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Concept of Cultural Landscape in Russian Cultural-Geographical Tradition
 
PIIS221979310012428-3-1
DOI10.37490/S221979310012428-3
Publication type Article
Status Published
Authors
Vladimir Streletsky 
Occupation: Principal Research Scientist, Professor
Affiliation: Russian Academy of Sciences
Address: Russian Federation, Moscow
Journal namePskov Journal of Regional Studies
EditionIssue 4 (44)
Pages83-92
Abstract

The article describes the historical background and trends of evolution of the cultural landscape concept in Russian cultural geography. The paper is written in developing ideas expressed in the author’s article “Cultural-Landscape Studies outside Russia: National Traditions and Scientific Schools in the World Cultural Geography”, published in the “Pskov Journal of Regional Studies”, 2020, Vol.43, No 3, pp.73-91. Significant attention is given to rethinking of the cultural landscape phenomenon in Russian geographical science at the end of the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st centuries. The interdisciplinary linkages between cultural geography, other geographical and social sciences as well as humanities are analyzed in the context of the contemporary reinterpretations of the cultural landscape concept in Russia. The main directions of cultural landscape studies in Russian cultural geography are compared.

Keywordscultural geography, cultural landscape, cultural turn in geography, Russian geographical tradition, geographical images, local communities
AcknowledgmentThis article was prepared with the support of the RFBR grant 20-05-00369 “Transformation of the ethnocultural space of the post-Soviet states: factors, trends, prospects”.
Received19.05.2021
Publication date19.05.2021
Number of characters17087
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1 Introduction. The landscape tradition is one of the oldest and most honorable in geography. The concept of landscape has played a stellar role in the development of the geographical science in general and physical geography in particular. At the same time, the landscape approach has gained overwhelming acceptance in human geography as well. This is particularly evident for cultural geography as a part of the human geography as a whole. Landscape as a general environment of a human being cannot be fully understood and realized outside its cultural context and be divorced from the scientific analysis of the fundamental links between local cultures and their surroundings. And it is no accident that the concept of cultural landscape is one of the most demanded and productive in cultural geography.
2 The main purpose of the presented article is to provide a comprehensive overview of the scientific insights into cultural landscape phenomenon in the Russian cultural geography. This paper is written in developing ideas expressed in the author’s article “Cultural-Landscape Studies outside Russia: National Traditions and Scientific Schools in the World Cultural Geography”, published earlier in the “Pskov Journal of Regional Studies” [39]. So, the emergence and evolution of the cultural landscape concept in Russia at the end of the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st centuries is analyzed in this paper in the world-wide context, taking into account the impact of the leading foreign scientific schools upon the Russian geographical tradition of the landscape studies.
3 Cultural Landscape in Russian Geographical Tradition: Path Dependence and New Trends. The term “cultural landscape” has begun to be used in Russia in the early 20th century, since the publication of the famous L. Berg’s article [1]. Lev Berg (1876–1950) was one of the founders of the landscape science in Russia, the follower and disciple of V. Dokuchaev. He came up with the concept of cultural landscape regardless of the scientific works of Otto Schlueter, who is considered to be a founder of the cultural landscape concept in the West-European geography [30]. The prominent Russian geographer V. P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky (1870–1942), the contemporary of Lev Berg and the author of the outstanding work “A Region and Country”, which was written in the humanistic traditions of anthropogeography [33], preferred the francophone term “paysage’ as an equivalent for “landscape”; he has developed the typology of landscapes, based on specifics of their natural, cultural, settlement and economic patterns. It can be concluded that the Russian anthropogeographers were doing their cultural-landscape research in the pre-Soviet period and in the early Soviet times, in comparison with the West-European scientists (especially with German and French geographers), in the similar vein and simultaneously with them.
4 Unfortunately, at the cusp of the 1920–1930s, the anthropological approaches and traditions of the pre-revolutionary Russian geography were largely abandoned [38]. The few exceptions [2; 17; 31–34; et al.] could not fundamentally change the situation. Since the early 1930s, the Soviet economic geography focused primarily on the study of settlement and territorial organization of the productive forces and, thus, largely distanced itself from the broader discussion of human and cultural issues [7].
5 The Russian landscape science moved away for a long time from the anthropological and cultural-geographical discourse and focused attention upon the natural landscapes, having made great strides in their studies and mapping (N. A. Gvozdetsky, N. A. Solntsev, A. G. Isachenko). After the Second World War the new term “anthropogenic landscape’ was coined; it was scientifically developed by F. N. Mil’kov in the 1970s [22]. This term means the geographical landscape emerged under decisive impact of the human activity. Many Soviet geographers identified the cultural landscape with the anthropogenic one. Some other scientists interpreted the cultural landscape as a kind, a certain form, variety of the anthropogenic landscapes. According to the so-called appraisal approach, widely rooted in the Soviet and Post-Soviet physical geography, the term cultural landscape means the “positive”, “improved”, “harmonious”, “noble” anthropogenic landscape [11]. In spite of some differences in interpretations, all of them shared the view that cultural landscape should embrace its natural basis, transformed by anthropogenic impact, and the artificial environment including the engineering works and other man-made structures. The same point of view was supported in the Soviet economic geography [29, et al.].
6 The revival of Russian cultural geography at the end of the 20th century has entailed the considerable reassessment of the cultural landscape concept in Russia [24; 38]. The clear evidence of that trend was a permanent methodological turn towards understanding cultural landscape as a result of the co-creation of Man, Nature and Culture since the cusp of the 1980s–1990s. And this movement was initiated just in Russian cultural geography where the alternative paradigm of the cultural-landscape studies in comparison to the leading scientific schools of the Soviet physical geography had been developed. On the one hand, the Russian cultural geographers have turned their faces towards the scientific works of human geographers in Western countries; on the other hand, they followed the revived traditions of the classical Russian anthropogeography and methodological principles of national schools of social geography, strongly reshaped in the 1970s–1980s.

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