The Nature of Evil. A Cultural History of Natural Resources

This is a book of facts and paradoxes, but it has a moral. The text connects the cultural history of natural resources with global history seen from a Russian perspective. World history began in deserts, but this book talks more about swamps. History requires protagonists, but here peat and hemp, sugar and iron, fur and oil speak and act. The unevenness of available resources was the engine of trade, and it also led to the accumulation of wealth, the growth of inequality, and the multiplication of evil. Different types of raw materials have different political properties, and they spawned various social institutions. Therefore, resource dependencies rarely changed without wars and revolutions. None of these crises were in vain; they led to dramatic changes in the relationships between labor, raw materials, and the state. On the brink of climate catastrophe, nature itself has joined the struggle of people to distinguish good from evil. Our world is the result of its temporary union with humanity. And since it has not been possible to change it, we must understand how it is structured.