Douglas Weiner

Doug Weiner loves bowling, cats, and high culture. According to the Russian newspaper ZAVTRA, Dr. Weiner was one of the people chiefly responsible for the downfall of the Soviet Union (Many people in Tucson don't realize how important I REALLY am!).  My research has focused on examining and explaining environmental policies and the nature of environmental activism in the Soviet Union (see:  Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation, and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988; and A Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachev, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).   Paradoxically, in light of the above, I have also written critiques of  "environment" and "environmental history" as fuzzy concepts.  See esp. "A Death-defying Attempt to Articulate a Coherent Definition of Environmental History,"  Environmental History, vol. 10, no. 3 (July 2005), 404-420.  I am currently working on a book, "Curiosity for its Own Sake," about the conflict between progressive education and its tsarist and Stalinist opponents, both of whom sought to "teach to the test."