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Settler colonial pollution? Liudmila Listrovaya, ‘Environmental injustice in Russia: internal and settler colonialism in the 21st century extractivist empire’, Environmental Sociology, 2025

10Mar25

Abstract: This review explores the colonial land practices employed by Imperial and Soviet Russia and
their enduring influence on environmental inequality in contemporary Russia. Drawing on
secondary histories and academic literature in Russian and English, it situates Russian environmental issues within global patterns of colonial ecological violence, emphasizing the historical
and ongoing exploitation of Indigenous lands, the marginalization of ethnic minorities, and centralized governance reliant on extractive industries. By employing the decolonial lens, this paper bridges the macro-historical processes of Russian imperialism with micro-level research on resource extraction and pollution. In so doing, it contributes a nuanced perspective on how enduring colonial structures and centralized governance perpetuate environmental inequalities. By synthesizing insights from Environmental Sociology and Russian Area Studies, this paper addresses existing gaps in understanding how colonial legacies shape the contemporary unequal distribution of pollution and environmental harm. The review calls for a decolonial environmental justice lens to analyze these systemic inequalities and to challenge state-promoted narratives of equality, prosperity, and the denial of colonialism in Russia’s history.


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