Water infrastructures in Leningrad/St. Petersburg and in Leningrad Oblast in the long twentieth century: Environment and society, expert knowledge and politics

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Infrastructure structures society and natural environments and are intertwined with power relations and political rule in multiple ways. The proposed project examines the water infrastructures of Leningrad/St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region (water pipes and sewage systems, dams and wastewater treatment plants) in the long twentieth century. Around these infrastructure projects and their planning and realization, which were at times heavily contested, discourses on hygiene and environment as well as ideas about the general welfare condensed. Departing from the examination of water infrastructure projects and the conflicts about them, specific constellations of technical infrastructure and expert knowledge, social structures and political regulation become visible.On the basis of four individual projects (two on the German, two on the Russian side) new approaches of infrastructure history, water history and environmental history are combined with urban and regional history and applied to Soviet and post-Soviet history for the first time. The project as a whole will shed light on urban ecology, politics and society in a (post-) socialist metropolis and on the role of environmental issues and protests for the system change. It will also provide findings related to infrastructure history and environmental history in general. One of the central questions here is that of the delegitimation of rule through contested infrastructure.