Reclus and Russia: Anarchism, World History and Geographic Determinism

September 25, at 18.00. Pascale Siegrist (MPhil, Cambridge; PhD student and research fellow, University of Konstanz) will give a presentation on «Reclus and Russia: Anarchism, World History and Geographic Determinism» at the regular Research Seminar "Boundaries of History" of the Center for Historical Research and the Department of History of the Higher School of Economics in Saint Petersburg.

The past decade has witnessed a renewal of interest in the work of the French anarchist and geographer Élisée Reclus and his circle of collaborators – his brother Élie Reclus, his cartographer Charles Perron, as well as Pëtr Kropotkin, Lev Mechnikov, and others. Historians of geography have highlighted and sought to account for the fact that these scientists all had strong ties to the anarchist movement. However, another commonality has often been overlooked or dismissed as an oddity: Reclus’ co-authors were almost exclusively of Russian origin or had received a considerable part of their scientific training in Russia.

Pascale will present the possibility of reading the Nouvelle Géographie Universelle in a Russian context, linking it to Russian debates on Darwinism, historicism, and environmental causation. In so doing, she will provide a new perspective on the politics-science interface in the work of Reclus, for whom anarchy and geography represented two strands of an interrelated endeavour.

Discussants: Semyonov A. (PhD, Professor, Departament of History), Sablin I. (PhD, Senior Lecturer, Department of History, National Research University Higher School of Economics), Kotenko A. (PhD, )

Address: Promyshlennaya St., 14a, Room 324                     

Contact email: ereutova@hse.ru