Abstract

Near the modern metropolis of Krasnoyarsk on the Yenisei River in Eastern Siberia rise dramatic ventifacts—the syenite “Stolby” (“pillars”)—amid taiga forest. Known to Russian travellers since the eighteenth century, the area was a site of trapping and gold fever before the Soviet state institutionalized protection in 1925. This talk argues that the Stolby Reserve, though conceptualized as a “temple of taiga,” was inherently part of an urban sublime. Increasingly encroached upon by the expanding industries of the postwar period, the reserve gained significance as a patch of “pristine” Siberian nature. In this respect, it resembled other Soviet zapovedniki. What set Stolby apart, however, was its internal division between an “aesthetic” zone—intended for the recreation of Soviet workers—and a “wild” zone subject to a stricter protection regime. Building on the legacy of pre-Soviet climbing enthusiasts and the celebrated clandestine meetings of revolutionaries near Stolby—imagined as taking place beyond the authorities’ watchful eye, under the protection of nature itself—late-Soviet Siberian urbanites developed a distinctive subculture. This community venerated the rocks and practiced bottom-up nature protection, even assuming informal authority to discipline its own members and tourists for littering and other careless behavior. This story nuances the experiences of autonomy through engagement with nature that Douglas Weiner identified in Soviet reserves as “little corners of freedom” (1999) and shows how these “corners” accommodated more than just professionals and the Soviet intelligentsia.