Under the Permafrost: Uncovering a Social Movement in the Soviet Union

Thesis

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University

By

Sarah Jessica Jones, B.A.

Graduate Program in Slavic and East European Studies

The Ohio State University

2013

Thesis Committee: Dr. David Hoffmann, Advisor Dr. Nicholas Breyfogle

Copyright by

Sarah Jessica Jones

2013

Abstract

Despite the wealth of information on the advent of environmentalism on the Soviet Union less is known about the social aspect of its development. This thesis examines the social aspect of environmentalism through a look at public responses to massive degradation.

The instances of intense ecological ruin presented significant public health problems for surrounding communities and this study views these sources as a catalyst for social activism outside of the political spectrum. Perestroika and Chernobyl were two of the important politically charged factors that gave the environmental movement the lift it needed to function. Official organizations working under the direction of intellectuals and academics worked as a moderator between society and the government. The social movement which grew out of dissatisfaction with governmental management of the environment is a unique social activism that developed outside the scope of traditional

Soviet civil society. The trilateral separation between the public engagement with environmental protection, the official organizations’ role in advocating for the environment, and the government’s response to protecting the environment left a legacy that continues to affect environmentalism under the Russian Federation.

ii

Dedication

Dedicated to everyone who, through steps big or small, is working to save our planet and our future.

iii

Acknowledgments

I first and foremost, want to thank my parents, Paul and Jolianne, for their persistence in backing my ideas and goals, without them I would not have gotten this far, and thanks to my friend Brittany for being a sounding board throughout the course of my research. My sincerest appreciation to the Guglielmi family for being a constant source of moral support. Thank you to the Ohio State University, the Center for Slavic and East European

Studies, and the Thompson Library for granting me access to research materials and anything I needed to further my research. Thanks to Jordan for a listening ear and valuable feedback and Alex for helping to translate what I found untranslatable. Thank you to Dr. Nicholas Breyfogle whose invaluable input gave shape to my ideas. Last but most definitely not least, I want to thank Dr. David Hoffmann for his constant support, encouragement and edits that gave my paper cohesiveness.

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Vita

May 2006………………………………..Grandview High school

June 2010…………………………………B.A., International Relations, University of

Denver

Fields of Study

Major Field: Slavic and East European Studies

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Dedication ...... iii

Acknowledgments...... iv

Vita ...... v

Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 2: Sifting Through the Layers ...... 6

Chapter 3: The Incident ...... 15

Chapter4: Exposing Eco-Glasnost ...... 31

Chapter 5: Conclusion...... 47

References ...... 50

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Chapter 1: Introduction

In the summer of 2009, Vladimir Putin took a miniature submarine ride to the bottom of Lake Baikal, and when he resurfaced, declared the lake to be “in good condition”; he then gave the go ahead for the Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill to reopen.1

Lake Baikal is important to both Russia and the world because it holds one fifth of the world’s fresh water; and before the paper mill opened in 1966, there was a maelstrom of opposition from Soviet ecologists and scientists. Between 1958 and 1962, the Soviet

Press was inundated with articles and letters opposing the building of a mill combine because of the chemicals it would release into the water, and the construction would require leveling the taiga surrounding the lake. 2 It took forty-two years of remonstration from environmental activists and the scientific community to close that mill, but a single year to reopen it.

The struggle over the mill is based on the surrounding communities’ need for the jobs and its central heating system it provides; the mayor of Baikalsk stated that, after the

1 Moskvitch, Katia. "UN May Strike Baikal off World Heritage List." BBC News. BBC, 23 July 2010. Web. 11 Feb. 2013. 2 Komarov, Boris. The Destruction of Nature in the Soviet Union. White Plains, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1980. Print. (4) 1 mill closed “the working rhythm that existed for the past 40 years was gone. People had no money, and this resulted in strikes, protest actions, a threat to block roads and the

Trans-Siberian railway.” 3 Baikal Environmental Wave, an organization that specializes in spreading information and research pertaining to environmental degradation in Siberia, has been working since 1992 to shut down the paper mill. The group is fighting against the Baikal townspeople, owners of the mill, Putin, and all those who consider the impoverished condition of the town more important than ecological degradation.

