I am a historian specializing in the economy, environment, technology, and state socialism. My publications include articles in leading international journals such as *Technology and Culture*, *Environment and History*, *Contemporary European History*, and the *Journal of Contemporary History*, among others. I have explored various aspects of the history of nature and natural resources, including water and forests, technological projects, and socialist modernity, as well as the history of industrial heritage in modern Russia. My first monograph, *The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology*, published by MIT Press in 2024, examines the relationship between nature and humanity under state socialism by analyzing the industrial role of Soviet forests.

My book explores the evolving Soviet policies regarding wood consumption, discussing how professionals in the forestry industry of the Soviet state envisioned the present and future of forests, perceiving them as both a natural resource and a source of industrial material. By examining the materiality of Soviet industry through the lens of forests and wood, this work demonstrates how, paradoxically, industrial ecology emerged and developed as a by-product of the Soviet industrialization project. The book critically reconsiders two explanatory models that have become dominant in the historiography of Soviet approaches to nature over the past few decades—ecocide and environmentalism. It goes beyond these polarized characterizations to show that, under state socialism, concern for the environment arose from the industrial priorities of the modernizing state, giving rise to an industrially embedded ecology.

My current book project explores the concept of food modernity within the framework of state socialism. Beginning in the mid-1950s, industrial food manufacturing emerged as a key priority for the Soviet economy. The increase in the production of agricultural and manufactured foodstuffs was viewed as essential for improving living standards, which the Soviet leadership identified as a critical step toward achieving communism starting in 1961. Concurrently, during the 1950s and 1960s, the role of science and technology in food production significantly expanded, promising enhancements in both the quantity and quality of nutrition. 

HIS116: The Cold War, Then and Now

HIS102: A Survey of Modern History: De-colonization and post-colonialism

EUR103 23V/Europe After 1945: Transformations in European Economies and Societies

HIS116: History of Science, Technology, and Socio-Economic Change

GHMS: Global History Master`s Seminar

2025

• Aleksey, Popov; Kochetkova, Elena (2025). Being Together, Growing Affluence: Institutions of Integration and the Making of Technological Power in the Comecon. (external link)

2024

• Kochetkova, Elena; Obertreis, Julia (2024). The Achilles Heel of a Big Player: Technology and Modernity in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and Russia (Nineteenth to Twenty-First Centuries). (external link)
• Kochetkova, Elena (2024). The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology. (external link)

2023

• Kochetkova, Elena; Damtar, David; Sliusarchuk, Polina et al. (2023). Drowning Capitalism: Soviet Technological Aid and the Technopolitics of Hydropower in Africa during the Cold War. (external link)

2022

• Kochetkova, Elena (2022). Making Food Modernity: Science and Technology in Late Soviet Nutrition and Food Production. (external link)
• Kochetkova, Elena (2022). Performing Inventiveness: Industrial and Technical Creativity in the USSR, 1950s–1980s. (external link)
• Kochetkova, Elena; Petrova, Anna (2022). Abandoned, But Not Forgotten Heritage: Former Industrial Enterprises in Cultural and Urban Russian Landscapes. (external link)
• Kochetkova, Elena; Popov, Aleksey (2022). Socialist construction for Siberia: Comecon and Ust`-Ilimsk forest industrial complex in the USSR, 1970s-80s. (external link)

2021

• Kochetkova, Elena (2021). Technological inequalities and motivation of Soviet institutions in the scientific-technological cooperation of Comecon in Europe, 1950s–80s. (external link)

2020

• Kochetkova, Elena; Heymann, Matthias; Högselius, Per et al. (2020). Challenging Europe: Technology, Environment, and the Quest for Resource Security. (external link)

2019

• Kochetkova, Elena (2019). Milk and Milk Packaging in the Soviet Union: Technologies of Production and Consumption, 1950s–70s. (external link)
• Kochetkova, Elena; Pokidko, Pavel (2019). Soviet industrial production and waste dispersal: a case study of pulp and paper plants on the Karelian Isthmus, 1940s–1980s. (external link)

2018

• Kochetkova, Elena (2018). Industry and Forests: Alternative Raw Materials in the Soviet Forestry Industry from the mid-1950s to the 1960s. (external link)
• Kochetkova, Elena (2018). A Shop Window Where You Can Choose the Goods You Like. (external link)
• Kochetkova, Elena (2018). Between water pollution and protection in the Soviet Union, mid-1950s-1960s: Lake Baikal and River Vuoksi. (external link)

See a complete overview of publications in Cristin.

2021-2026 ---- Research Project “Memory politics of the North, 1993-2023. An interplay perspective' (NORMEMO)”, The Research Council of Norway, project participant.  

2021-2024 ---- Research Project “The History of Lake Ladoga”, Kone Foundation (Finland), project participant.  

Current book project: (Post)Socialist Food Modernity: Industrial Food Making in the USSR/Russia.