State environmental ideology: from Tsarist Empire to sustainable Russia

Abstract

The main approach to the relationship between mankind and the natural environment is sustainable development which has increasingly found its way into the context of environmental legislation. The efficacy and scope of Russian environmental legislation varied during different periods throughout the history of the country and depended to a great extent on the state ideology which at the time shaped public opinion and environmental awareness. Russian environmental ideology has proven to be inconsistent and contradictory, because it is based on a dual historical tradition: a pre-revolutionary and Soviet pattern. Environmental ideology in its historical perspective has always remained on the periphery of scholarly attention in Russia. This paper is an analysis of the basic domains of the state environmental ideology with the focus on changes that happened in the periods of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the 1990s when the country was transitioning to anew democratic state. The study of the historical peculiarities of the state environmental ideology can contribute to assessing how much Russia has progressed in achieving efficient legal regulation of environmental use and protection. The hypothesis is that the difficulties in the transition of the Russian Federation to sustainable development are caused by the failure of the state to form a holistic and efficient environmental ideology that can serve as an adequate background for the development and implementation of legal norms.