Anna Safronova | Associated Researcher

Environment, climate, energy: Societies and their ecological challenges
Centre Marc Bloch, Friedrichstraße 191, D-10117 Berlin
Email: anna.safronova  ( at )  cmb.hu-berlin.de Tel: +49(0) 30 / 20 93 70700

Home Institution : CERCEC, EHESS | Disciplines : History |

Biography

I am trained as a historian at the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne Paris 1, where I defended my thesis on the history of cooperatives and the cooperative movement (2022). My book, entitled "Histoire des coopératives russes et soviétiques (1860-1930). Moderniser le peuple" was published in 2023 by Classiques Garnier. An edited and revised version, which I translated into Russian, was published (2025) in the major publishing house in social sciences in Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.


My current research is on the environmental and social history of the  Volga River delta (both Russian and Kazakh parts) in the long 20th century. It's a history of a wetland in the middle of arid steppes, rich in natural resources. It is also a story of the transformation and development projects that the central Tsarist and Soviet authorities successively to make use of the delta's resources. Finally, it's a story of the vernacular uses of the delta by its local hibitants, intimately familiar with the meandering rivers and reed beds. The first results of this research were published in the Water History journal (2024).