About this Event
Moderating the discussion is staff writer at the The New Yorker Jennifer Wilson. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.
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ACCESSIBILITY:
Strand Book Store is an ADA compliant venue. The event space is accessible via elevator.
ASL interpretation is available for this event by request only. Please reach out to our events team at [email protected] by Jan. 8 to request.
Please ask a Strand employee upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred.
For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact [email protected]
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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.
Photo credit: Alina Bairamova
Sophie Pinkham is a professor at Cornell University and a former NEH Public Scholar. Her writing on Russia and Ukraine has appeared in the New York Review of Books, New York Times, Guardian, New Yorker, and Harper’s. She lives in Ithaca, New York.
Jennifer Wilson is a staff writer at The New Yorker.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Strand Book Store, 828 Broadway, New York, United States
USD 13.61 to USD 42.64