This is just one example of the legacy the Soviet Union left to the Russian social environmental movement. Environmental activists have to struggle against the forces of industrialization that continue to drive the Russian economy; they also have to combat the corruption that undermines all sectors of society, and the lack of true information percolating through the population. This thesis intends to explore that legacy through analyzing the foundations of the social environmental movement, which can be traced back to the mid-1980s. The coincidental intersection of two major events served as a catalyst in the rise of a grassroots response to the state of the environment, the Soviet government's policy of Glasnost, and the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Underneath these much discussed and analyzed developments at the end of the Soviet

Union is the permeation of information, and the ability to independently organize and express controversial ideas, and the loss of trust and confusion that followed. This affected the way people talked about their environment, and multiplied and strengthened

3 Moskvitch, Katia. "UN May Strike Baikal off World Heritage List." BBC News. BBC, 23 July 2010. Web. 11 Feb. 2013. 2

the voices against further destruction, and at once created the opportunity to legitimize

opposition to the government’s handling of environmental concerns.

To exhume the development of a social activist movement in Russia is an

extremely delicate process, which requires a broader understanding of the terms “social

movement and social organization.” The existence of local organizations that existed for

the promotion of the local popular concerns was first made possible by Nikita

Khrushchev, under the Soviet term “informal organizations and movements” and was expanded under Mikhail Gorbachev.4 These organizations were almost identical to urban

Komsomols and had little real influence on the Party or in the creation of policy and the

public did not seriously engage in them. The true social organizations developed

organically, from the people creating their own public space to voice concerns rather than

using a soapbox provided by the State. The building of these independent organizations

can be considered activism, and when done collectively by several groups around the

State, a movement.

This thesis will explore the pockets of environmental awareness that developed

through the gradual spread of information to the public or where the extreme degradation

of the environment affected local populations’ health and daily lives. These populations

in Chelyabinsk, around the Aral Sea, and in the chernozem regions of the southern USSR

were exposed to the disastrous effects of environmental degradation and where awareness

grew, a response ignited. This response took shape through media and journalist

4 Jancar-Webster, Barbara. Environmental Action in Eastern Europe: Responses to Crisis. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1993. Print, 177 3

disclosure, and the creation of organizations with locally elected representation to defend

resident interests.

The second portion will examine the Chernobyl incident and present it as a focus

point for the unique shape of the Soviet-Russian environmental movement through the

fall of the USSR. The incident solidified the Russian population’s distrust in the political

system, and prevented them from unifying social activism with political engagement.

This distrust is evident in news articles, interviews, and other expressions from

intellectuals, and the public alike. After Chernobyl, the public felt it finally necessary to

advocate for themselves through demonstrations and strikes to get the government’s

serious attention. Post Chernobyl, this paper denotes two categories of environmentalism:

“official” environmental organizations developed and supported by intellectuals and

academics, and social environmental activism that was the public’s response to the

deterioration of their environment to the detriment of their health. It is the second of these

two categories that this paper focuses on. A third category of environmentalism comes

into play after 1987 because of Chernobyl backlash; the Soviet government created new

environmental ministries and committees to respond to the general environmental crisis and the negative reaction of the public.

This thesis concludes that environmental pollution, Glasnost, and Chernobyl were

the vital factors in the shaping of a social environmental movement in the Soviet Union.

The combination of these dynamics sparked a reaction in society that expanded into a

movement. This movement cannot be characterized by the traditional western

interpretation of social activism because of these unique circumstances surrounding its

4 foundation. Instead, it must be classified as a unique social activism that developed outside the scope of traditional Soviet civil society because of the compounding environmental issues and its effect on the health of the public. The trilateral separation between the public engagement with environmental protection, the official organizations’ role in advocating for the environment, and the government’s response to protecting the environment continues to play a role in environmentalism in the Russian Federation.

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Chapter 2: Sifting Through the Layers

To give the environmental situation in the 1980s context requires an

understanding of the status quo leading up to the emergence of a new mindset among the

people. This chapter will describe the unique biomes that encompass the Russian portion

of the Soviet Union and attempt to interpret the Soviet understanding of and interaction

with the environment. This will help develop a comprehension for why the 1980s

environmental awareness was relatively weak and slow to mature when compared with

other Soviet states. It will also help to explain the importance placed on the large-scale industrial and nuclear projects that took the heaviest tolls on the environment.

