Vegetation Studies in Russia and the USA: Why did the Creation of the Discipline Proceed in Different Ways?
The article examines the creation of “geobotany” in Russia in comparison with the American “plant ecology”. According to the author, Russian “geobotany”, during its founding focused primarily on the problem of vegetation surveying, classifying and mapping. Most historians of American ecology claim that the main objective of the discipline was to explain how plant communities function. The author explains this difference by three interrelated groups of factors: 1) different interests of the first generation of researchers who created the discipline in the late 19 <sup>th</sup> - early 20 <sup>th</sup> century in two different countries: 2) primary sources of funding: in Russian case both the state and local authorities were keen on supporting land surveys, 3) distinctive social conditions, in which the institutionalization of the discipline took place in Russia and in America in the first quarter of the 20 <sup>th</sup> century.