The Pripet Marshes. An environmental perspective on its history

Sławomir Łotysz, Institute for the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw

Online Lecture: Wednesday, 26 June 2024, 17.30 (CEST)

The Pripet Marshes are the largest wetlands in Europe, stretching from the Bug River in the west to the Dnieper River in the east. While most of the area today belongs to Belarus and Ukraine, in the inter-war period the marshes were divided in half between Poland and the Soviet Union. The region’s unique natural features, such as regular flooding, bogs, marshes and sand dunes, have not only shaped its landscape but also its history. It is with this last hypothesis in mind that Pripet Marshes. Nature, Knowledge and Politics in Polish Polesie until 1945 (published in Polish, Krakow: Universitas 2022) offers a new perspective on the history of the eastern territories of the Second Polish Republic. While explaining the place of the planned draining of the Pripet Marshes in a modernist discourse of the interwar period, the book argues that the draining scheme, conceived in the early 1930s, was the key to ensuring the political, economic and cultural supremacy of ethnic Poles in the borderlands.

Sławomir Łotysz is Professor at the Institute for the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. His research interests include the history of technology, disability studies, environmental history and health diplomacy. In 2014-15 he was an Andrew Mellon Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in Wassenaar, the Netherlands; in 2017-21 he was President of the International Committee for the History of Technology. His book on the Pripet Marshes received the most important prize for history-books in Poland.

Link: https://kit-lecture.zoom-x.de/j/6884631281?pwd=R3ZwaXVvQWhEaG5MTmlrdytTUXFPUT09

Please contact for further information: Stefan Poser, stefan.poser@kit.edu