Empire, Environment, and Extraction: Comparing Soviet Resource Frontiers and Global Colonial Economies

Abstract

This paper examines the intersections of empire, environment, and resource extraction by comparing Soviet development of internal resource frontiers with extractive practices in global colonial economies. It argues that while the Soviet Union rejected the language of empire, its policies in Siberia, Central Asia, and the Arctic resembled colonial logics of environmental domination, labor exploitation, and peripheralization. Drawing on comparative frameworks from global and environmental history, the study explores how state-led industrialization in the USSR paralleled the resource strategies of European colonial powers in Africa and Asia. The analysis highlights the paradox of an anti-imperial empire whose developmental ambitions reshaped ecologies and societies across its vast territories, leaving a legacy that continues to inform contemporary debates on resource dependence and environmental degradation.