As the russian geologist Fersman claimed: «our geography is the work of ten of thousand of people participating in expeditions which have traversed our country in different directions and recorded remarkable discoveries» (Fersman, 1944, p. 38). Thanks to the presence of vast woods and uncontaminated lands, the russian explorations were an ideal opportunity to gather a rich variety of flora and fauna; to study different structures of the soils and observe the interactive relationship between the biological organisms and their environment. New branches of science, such as systematics, cartography, oceanography arose during the Age of Discovery, making naturalists from all over the Europe increasingly interested in visiting the Russian Academy of Science. Many years before J. Lovelock analyzed Gaia as a living system (1960), Russian scientists had already adopted an uncommon method for their investigations on the history of Earth and history of Life on Earth; treating it as an integrated subject (Graham, 1993). The unified approach to biology and geology was particularly encouraged in 1930 by the leading scientist V. I. Vernadskij, founding father of the bio-geo-chemistry, while the physician A. A. Bogdanov, precursor of cybernetics, invoked a mutual relationship among all the components of nature in his notion of the organizational process. This paper outlines the impact of the russian naturalism and its powerful tradition upon the development of Systems Thinking in the Soviet Union. Examining three aspects in particular: how the interdisciplinary framework used by Russian naturalists partially informed the evolutionary system approach in geophysical studies during the early cold war; the leading role played by ecology in the establishment of this conception, and finally the relevance of the environmental protection movements survived during and after Stalin's regime, keeping international links beyond the Iron Curtain.