In the 19th century, Russia experienced active industrialization, which led to significant changes in the environment. Water resource pollution, caused by factory and plant runoff, as well as incidents during oil extraction and transportation, negatively affected the purity of rivers and lakes.
Faced with this new type of pollution, both the public and the state were forced to begin considering the impact of industrial activity on the natural environment.
Historian Andrey Vinogradov, in his book 'In Quiet Backwaters: Industrial Pollution and the Birth of Russian Environmental Policy (1871–1931)' (NLO publishing house), analyzes how debates related to production waste and oil spills contributed to the development of new norms and principles for combating pollution. The book also examines the church's views on the interaction between humans and nature.