Pace Environmental Law Review Volume 5 Issue 2 Spring 1988 Article 2 April 1988 Perestroika and Priroda: Environmental Protection in the USSR Nicholas A. Robinson Pace University School of Law,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/pelr Recommended Citation Nicholas A. Robinson, Perestroika and Priroda: Environmental Protection in the USSR, 5 Pace Envtl. L. Rev. 351 (1988) Available at: https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/pelr/vol5/iss2/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Law at DigitalCommons@Pace. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pace Environmental Law Review by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Pace. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. PERESTROIKA AND PRIRODA: ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION IN THE USSR Nicholas A. Robinson* I. Introduction Environmental protection is becoming a substantial field of endeavor today in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Soviets know the environment as priroda, a word which is literally translated as "nature," but whose meaning encompasses all aspects of life within the biosphere. Priroda connotes "mother nature," a nurturing and even moral realm, while also suggesting the ambient environment and all ecolog- ical systems." Protection of the environment has been elevated to a top priority in the Soviet Union because the Soviet's harm to prir'odathroughout that nation has become acute.2 In order to reverse pollution's environmentally- damaging trends, to stay the depletion of natural resources and to restore de- graded conditions resulting, from years of neglect during, the heavy and rapid industrialization in.