“Nature caprices are finally defeated!”: reclamation politics and practices in Latvia during the era of modernism

Abstract

Soviet agro-polders, as ideological and highly technological assemblies, were among the first ones to signify the productivism era in the rural landscape of the Baltic republics and the modernisation of Soviet agriculture there. At the time of autocratic reigning of productivist ideas, polders were a testimony to productivity – the means to disband with the unproductive past and demonstrate the Soviet Union’s scientific and technological supremacy over the traditional ways of managing the wetlands. The establishment of polders took place during two different periods of Soviet agricultural developments. The first phase occurred as part of Khrushchev’s reforms, whereas the second was implemented under Brezhnev’s reclamation programme. Whereas the former was linked to recovery from stagnant Stalinist schemes by improving the conditions of marginal areas and poor collective farms, the latter, in the context of Latvia and the other Baltic Republics, entailed extensive works on what was called the “northern strategy of drainage, liming and so on”. The paper, building on case studies, wider political contexts and local situations, explores the drainage movement and traces the formation of agro-polders, unfolding the practices of the Soviet agricultural ideology in action.