V. V. Alekseev / D. V. Gavrilov: Metallurgija Urala s drevnejšich vremen do našich dnej. Moskva: Nauka, 2008. 866 S., Abb. ISBN: 978-5-02-036731-9

V. V. Alekseev / D. V. Gavrilov: Metallurgija Urala s drevnejšich vremen do našich dnej. Moskva: Nauka, 2008. 866 S., Abb. ISBN: 978-5-02-036731-9.

The huge book by Academician V. V. Alekseev and Professor D. V. Gavrilov takes analysis of the metallurgy of the Urals in its world context to a new level. It is based on statistics contained in more than 170 tables and a mass of information taken from a wide range of archives, some recently opened. And both authors have long been involved in their researches, some of which have been carried out as part of international projects. All branches of metallurgical production have been investigated, along with their economic consequences and social relations, the mechanisms of administration and the formation of the workforce, from pre-historic to post-Soviet times. The legacy for post-industrial society is assessed, permitting lessons to be drawn about the lessons of the past in its successive phases of development for the present, in a local and world context.

Nearly a third of the book is devoted to questions of historiography and methodology. The survey of previous publications is devoted to foreign as well as to indigenous publications, while the approach is based on the concept of modernisation. A difference will be noted here between the periodisation of the Russian authors and most of their Western colleagues. For Alekseev and Gavrilov, pre-modernisation before the eighteenth century is followed by proto-industrialisation up to 1860 and early industrialisation from 1861 to 1917. The pace of modernisation is forced from 1917 to 1945, after which late industrialisation ensues up to 1991, and contemporary modernisation processes up to 2007. These divergences largely stem from the peculiarities of tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet history.

Copper and bronze were processed in smelting pits and clay furnaces since the fourth millennium BC, while iron followed in the first millennium BC. With the arrival of Russians in the region in the sixteenth century, the pace of development began to quicken before a major impetus was given in the reign of Peter the Great. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the authors point out, the Urals produced 80 % of Russia’s ferrous metals and 100 % of its copper, allowing Russia to overtake Great Britain and occupy second place to Sweden in metallurgical production. By the turn of the century, Russia had achieved first place, producing more than a third of the world’s cast iron and about a quarter of its copper, of which the leading consumer was Great Britain. Thus, to a considerable extent, Great Britain was helped to achieve its industrial revolution, making use of coal while Russia continued to rely for the most part on charcoal.

In the nineteenth century, the Urals experienced difficulties in modernisation, but they played a part of central importance in the forced pace of Soviet industrialisation, becoming an ‘Arsenal of Victory’ during the ‘Great Patriotic War’, 1941–1945. Then, with the advent of the Cold War, a significant amount of atomic and missile power was developed in the Urals, much of it in ‘closed cities’ making no appearance in official maps. In the year of publication, 2008, the Urals still produced more than 40 % of Russia’s iron and steel and more than 30 % of its copper, 100 % of its titanium and magnesium alloy. Up to 60 % of its ferrous metals, as well as about 90 % of its light metals, were exported.

Considerable emphasis is given in the book to the question of the preservation of industrial inheritance. Archaeology plays a part here, identifying strata of development. Hundreds of material reminders are noted, including tens of unique objects from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, representing all stages of development: from water power to more advanced forms of energy, a wide range of mineworks, primitive and more complex means of iron production. These are among examples of the convergence of Western and Russian technology, indicating the essential unity of industrial civilisation in the view of the authors. This might still be the case if recent developments in Asia are taken more fully into consideration. Certainly, with the intensification of pollution, we are all in the same predicament.

Paul Dukes, Aberdeen, Scotland