Provisional government and environmental problems of Russian province in 1917: attempts to solve on the transit between «tsarism» and «bolshevism»

The aim of the research is to study the Russian socio-natural problems during February-October 1917 in the perception of the Provisional Government, the Chief Land Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Governmental League of Agrarian Reforms. The sources of the research were the documents of the Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA) and the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) funds, the journals of the Provisional Government meetings, the materials of the official publications - “The Provisional Government Review” and “The Chief Land Committee News”, - and other published documents. In the article for the first time the environmental aspects of the agrarian policy of the Provisional Government were considered: land use and land reclamation, forest use, water use, cattle and livestock development, fishery issues. Fragmentary presents issues of the resettlement and colonization policy. In the first place for the authority and society were land use problems. In preparing the fundamentals of agrarian reform, the Provisional Government relied on the expansion of the land area by reclamation of both exploited and uncomfortable for agriculture lands. The achievement of the Provisional Government was the desire to preserve rationally organized farms, experimental fields and various nurseries from destruction and decline. In the sphere of forest management, Provisional Government varied between the desire to provide the forestry material to the defense industry and the army and the need to protect forests from illegal felling. Water use issues were periodically discussed, but were not prioritized. The authorities' actions to preserve breeding stock and liberalize fishing were dictated by an acute food problem in the rear and the army. It is concluded that in the extreme period of military-revolutionary devastation and political instability, the problems of ecology were clearly not top priorities for the Provisional Government. Despite this, the authority understood the problem of depletion of the country's natural and economic resources, and tried to minimize them. The importance of unrealized proposals and activities of the Provisional Government in the sphere of economic activity rationalization, which were subsequently continued by the Soviet government, is noted.

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