The landmass of the Russian Federation is over seventeen million square kilometers and contains approximately 25% of the world’s freshwater resources; it has the largest reserves of fossil fuels and the largest forested area of all the nations in the world. It is characterized by several types of fertile soil used for various types of agriculture, and many indigenous species that are unseen elsewhere in the world. 5 It is

small wonder with this sheer amount of raw material available to convert into economic

gain, and the ecological tools supplied by the environment that the Soviet Union was able

to begin a massive campaign for rapid industrialization. 6

5 Komarov, Boris. The Destruction of Nature in the Soviet Union. White Plains, N.Y. Sharpe, Inc., 1980. Print. 21 6 Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print. 137 6

Part of the reason for the massive degradation of the Russian environment is its

geographic location, which makes it vulnerable and slow to recover. The northern regions

have harsh climate, and the low temperatures produce slow growing rates for vegetation, and impede regeneration. The air pollution rampant in the larger industrial cities is carried by the wind to the east and turns into acid rain and snow.7 Russia’s environment

in 1985 was as fragile as the Soviet system; too many tracks in an industrial supply truck

could break the permafrost layer, expose the wet boggy layer filled with carbon, and

significantly alter the earth’s atmosphere.

In the early years of the Soviet Union high-profile leaders set the tone for the functional role of the environment. Vladimir Lenin, after introducing the New Economic

Policy in 1921, described the policy as a reprieve before a “revolutionary assault” of industrialization; that rhetoric alone implied a violent approach to development and implicitly identified the environment as the force to be assaulted. 8 In order to consolidate

and control the fledgling Soviet Union, Lenin and his followers, including Stalin insisted that a revolutionary change would only happen by force. While under Lenin, the Soviet

Union was still too weak to undergo the massive economic overhaul that could wreak havoc on the environment but when Stalin took over, the change was swift and massive.

By 1929-30, there was an almost limitless labor force available as the result of

collectivization and rapid growth of the urban population.9 Stalin quickly implemented

the First Five Year Plan that focused on rapid industrialization and required a great deal

7. Komarov, Boris. The Destruction of Nature in the Soviet Union. White Plains, N.Y. Sharpe, Inc., 1980. Print. 21 8 Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print,117 9 Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print,148 7

of labor and raw materials. This inaugurated a period which some historians call “Stalin’s

revolution” for the direct state control that Stalin extended over the economy, agriculture

and police force.10 Environmentally this control was represented in all of the individual manufacturing, deforesting, engineering, and mining projects that were undertaken because of the plan. Massive construction sites for factories emerged all over the nation, these sites developed into urban centers and cities that were horribly polluted. Once such site was the steel plant built in the Ural Mountains, the city of Magnitogorsk.

The plant was built on the eastern bank of the Ural River for the rich iron ore

deposits located there. Since the plant ran on coal burning fuel, as did the train that

brought the coal to Magnitogorsk from coal mining cities, the air was thick with pollution

and the Ural River became polluted with waste from the plant mills. 11. Stalin’s main

method of showing the Soviet prowess was through the speed in which projects were

completed, raw materials extracted and products created as well as the sheer immensity

of these projects that were undertaken. The plant at Magnitogorsk was designed and built

to be a shining example of this functionality and efficiency of socialism in the Soviet

Union.

This period of economic growth based on harnessing the natural resources

extended from the 1920s to the 1950s; and the Soviet Union was transformed from an

agrarian economy to an industrial power, third in the world according to evaluation of

10 Ibid, 146 11 Kotkin, Stephen. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. Berkeley: University of California, 1995. Print. 8

gross national product. 12 Despite this improvement in the economic conditions, by the

1940s citizens were noticing the ill effects of progress. One Chelyabinsk resident,

Comrade Shchukin wrote in a letter to the editor of Izvestia, "During the years of the

Soviet system Chelyabinsk has changed from a provincial town into one of the country's

large industrial centers. ... However, all this is spoiled by the Miass River, so polluted

that it has actually become shallow. Every winter a large amount of rubbish is hauled to

the river”.13 Residents in Kazan noticed a similar problem with the Kazanka River that

became so polluted, city officials were forced to close it to swimming. 14 The situation in

the Okulovka District on the banks of the Peretna River caused a more serious problem as

resident I. P. Demin complained to his local paper, “Residents of Kotovo Station are now

deprived of the possibility of bathing in the stream and using its water for drinking”. 15

In the early 1940s, Stalin outlined plans to divert the northerly stream flow of the

rivers Pechora and Vychegda southward to Central Asia and the arid regions with the

destination of the Caspian and Aral Seas. The intention of this plan was to create fertile

soil and a system for irrigation so that the Central Asian territories could be agriculturally

productive. He also forced collective farms, in 1947 to plant windbreaks and shelterbelts

of trees in the steppe regions of western Russia to “enhance crop yields through climate

modification.” 16 Simultaneously, the Hydrological Planning Agency was responsible for

