Acknowledgments Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Lake Baikal Chapter 3: Baikal Goes Global Chapter 4: A Tale of Two Lakes Chapter 5: Putin's Favorite Oligarch Chapter 6: Disempowering Empowerment Chapter 7: State Suppression of Baikal Activism Chapter 8: Conclusion CODA Notes Bibliography Index

"Brown has created an effective tool for analyzing environmentalism and its contradictions in Russia ... the model offers nuance, going beyond the conventional good guy/bad guy formula. ... the environmental focus of Saving the Sacred Sea is a welcome addition to the sociological study of power" -- Summer Gray, American Journal of Sociology "This brilliant, immediately engaging book takes the reader directly into the environmental movement of Lake Baikal, through an ethnography that reveals the benefits and shortcomings of transnational social movements and the urgency of environmentalism. Kate Pride Brown brings together the history of the Soviet-era movement, her participant observation among local organizations around the lake today, an exploration of the movement's transnational supporters in Moscow, Seattle, San Francisco, and South Lake Tahoe, and interviews with Russian state officials and corporate sponsors to critically assess the difficulties faced and the successes gained by civil society within 21st-century authoritarianism and globalization." --Johanna Bockman, author of Markets in the Name of Socialism "Brown's engaging manuscript introduces us to the environmentalists who endeavor to protect the unique natural resource of Lake Baikal. Brown deftly analyzes Russian activists' efforts to gain transnational support to save Baikal as they navigate the shifting terrain of post-Soviet politics and industrial development. As global forces penetrate even the most remote corners of the world, Brown's account provides insights for how civic activism is shaped by power dynamics in Russia and beyond." --Laura A. Henry, author of Red to Green: Environmental Activism in Post-Soviet Russia "Saving the Sacred Sea is that rare ethnographic monograph that is as theoretically important as it is empirically rich. Kate Pride Brown uses her beautifully crafted portrait of environmental activism in defense of Lake Baikal to challenge conventional scholarly understandings of the concepts of 'civil society' and 'globalization' and their relation to each other. Anyone interested in the study of contentious politics, globalization, or field theory will want to read this book." --Doug McAdam, Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology, Stanford University "In her wonderfully clear-headed, empathetic, and engagingly written study of Putin-era environmental organizations, Kate Pride Brown has given us crucial keys for the understanding of the Putin regime's management of Russian society as a whole. Using groups seeking to protect Lake Baikal as a case study, Brown has produced the best analysis I have read to date of the multiple contexts -- economic, legal, social, global, and political -- in which all voluntary organizations function." --Douglas R. Weiner, Professor of History, University of Arizona

Selling point: Contributes a new theory of civil society, where civil society is a player among many in a field of power Selling point: Provides rich, detailed ethnographic data based on intensive field work in Siberia Selling point: An accessible format: story-telling is interwoven with theoretical insight

Selling point: Contributes a new theory of civil society, where civil society is a player among many in a field of power Selling point: Provides rich, detailed ethnographic data based on intensive field work in Siberia Selling point: An accessible format: story-telling is interwoven with theoretical insight