The Russian Roots of Midwestern Farming: On David Moon's "The American Steppes"

David Moon | The American Steppes: The Unexpected Russian Roots of Great Plains Agriculture, 1870s-1930s | Cambridge University Press | 2020 | 352 Pages

Readers looking for surprising insights into the environmental history of the American Midwest will not be disappointed by David Moon’s The American Steppes. Building on his previous work on the history of agriculture in Russia between 1700 to 1914, David Moon convincingly demonstrates that, despite being two seemingly distinct parts of the world, the North American Great Plains and the Eurasian steppes have much in common. Focusing on both human and environmental actors, Moon seeks to better understand how the thousands of Russian and Ukrainian immigrants who relocated to the Great Plains and Canadian prairies between 1870 and 1917 crucially shaped what is today called “America’s wheatbelt.”

As Moon illustrates, the number of migrants to the region is impressive. Between 1870 and 1883, 18,000 Mennonite immigrants coming from north of the Black Sea and north of the Sea of Azov settled in the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies, with 6,000 relocating permanently to the State of Kansas. This however signaled only a first wave of immigration from Russia to the United States, with the largest occurring between 1900 and 1917 and totaling 2.5 million. According to Moon, without these immigrants and the agricultural practices they brought from their homelands to the Great Plains, the landscape of these regions would look very different from how they look today.

What distinguishes The American Steppes from other histories of the Midwest and immigration to the United States is that the land itself is center stage—in particular the soil. From the outset, Moon underlines this for the reader, noting “the environmental conditions are active, if unconscious actors in this story.” This is because the soils and climate of the Great Plains and the Southern and Eastern Eurasian steppes share several characteristics that can frustrate agricultural development. As Moon stresses, these immigrants would have seriously struggled to adapt to the land if they had not already encountered problems tilling similar soils in their homelands.

The similarities in the land are crucial for two reasons in The American Steppes. First, they explain the intimate relationships established between Mennonite farmers, agents of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Russian soil scientists, and Russian foresters in order to better understand the climates and soils of the Great Plains. This brings Moon to focus primarily on “transfers” of agricultural knowledge between institutions, showing his prowess as a historian who can skillfully interweave stories as diverse as those of Mennonite immigrant and merchant Bernard Warkentin (1847-1908), Russian soil scientist Vasilii Dokuchaev (1846-1903), and the Russian-Jewish émigré forester, Raphael Zon (1874-1956). Second, these similarities explain how wheat indigenous to the Eurasian Steppes were introduced to the Great Plains. Indeed, Moon looks to sources found in Russian archives in order to highlight not just the frequency of exchanges between grain merchants in the steppes and those who migrated to the Midwest but also to clarify a particular controversy between historians of the State of Kansas over the introduction of the Turkey Red wheat variety in the State. In this sense, The American Steppes offers a history similar to that of William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1992); it is one that examines both what Americans eat, as well as the agricultural practices that they have adopted since the mid-nineteenth century.

A strength of this book for enthusiasts and historians alike is its structure. Organized into two distinct sections, The American Steppes first outlines what Moon terms the “barriers” and “bridges” for communication between U.S. and Russian agricultural scientists. He then turns to examine a series of case studies that illustrate his argument. What is most convenient about this book is that each chapter can be read independently of the other, allowing for quick reference to one of the four case studies that Moon provides. Nonetheless, this same structure can make for tedious reading for readers desiring a book without some repetitions and enumerations. But this does not hamper the insights given throughout this book, as The American Steppes examines a variety of perspectives to show how the environmental history of the Great Plains also offers a sharper understanding of other areas of U.S. history.

Moon’s first section demonstrates this particularly well. Here, Moon shows that the debate over agricultural techniques in the Great Plains offers a more nuanced understanding of U.S.-Russian diplomatic relations following the Russian Revolution. Indeed, at the turn of the twentieth century, USDA scientists were reluctant to adopt Russian-developed methods of soil classification and forestry to protect crops in the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas. But surprisingly, administrators in the USDA most valued Russian techniques and adopted them as standard USDA practice after the Wilson administration severed formal diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union in February 1918. By highlighting this anecdote, Moon shows how the study of U.S. environmental history overlaps with several aspects of U.S. political history that often appear to be two separate subjects. This is due to his careful examination of institutional sources written in both English and Russian, which have revealed a stronger connection between U.S. international relations and the development of Great Plains agriculture than has been previously suggested. 

David Moon’s The American Steppes is a rich history that is bound to please not just specialist historians and students, but also any reader interested in the history of the post-Reconstruction United States. Within its pages surface the social issues that underlie the history of the United States such as the long-standing tension between those inhabitants of the Midwest and USDA bureaucrats based in Washington, but above all, Moon’s work offers a chance to reflect on how the land itself can connect the United States to other parts of the world. This perspective, along with the several others that form Moon’s analytical framework, makes The American Steppes a unique and welcome account of the history of the Midwest, one that is likely to be appreciated for years to come.