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Environment in the Soviet Bloc

This study examines the environmental damage in the Soviet Bloc, including air and water pollution, deforestation, and nuclear disasters like Chernobyl. It analyzes the reasons behind the worsening environmental conditions and compares them to the West.

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Environment in the Soviet Bloc

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  1. Environment in the Soviet Bloc Dr. Zoltán Grossman Assorted Cabbage-Eating Peoples Studies, The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington

  2. Environment in Russia

  3. Environment in Soviet Central Asia

  4. Engels’ Dialectics of Nature (1883) “We by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside of nature--but that we… belong to nature and exist in its midst…” “We are…getting to know both the immediate and the more remote consequences of our interference with the traditional course of nature…. The more will men not only feel, but also know, their unity with nature, and thus the more impossible will become the senseless and anti- natural idea of a contradiction between …man and nature.”

  5. RosaLuxemburg(1917)

  6. Soviet Central Planning • “The means—industrialization—came permanently to replace the end—egalitarianism—as it was…expressed in the Bolshevik Revolution.” (Bailes) • Economic decisions made not by workers’ self-management, but central planners insensitive to local communities’ needs

  7. USSR was worse than West • 2.5 X air pollution of U.S. (per GNP) • 20% water unsafe • 1/3 of arable land affected by acid rain • Etc., etc.

  8. Why Soviet bloc was worse • Stalinist heavy industry • Expansion of agriculture • Khrushchev: “Virgin Lands” • “Inexhaustible” resources in large empire/bloc • Sacrifice for defense of Communist state

  9. Why Soviet bloc was worse • Little or no free opposition • Secrecy; lack of enforcement • Only capitalism harms nature • Need to “catch up” with (historic) West & capitalism

  10. Why Soviet bloc was worse • State legitimacy, self-sufficiency through technology • Aviator heroes, 1920s-40s • Space Race, 1950s-60s

  11. Soviet Technocracy • Technocratic institutions had the ear of the Kremlin (Konrád / Szelényi) • Leaders technicians; questioning of technology prevented • 80% of Politburo had high technical education, 1970s. • Many Western-recognized Soviet dissidents were also technocrats (Sakharov, etc.).

  12. WATER

  13. Aral Sea • Once the 4th largest inland body of water in the world. A series of dams was built to irrigate cotton. • Aral Sea reduced to about 25% of its 1960 volume, 4x salinity wiped out the fishery. • Pollutants became airborne as dust, causing significant local health problems.

  14. Aral Sea Interbasin water transfers (river diversions) Kara Kum Canal Amu Darya Size of Aral Sea Environmental damage estimated at $1.25 -$2.5 billion a year.

  15. Dnieper R. Don R. BLACK SEA Ukraine Sea ofAzov Russia Dniester R. Moldova Crimea Georgia Danube R. Romania Bulg. Bosporus Turkey

  16. Sea of Azov Eutrophication (Algae growth) Metals plant on Dnieper River

  17. Lake Baikal Environmental objections to paper mills as early as 1960s Network with Lake Superior

  18. Gabcikovo Dams,Slovakia Conflict, protests between Slovakia and Hungary over diversion of Danube River in Gabcikovo/ Nagymaros project

  19. AIR & LAND Kola Peninsula, NW Russia

  20. BlackTriangle GDR POLAND Devastation from acid rain, SO2, toxics CZECHOSLOVAKIA

  21. Pop., 1870

  22. Pop., 1910

  23. Canals & RR, Pre- 1914

  24. Industry1945- 1989

  25. Donbass & Kuzbass Donbass coal fields, E. Ukraine Kuzbass coal fields, W. Siberia

  26. Kalmykia European Buddhist Mongols Desertification Chemicals/ Salinization Oil development

  27. Sakha(Yakutia) • Siberian indigenous • Coal, metals mining • Logging

  28. Noril’sk nickel smelter

  29. Arctic Haze and Acid Rain

  30. MILITARIZATION Kola Peninsula Acid rain, Mining, Nuclear subs scuttled

  31. Toxic Soviet military bases Abandoned Soviet military bases in Central Europe, ex-GDRhave toxic wastes (like U.S. bases elsewhere.)

  32. Sverdlovsk anthrax, 1979 Bioweapons disaster, 79 cases (66 dead) in Yeltsin’s district

  33. Bombing civilian chemical plants Toxic cloud after NATO bombing of Pancevo plant in Yugoslavia, 1999

  34. 1st uranium minesin Czech Rep. Maria Sklodowska Curie, Polish-French scientist who discovered radium from Czech mines, 1890s

  35. Uranium mining in Hungary Roma (Gypsy) kids playing on radioactive mill tailings from Soviet uranium mine in Pécs (Like Native American kids in US). Mecsek Range miners threatened to flood mine in 1956 Revolution

  36. Soviet nuclear testsin Kazakhstan Genetic defects near Semey (Semipalatinsk) Kazakhs protest, network with Nevadans for 1996 ban

  37. Kyshtym waste disaster, 1957 • Explosion at Soviet weapons factory forces evacuation of over 10,000 people in Ural Mts. • Area size of Rhode Island uninhabited; 30 villages demolished; many cancers reported Orphans

  38. Novaya Zemlya

  39. NUCLEARPOWER Chernobyl disaster, April 1986

  40. 400 million people exposed in 20 countries

  41. “It Can’t Happen Here”:West Mirrors East • U.S. reaction to Chernobyl, 1986 • Blamed on Communism, secrecy, graphite reactor • Also Soviet reaction to Three-Mile Island, 1979 • Blamed on Capitalism, profit, pressurized-water reactor • US, Soviet industries covered for each other • No technology is 100% safe • Fukushima 2011 due to corporate profit & state secrecy

  42. Soviet media reaction to Three-Mile Island, 1979 • Literaturnaya Gazeta: Pennsylvania near-meltdown was a “serious, major accident.” • Kommunist: Build nukes in less populated areas. • Izvestiya: “essentially minor unfavorable consequences were depicted in an extremely exaggerated form,” by an antinuclear movement that is a “tool” of Western oil companies (!)

  43. 8,000-10,000 premature deaths United Nations Scientific Committee of the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), 2005 Half of deaths, many genetic defects in local contaminated zone

  44. My grandmother, by Luda

  45. Death of my life, by Marina

  46. Chernobyl is war, by Irena

  47. Beauty and the beast, by Helena

  48. Nothing escapes radiation, by Irena

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