This chapter takes a broad view of the state of Russia’s national parks in the 1990s by looking at three case studies—Meshcherskii National Park, the proposed Beringia International Park, and Nalychevo Nature Park—and the broader discourse about national parks among Russian environmentalists. Park supporters knew that state support for park development would be difficult in the wake of the USSR’s collapse, but they initially believed that Yeltsin and the new government would become still more responsive to environmental concerns. Moreover, they now felt more connected than ever to Western colleagues and hoped that support from international NGOs and organizations might help develop parks until the state could undertake this independently. However, by the end of the decade, Russian park supporters realized that international support was no panacea and were increasingly convinced that their Russian government had little interest in national parks or environmental protection.

Not long after the RSFSR started establishing parks in the mid-1980s, environmental concerns became mainstream in the Soviet Union as Gorbachev’s reforms encouraged Soviet citizens to discuss a variety of problems more openly than at any time previously in Russian history. In turn, national parks were often touted for their potential to transform the economy of entire regions and the lifestyles of their inhabitants. While the state could not provide the funds for parks to carry out their most basic functions, park supporters placed hopes in attracting foreign tourists and new opportunities to collaborate with international organizations. This chapter uses several case studies—Elk Island National Park, ideas for parks on the Kamchatka Peninsula, and the proposed Beringia International Park and a park in the Altai Mountains—to demonstrate how park supporters used the national park idea to guard against development and future environmental threats.

Since Vladimir Putin came to power, the Russian Federation has continued to establish national parks. However, although there are some exceptions, most of Russian national parks exist in a state of neglect and are mired in conflicts with local populations, unequipped for large numbers of tourists, and frequently unable to clean up litter that has accumulated within their boundaries. At the same time, some remote parks with little tourist traffic still provide the sort of wilderness experience that an infrastructurally-developed park could not. While American environmental historians have suggested that particular cultural traditions in the United States have encouraged Americans to seek out wild places, during the late twentieth century, Russians seemed no less interest in such experiences than Americans. This suggests, perhaps, that seeking out such experience is better explained by the general impulse for people in urban areas to deliberately escape to wild places than by particular cultural traditions.

During the mid-1960s, industrial development on the southern shore of Lake Baikal raised grave concerns among scientists, writers, and the general public. These concerns prompted geographers, architectural institutes, economists, and others to develop plans for national parks (or a single park) on Baikal’s shoreline. Although the ideas for Baikal’s parks varied, their supporters believed they would orient the regional economy to tourism and stave off future industrial development. In the years after the establishment of Zabaikal’skii and Pribaikal’skii National Parks in 1986, the USSR’s political and economic crisis resulted in the neglect of these parks. Supporters of Baikal’s parks turned to foreign support, especially after the USSR’s collapse, only to realize that without state support it would yield minimal results. While few planned Russian national parks were more ambitious in scope, perhaps none were more disappointing to a broad swathe of Russian environmentalists than those around Lake Baikal.

During the 1970s in the USSR, several Soviet republics established national parks. While the Soviet Council of Ministers had to pass a law giving national parks union status before the RSFSR could establish national parks, numerous park projects were conceived throughout Russia during this era. The attention that the Soviet government gave to environmental protection fueled their hopes. At the same time, Russian environmentalists became increasingly frustrated by the slow push toward establishing a law giving national parks union status as they discussed the future form that Russia’s parks would take. Passed by the USSR Council of Ministers in 1981, the law recognizing national parks left many long-debated issues unresolved and laid the groundwork for conflicts between Russia’s national parks and local populations.