Agricultural History Review, Volume 69 Part 1 (2021), p. 164

Russian influences are etched into the landscape of the Great Plains, as David Moon demonstrates in The American Steppes. Today, travellers may glance at a sign for a Mennonite museum, or they might hear the ubiquitous phrase ‘Germans from Russia’. These observations are not new. Moon introduces readers to a 1942 sculpture in Newton, Kansas, erected to commemorate the Russian Mennonites who ostensibly brought Turkey Red wheat to the Plains. The sculpture followed a 1941 radio play about a young Mennonite girl whose family brought seeds from the Crimea to the United States. These cultural documents gesture towards the power of an agricultural origin story. Moon’s book, however, reveals that this simplified legend is but one strand in a complex history of exchanges between the Plains and the steppes. These exchanges include wheat, but they also include soil science, shelterbelts, and tumbleweeds.

Moon argues that Russian immigrants, research, and science played a crucial role in the development of Great Plains agriculture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author is uniquely poised to marshal evidence for this assertion; his extensive experience with Russian material, including a 2013 book on the environmental history of the steppes, allows him to assemble histories of contact between Russian and American scientists. Moon’s own journeys span state archives in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and the United States, and include regional holdings from Odessa to Topeka. This archival feat is particularly evident in part II, where Moon details specific ‘transfers’. However, the danger in such a topic is that the author will produce a Russian source for plains agriculture at every turn, even with scarce evidence. Thankfully, Moon skilfully avoids that fate by acknowledging barriers to exchange and noting archival absences.

Structurally, Moon assists readers by devoting the first three chapters to ‘context’. The first chapter offers a summary of European settlement on the Great Plains, with a specific eye on Russian and Mennonite settlers. Chapter 2 outlines the barriers to Russian-American exchange, among them the steppes’ reputation as a site of disaster, American perceptions of Russia as culturally ‘backward,’ and the political realities of Soviet Russia. As noted above, this chapter is particularly useful for such a project, because Moon does not dismiss the real impact of cultural prejudice or strained diplomatic ties. However, these barriers did not preclude numerous exchanges, facilitated by the bridges described in chapter three, including: travellers between the two regions, immigrants with Russian language skills, and international scientific communities. Helpfully, by the end of part I, key individuals will feel familiar to readers.

Part II is structured around two plants as bookends (wheat and tumbleweeds), with exchanges of science and technique sandwiched between. Moon begins with the most iconic transfer, the vaunted Turkey Red wheat, before working through the longer history of exchange. In chapter 4, Moon tells a more complete story that includes the USDA’s search for a hardy wheat and the relationship between American crop scientist Mark Carleton and steppes-born Mennonite immigrant, miller Bernhard Warkentin. Notably, the long and varied introduction of Russian wheat varieties to the plains was not distilled into the Mennonite seed story until the early twentieth century. Chapters 5 and 6 turn to a lesser-known site of Russian influence: soil science. Moon begins by noting that USDA publications in the 1930s describe plains soil as ‘chernozems’, the Russian term for black soil on the steppes. This designation demonstrates a Russian influence, but there were barriers (as Moon notes throughout). For example, into the twentieth century, American soil science remained rooted in geology, while Russian science considered soil formation in a wider context that included climate and organic matter. However, some scientists were determined to build bridges. Curtis Marbut, a director of the US Soil Survey, read Konstantin Glinka’s book in German, used his methods in Plains fieldwork, and even befriended his fellow soil scientist at a conference in Prague. Marbut’s unwavering efforts to implement Russian science in the US, and his friendship with Glinka, are highlights of Moon’s research. Chapters 7 and 8 survey both the Russian and American experience with shelterbelts as a technology for ameliorating drought and dust storms. During the New Deal, American foresters turned to Russian science to argue for the Great Plains Shelterbelt Project, largely due to the ambitions and efforts of Russian-born forester Raphael Zon. In fact, the US also looked to the steppes for shelterbelt tree species, including Russian olive and mulberry. Finally, Moon turns to another species transfer, and threat to young shelterbelts, the Russian thistle. Better known as a tumbleweed, the Russian thistle was part of the same transfer that brought steppe species to the Great Plains. Moon’s final account of a plant traveller underlines the complex and global sources of plains agricultural history.

Ultimately, Moon’s study is eminently convincing. He makes careful, evidence-based connections, though after reading it is tempting to search for Russian influences elsewhere – in the social realism of the Newton sculpture for instance. One admirable feature of Moon’s text is his clear delineation of the book’s aims. However, though he repeatedly notes the structures of settler colonialism that facilitated many of these transfers, Moon also relegates Native peoples to the past. Given that his period overlaps with the US government’s assimilationist policies, of which agriculture was a central tenet, I found myself wondering if Russian wheat varieties were sowed on reservations. Or, if soil scientists, driven by Russian sources, conducted fieldwork on reservations? Certainly, Moon’s research task was already expansive, but the book could have benefited from including contemporaneous Native people in the narrative. Still, The American Steppes is an important entry into the growing body of literature that positions the American West within global histories. Aside from the obvious audiences of environmental and agricultural historians, The American Steppes will be of interest to anyone looking for a transnational study that does not devolve into mere comparisons. Finally, Moon’s book will appeal to Plains people who are interested in a more nuanced story of their Russian roots.