'A towering achievement' MERVE EMRE An FT 'What to Read in 2026' Book A majestic cultural and
environmental history that reveals how forests have made - and resisted - Russia's many
empires. From the Baltic to the Pacific from the Arctic to the Steppes of Central Asia
Russia's forests account for nearly one-fifth of the world's wooded lands. The Oak and the
Larch is the first-ever English-language exploration of this vast expanse - a dazzling
environmental history of Russia that offers an urgent new understanding of the nature of
Russian power and of Russia's ideas of itself. Inspired by the majestic oak which towers over
the country's western heartland and the hardy Siberian larch an emblem of survival in the
east award winning scholar Sophie Pinkham's magisterial account spans centuries revealing how
forests have nourished ancient Siberian Indigenous societies defended medieval Slavic
settlements from Mongol invasion and served as both an essential natural resource and a potent
cultural symbol for Russia in all its incarnations from the days of the tsars to the Soviets
to Putin's Federation. By examining the country from the forest's perspective Pinkham pushes
far beyond the contemporary political environment in Russia. She draws on literature history
and art to connect the expanse of the Russian wilderness and the nature of Russian culture
with indelible portraits of the diverse figures who have inhabited and celebrated these
forests: the legendary Indigenous guide Dersu Uzala giants of literature like Tolstoy and
Chekhov political thinkers like Kropotkin and even Stalin. She confronts the forest's role in
Russia's long history of imperial conquest and in resistance to this conquest. Gorgeously
written and surprising at every turn The Oak and the Larch offers a vision of Russia rarely
seen in the West as a land defined by its wilderness shaped by its encounters with the
frontier and - much like our own - ultimately beholden to nature's whim.