12 Jancar, Barbara. Environmental Action in Eastern Europe: Responses to Crisis. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1993. Print, 59 13 Current Digest of the Russian Press, The (formerly The Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press), No. 32, Vol.1, September 06, 1949, page(s): 45-45 14 Ibid, 45 15 Ibid,45 16 Ziegler, Charles E. Environmental Policy in the USSR. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1987. Print, 26 9

creating the dams, reservoirs and flood plains all throughout the Soviet Union, including

in places where the most fertile soils were located.

The Hydrological Planning Agency’s actions effectively destroyed black soil (a

fertile variety that produces high agricultural yield) acres numbering in the hundreds of

thousands, and deceived the surrounding public as to the true destructive nature of the

flooding programs.17 These immense projects were designed by Soviet officials to

harness and change the land itself to suit the needs of the people. In this regard, the

organization of environmental space was the Soviet governments’ domain, they

determined how to use it and they were entrusted with the ability to gauge what amount

of ecological consumption was economically viable.

A large part of the public’s positive perception of environmental use was the

government control of media and educational sources. Under Stalin’s tight reign all

official literature, party scientists and socialist thinkers confirmed that a commitment to

remolding the earth radically would benefit the masses; any contradicting thought or

argument was anti-socialist and unacceptable.18 The rest of the developing world disregarded of the environmental effects of the rapid pace of industrialization prior to the mid-1960s; the USSR was by no means a special case. While the degree to which the

Soviet environment was devastated was great, it was proportional to the vast amount of land and resources it had at its disposal. Time has shown that “developing” nations all go

17 Komarov, Boris. The Destruction of Nature in the Soviet Union. White Plains, N.Y. Sharpe, Inc., 1980. Print, 58 18 Ziegler, Charles E. Environmental Policy in the USSR. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1987. Print, 27

10

through a stage in which they use natural resources to excess and without caution or care

in the pursuit of gaining economic power. In the United States for example, the book

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, criticized the use of a harmful chemical agent (DDT)

and explained its effect on the biological cycle of nature.

The book was critical of the societal role and ignorance in this process; and as

proof of the unwillingness of the US government to cease using such a potent agricultural

aid it took 10 years for DDT to be banned from use. The societal and governmental

attitudes of the Soviet Union towards the environment were quite typical prior to the

1960s. The lasting effect of these attitudes was and continued to be detrimental to the

development of the social environmental movement.

In the post-Stalin Soviet Union, many of his original environmental

transformation plans were continued and completed including The Baikal-Amur Mainline project (BAM). This was an immense project, which was labeled “the project of a century”; it entailed the building of a railway north of the Trans-Siberian railway through eastern Siberia. This caused several significant environmental problems such as the leakage of petroleum products, gasoline, and diesel fuel into tributaries leading to Lake

Baikal, and the permeation of smog into city stops along the railway.19 The Mainline

itself crossed through Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East, a region that is dissected

by quite a few rivers, including the Kirenga, Vitim, Olekma, Selemdzha, Bureia, and

Amgun, and the unpredictable taiga biome, with thick boreal forests. The geologic,

19 Komarov, Boris. The Destruction of Nature in the Soviet Union. White Plains, N.Y. Sharpe, Inc., 1980. Print, 24 11

seismic, and climatic challenges posed to the building this railway only heightened the

resolve of the Soviet state to have it built.20

Regardless of the disastrous environmental affects, the Soviet media was able to connect the building of the Mainline with the glory of the Soviet Union, by declaring it a

feat that had never before been undertaken by any nation.21 The Soviet government

declared the Mainline “a path toward communism that would unite all citizens”.22 The

rhetoric surrounding the building of the railroad revealed the states intention to develop

socialism in a manner that would set an example for the population. The BAM was an

esoteric icon, much like the city of Magnitogorsk of industrial power, and ecological

mastery. It was the last example of Soviet infatuation with immensity, in which the

misallocation of resources, inefficient use of them, and disregard for environmental

impact reflected the continuation of the Stalinist ideal- conquest of nature could remedy

all social, political, and economic ills. 23

It is important to point out the difference between conservation and activism for

the purposes of this paper. Under the Soviet Union there existed many preservation and

conservation organizations in connection with the Communist Party. Douglas Weiner has

written several books detailing the importance of land preservation under the Soviet

