In The Depths of Russia, Yale anthropologist and historian Douglas Rogers tells the history of Russian oil from the perspective of the Perm region of the Urals. From the discovery of world’s first socialist oil in 1929 to the oil-fueled social and cultural politics of the 2000s, he shows how Permian oil illuminates the place of oil in the modern world in new ways. Rogers pays particular attention to the nature of oil as a material substance and to its role in the formation and interaction of states and corporations in socialist and capitalist contexts. The book is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and archival research in the Perm region.

Douglas Rogers is Professor of Anthropology at Yale University, has been traveling to Russia since 1994, and has collaborated with scholars from Moscow State University, Perm State University, and the Perm Regional Museums. He is the author of The Old Faith and the Russian Land: A Historical Ethnography of Ethics in the Urals (2009), a book about religion, rural life, and history, based in the Perm Region.