"WATER MİSUNDERSTANDİNGS": POLLUTİON OF RİVERS BY THE PARTNERSHİP OF THE TVER MANUFACTORY AND THE FORMATİON OF SCİENTİFİC EXPERTİSE İN THE LATE RUSSİAN EMPİRE (1858-1910)

Abstract

The aim of the article is to show the changing role of scientific expertise in solving the sanitary and environmental issues on the example of the Tmaka river pollution by the Tver Manufactory of Morozovs’. The confrontation between the Tver City Duma and the Tver Manufactory Association became one of the most famous and revealing litigations in the Russian history of environmental pollution control. The conflict that lasted for several decades allows to trace how the role of scientists-experts in its settlement changed over time. Based on the study of archival sources, the authors show that initially scientific knowledge was used only to a limited extent and served as a supplement to the unchanged positions of the parties. However, as the analysis of the judicial record revealed, in later stages of the conflict the expert community became an independent force that guided and conditioned its course. In the
conclusion the authors explain the reasons for such transformation and characterize the influence of the “Tver case” on the further struggle against river pollution in the Russian Empire and the USSR.