Union and asserting that it carried over from the Imperial Land preservation as directed

20 Ward, Christopher. "Building Socialism?: Crime and Corruption During the Construction of the Baikal- Amur Mainline Railway." Global Crime 8.1 (2007): 58-79. Print. 21 Ziegler, Charles E. Environmental Policy in the USSR. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1987. Print, 28 22 Ward, Christopher. "Building Socialism?: Crime and Corruption During the Construction of the Baikal- Amur Mainline Railway." Global Crime 8.1 (2007): 58-79. Print. 23 Ward, Christopher. "Selling the "Project of the Century": Perceptions of the Baikal-Amur Mainline Railway (BAM) in the Soviet Press, 1974-1984." Canadian Slavonic Papers 43.1 (2003): 75-95. Print, 77 12

by the tsar. Some such organizations were the All Russian Society for the protection of

Nature (VOOP), and the Moscow Society of Naturalists. These organizations were made

up of intellectuals including ecologists, biologists, geologists and other earth scientists

that set the precedent for how the Soviet Union would interact with the environment.

Within these scientific societies, alternative options of land use, the exploitation or

resources, and protection of ecosystems and habitats were sustained and publicly

advocated, but this was not effectively transferred to non-Committee members or non-

intellectuals.24

In December of 1981, Dr. P. Oldak, a professor of agricultural sciences at

Novosibirsk University wrote an editorial for the Izvestia Newspaper; he was a member

of the student faculty union of scientists and engineers called Fakel. 25 In his editorial he

called for “determination of standards of environmental quality and deadlines by which

they must be adopted as compulsory norms; a program for the changeover to systems of

environmental-protection technology and balanced use of natural resources; and the

creation of an administrative body to oversee nature conservation and the creation of a

system of ecological education.” This article voiced the frustration that many scientists

and environmental consultants had to their “off stage consultancy role” that gave the

Soviet regime the power and final say in matters of nature preservation and the

implementation of solutions.26

24 Weiner, Douglas R. A Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachëv. Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1999. Print 25 Jancar-Webster, Barbara. Environmental Action in Eastern Europe: Responses to Crisis. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1993. Print, 178 26 Ibid, 91 13

Up to this point, the dissemination of information pertaining to industrial

development projects and all projects that had a significant environmental toll was privileged. Intellectuals and academics were given access to this information to provide objective assessments; but this was considered a show of good faith to maintain support of the intellectuals for the Soviet government.27 Oldak concluded his article with the

statement, “the overall importance of territorial environmental-protection agencies will

consist in the fact that they will defend the various regions' interests in improving their

environment and will instill high social consciousness and public participation in

accomplishing these tasks. This last function is exceptionally important, since it

engenders broad public support of local agencies' activities.”28

Unfortunately, the public support was not to come, because as academics and

intellectuals attempted to engage people with environmental protection information and

activities, reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded. The illusions and

trust in the capability and trustworthy nature of the Soviet Government to stabilize and

properly manage its environment crumbled in the wake of the disaster. Instead of turning

to the official environmental organizations for reinforcement, the public turned to

themselves and each other to create their own platform and protest the damage done to

their environment and as a result, their health.

27 Ziegler, Charles E. Environmental Policy in the USSR. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1987. Print, 66 28 Oldak, P. "Nature Protection: Be Good Managers." Editorial. Izvestia 14 Jan. 1981, No. 50 ed., Vol. 32 sec.: 22. Current Digest of the Russian Press, The (formerly The Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press). Web. 26 Feb. 2013. 14

Chapter 3: The Incident

The public response to the Chernobyl disaster is evidence that the social

environmental movement was the only “public talking space” of the time that allowed

people to have a voice and to disagree openly.29 It also denotes the unique path that the

Russian social environmental movement took from its Soviet foundation. Instead of

slowly developing from a social movement into a political party, as many social

movements in democratic nations tend to do, the Soviet version was centered around a

general distrust of the political process in both protecting the environment and informing

the public. Personal accounts from common people, intellectuals and Party officials alike

reveal that the distrust was real and it was appropriate. The blowback in the Soviet press

condemned the government’s discretion and solidified the public’s cynicism.

