ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the early work of Lev Semenovich Berg concerning landscape science which emerged during the dying days of the tsarist period and would go on to form the basis of a series of influential publications towards the end of the 1920s and early 1930s. Notions of landscape were developed by a range of scholars during the course of the 1920s encouraged in part by the new regime's energetic emphasis on expedition-ary activity. The chapter presents an assessment of Andrei Aleksandrovich Grigor'ev's early work related to the physical-geographical environment and its associated processes. It also explores the Stalin period in greater detail and more specifically the way in which the ideas of Berg and Grigor'ev concerning natural physical systems developed within the somewhat baleful context of Stalin's rise to power. Finally, the chapter reflects on the collaborative work of Grigor'ev and the climatologist M. I. Budyko as it developed during the 1940s and into the 1950s.
