This special thematic issue of NZ – "Politics of nature: From the environment of survival to the living environment" – was originally supposed to be dedicated to the ecological movement as a specific form of civil activism. However, in the process of assembling this issue, we were confronted with the necessity to write the ecological problematics into a perspective, reaching far beyond the bounds of the ecological movement as such.

The issue opens with a theoretical section, "The production of nature", dedicated to the problematization of the notion of "nature", which often continues to function as an obvious horizon of objectivity. At the same time, the future of nature itself is determined not only by direct protection activities, but also by the process of fundamental redefinition of the currently dominant cultural values. This in turn is connected to the necessity of becoming cognisant of our idea of nature being inbuilt in existing knowledge-producing mechanisms. The workings of those mechanisms are discussed in the texts by the French and Russian sociologists Bruno Latour and Oleg Yanitsky.

The conversation on the social perception of nature is continued by our columnist Aleksey Levinson ("Sociological Notes"), who discusses the specifics and tendencies in Russian society's attitude towards ecological problems in the material provided by the opinion polls.

The next thematic group, "Back to the USSR: Nature – society – state", offers a diachronic section, presenting the history of the ecological movement and of state environmental management policies in the USSR and Russia of the 1990s. Thus, an article by an American historian Douglas Weiner describes how participation in the work of environment protection societies became one of the few available mechanisms of gaining a civil consciousness at least partly autonomous from the state ideology. The articles by Dmitry Vorobyev, Alla Bolotova, and Lev Fedorov further discuss that set of problems in connection with various separate aspects and incidents of government and society clashes over the issues of environment (and health) protection as well as those of environmental management.

In the new NZ section – "Case studies" – Zurich University professor Peter Brang offers an overview of the development of Russian vegetarianism, particularly stressing its ethical motivation that distinguished it from the European movement.

We could not avoid the attempt by Russian ecologists to copy a successful initiative by their European colleagues and create a political party that would have direct influence over making socially significant decisions not limited to the field of environment protection. The Russian specifics of party building are debated by ecological activists and professional political scientists in a discussion comprising the bloc of materials "Is there such a party?"

Evgenij Saburov's column "Humane Economics" picks up the issue of ecological problems becoming a significant argument in the country's political and economical life.

The next topic – "Ecology or the art of making a profit" – directly places ecology into an economic context. Environmental protection and rational natural resources management have become (although to a catastrophically insignificant degree as yet) important pragmatic factors of economic development that stimulate industrial modernization and acquisition of an ecological image necessary for effective competition. The existing state of the economy and its prospects for shifting towards a more careful and at the same time more cost-effective treatment of nature are described by journalist Irina Fedotova and nature conservation policy director of the Russian WWF Yevgeny Schwartz.

The rubric "NZ Tribune" gives the ecological activists an opportunity to speak for themselves. The St Petersburg ecologist and journalist Tatiana Artemyeva tells us about the dramatic collisions of the "espionage cases" and criminal actions started against Russian ecologists that ended in the authorities beating a temporary retreat and a partial overhaul of the obsolete legislation. Kazan ecologist Sergei Mukhachev shares with us his experience of participating in a popular ecological movement.

The last thematic bloc of the issue, "Works and days: Ecological policy in modern Russia", is dedicated to monitoring the current state of interaction and inner conflict between society, ecological organizations, and the state. On one hand we are confronted by the reorganization of the state environment protection system, the weakening of control over the status of the environment, and the growing state and business pressure on ecological activists. On the other hand, individual ecological policy issues are gaining in immediacy (the import of used nuclear fuel, the debates on the necessity of resource rent and ecological risk insurance, etc.)

The issue is concluded by our traditional columns, "New Institutions", "Journals Review", and "New Books".

Though we do share the general attitude of the ecological movement, we have nevertheless tried to create a more complex, stereoscopic picture of the perception of nature, not only placing it in various disciplinary and pragmatic contexts, but also combining various perspectives and views – the internal position of ecological activists and the external metaposition of the experts that specialize in the problems of ecological movements and ecology as such.

Published 2006-09-15