The discovery resonated deeply across Russia. As Sophie Pinkham writes in “The Oak and the Larch,” her expansive, often absorbing study of the role of the wilderness in the Russian imagination, their fragile existence underscored the forest’s role as a refuge from civilization’s darker forces. A professor of comparative literature at Cornell specializing in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, Pinkham observes that Russia’s forests symbolize “what is good and what must be preserved, the last bulwark against annihilation.” Yet they are also entwined with some of the cruelest chapters of Russian history. By examining Russia from the forest’s perspective, she suggests, “we can gain new understanding of Russian power, Russian nationalism, Russian imperialism and Russia’s ideas of itself.”