A New Ecological Order: Development and the Transformation of Nature in Eastern Europe ed. by Ştefan Dorondel and Stelu Şerban

Abstract

Although it is still difficult to speak of it as a fully consolidated field, environmental history of Eastern Europe has been making considerable progress in recent years. A New Ecological Order provides a good example of ongoing efforts to draw scholarly attention to this part of the continent and thus to come closer to a fuller picture of European environmental history. The volume covers not only a wide area encompassing large parts of the former Eastern bloc but also quite a large chronology, spanning a period of more than 150 years from roughly the 1850s to the post-1989 era. While attempts at integrated transnational studies of ecological problems and environmentalism in the region are not completely new (see for instance Olšáková, In the Name of the Great Work, 2016), the emphasis put [End Page 286] on searching for continuities and ruptures between the pre-1918, interwar, and Cold War periods—all of which were characterized by ambitious projects of state-led modernization—is a methodological innovation that makes the book an original contribution to the field.