialization, the environment and the black skies over Krasnoyarsk. The post Black Skies Over Krasnoyarsk appeared first on The Eurasian Knot.
The bitter cold winters in the industrial town of Krasnoyarsk, Russia come with an added bonus–a phenomenon known by locals as “black sky.” This suffocating, chemically saturated smog emerges from the Yenisei River and blankets the city. Sometimes up to three months a year. Black sky is recent–since around 2012. But its causes reach back to the industrialization of the region in the 1950s and 1960s. The Yenisei hydroelectric dam and massive aluminum plant have irrevocably altered the landscape. What causes black sky? And what are the origins of Siberian industrialization? In what ways did conquering nature shape the local identities of the workers who built Krasnoyarsk? The Eurasian Knot turned to Mariia Koskina to talk about her scholarship, the Yenisei River, and the environmental degradation caused by the Yenisei hydroelectric dam.
Guest:
Mariia Koskina is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Fribourg. She is currently involved in a project on the history of Soviet glaciology in Central Asia, with a focus on Kazakhstan. Mariia’s book project narrates the transformation of the Yenisei River under Soviet development and explores how Siberian nature itself influenced environmental relations and subjectivities.
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