Nature, Knowledge and Politics in the Pripet Marshes during the Second Polish Republic

The Pripet Marshes are the largest wetlands in Europe, stretching from the Bug River in the west to the Dnieper River in the east. They belong to Belarus and Ukraine, but before the Second World War Poland controlled the western part. The region's unique natural features, such as regular flooding, bogs, marshes and sand dunes, have shaped not only its landscape but also its history. It is with this latter hypothesis in mind that The Pripet Marshes. Nature, Knowledge and Politics in Polish Polesie until 1945, published in Polish in 2022, offers a new perspective on the history of the eastern territories of the Second Polish Republic. While explaining the place of the planned reclamation of the Pripet Marshes in a modernist discourse of the interwar period, the book argues that the reclamation scheme, conceived in the early 1930s, was the key to ensuring the political, economic and cultural supremacy of ethnic Poles in the so-called eastern borderlands of Poland.. This book, the first environmental history of the Pripet Marshes, explores the various entanglements between humans and nature that have shaped the region's past. First, it demystifies the indigenous economy that prevailed there until the 1930s as nature-friendly. Secondly, it reconstructs the inter-war debate about the expected effects of drainage, which was envisaged by the Polish authorities but never realised. Thirdly, it describes the results of the drainage work carried out by the Soviets after 1945, when the whole of the Pripet Marshes became part of the Soviet Union.

 

Sławomir Łotysz is Professor at the Institute of the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland. His research interests include the history of technology, disability studies, environmental history and health diplomacy. His recent publications include an award-winning book The Pripet Marshes. Nature, Knowledge and Politics in Polish Polesie until 1945 (in Polish: Pińskie błota. Natura, wiedza ipolityka na polskim Polesiu do 1945 roku), Kraków: Universitas and Factories as Aid. Penicillin behind the Iron Curtain, 1945-54 (in Polish: Fabryka z darów. Penicylina za żelazną kurtyną 1945-1954, Warsaw: Aspra 2020). In 2014-15 he was an Andrew Mellon Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in Wassenaar, the Netherlands. In 2017-21 he was President of the International Committee for the History of Technology. He is currently the Project Leader of 'Media and Epidemics. Technologies of Science Communication and Public Health in the 20th and 21st Centuries", funded within the international CHANSE network.