Melting Mountains: Environment, Society and the Vertical Climate Frontier in the Greater Altai (1950-2020)

Andrei Vinogradov, Leibniz-Institut für Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Europa (GWZO)

This lecture presents an incipient research project on the climate and environmental history of the Greater Altai mountain system between 1950 and 2020, funded by the Leibniz Association for five years (2024-2029). Divided between the four states of Kazakhstan, Russia, China and Mongolia, this region has been deeply affected by rapid climate change since the mid-20^th century. At the same time, the Greater Altai has been little studied so far.

Through a focus on the social impacts of global warming, the project scrutinizes the ways in which the interactions between society, environment, and state have evolved under the influence of climate change in this region. Given the transdisciplinary, as well as transnational, scope of the project, the development of a new methodological approach to studying climate change in mountain areas is a significant part of the project. This approach, called the »vertical climate frontier«, focuses on the climate-change-induced expansion of new forms of economic activity and the intensification of state regulation in previously isolated and remote high-altitude regions. These changes have transformed the environment and traditional livelihoods of local populations.

The lecture will discuss the project’s methodological approach, as well as its contribution to mountain studies and to the climate and environmental history of socialist and post-socialist countries.

Andrei Vinogradov is an environmental historian focusing on Russia, the USSR and the post-Soviet space. In 2024, he defended his PhD in Eastern European history at Munich’s Ludwig Maximilian University. His current research project is devoted to the climate history of the Greater Altai region from 1950 to 2020.

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