The weak and ineffective measures and institutions Gorbachev instituted to regain

the public’s trust in the government’s management of the environment was a last straw in

the cleaving of the social environmental movement from political environmental

management. The social isolation of the environmental movement in Soviet Russia came

not coincidentally at the fall of the USSR. The majority of Russian citizens were

preoccupied with the substantial life changes brought on by the deterioration of the

29 Jancar-Webster, Barbara. "Soviet Greens." Environmental Action in Eastern Europe: Responses to Crisis. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1993. 176-91. Print, 196 15

Soviet system, disillusioned with their government as a whole, and therefore did not

consider political participation to be a solution to the environmental problems.30

At 1:24 a.m. on April 26, 1986 in the city of Chernobyl, Ukraine a testing

experiment at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant went completely wrong. April 25th was

a designated experiment day in which engineers were testing the electrical systems of

reactor no.4. The evening shift engineers tested the water-cooling pump system to ensure

its functionality in using low power in case of auxiliary electricity supply failure.31 The

engineers shut down the cooling system and disabled automatic shutdown systems to

ensure the reactor could work under low power conditions. The majority of the reactors

control rods, which regulate the fission process in a nuclear reactor by absorbing neutrons

and slowing the chain reaction, were not lowered into the reactor.32 The few rods that were lowered were too short to reach the bottom of the tank where the neutrons had begun to overheat. The inexperienced engineers continued to assume the reactor was running on low power levels and raised all six control rods from the reactor (the minimum safe operating number was considered 30).33

A sudden surge in power caused the entire reactor to overheat within minutes, and

the water cooling system turned into steam. At this point, the emergency system was

activated but the chemical processes in action could not be reversed. At around 1:20 a.m.

30 Weiner, Douglas R. Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation, and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988. Print, 235 31 Gudzenko, V., and V. Shestopalov. "Characterization of the Chernobyl Disaster." Chernobyl Disaster and Groundwater. By Vi︠ a︡ cheslav Mikhaĭlovich. Shestopalov. Lisse [Netherlands: A.A. Balkema, 2002. 1- 23. Print. 8 32 "Chernobyl Accident and Its Consequences." Nuclear Energy Institute. Nuclear Energy Institute, 11 July 2011. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. 33 Ibid 16

fuel capsules within the reactors core began to explode, rupturing the fuel channels.34

Four minutes later two explosions occurred simultaneously blowing off the reactors roof

and expelling the harmful contents of the reactor. The reactor itself was not housed in a

reinforced concrete shell, as is standard practice in most countries, the building sustained

severe damage and large amounts of radioactive debris escaped into the atmosphere.35

The social and environmental fallout from the incident was massive; the initial

explosion resulted in the death of two power plant workers. Twenty-eight firefighters and

clean-up workers died within the first three months after the explosion from acute

radiation sickness.36 There were over 100 radioactive chemicals released into the atmosphere, though most of these were short lived and decayed very quickly. These

chemicals still affected the health of the surrounding ecosystems significantly; caesium and strontium and iodine contamination in the soil was of particularly prevalent. Iodine is

linked to thyroid cancer, strontium has been found to lead to leukemia and caesium harms

the liver and spleen. Agriculturally, the release, transport and subsequent deposition of caesium enabled it to pass through the food chain and accumulate in milk, fish and other

food products in Ukraine and Belarus. In Norway, cesium was detected in the reindeer

population and in other parts of rural Scandinavia; farm animals revealed significant

levels of gamma radiation in the early 1990’s.37

34 Ibid 35"Chernobyl Accident and Its Consequences." Nuclear Energy Institute. Nuclear Energy Institute, 11 July 2011. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. 36"Feature Stories." The Human Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident. UN Report 2002, 2002. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. . 37 Staff Report. "Countering Agricultural Consequences." International Atomic Energy Agency. IAEA, Aug. 2005. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. . 17

Substantial amounts of radioactive materials were deposited in the urban areas

near the power plant. Priyaprat residents were evacuated so that they avoided being

exposed to high levels of external radiation. Other surrounding urban areas received

different levels of deposition, and their residents received some amount of external

radiation. After the accident, radioactive materials were deposited mostly on open

surfaces such as lawns, parks, roads, and building roofs, for instance by contaminated

rain.38 The surface contamination in urban areas eventually decreased because of the

effects of wind, rain, traffic, street washing and cleanup. However, this has caused

secondary contamination of sewage systems and sludge storage, which was not directly

addressed or cleaned.39

A few hours after the incident the Central Committee in Moscow received a

report from Deputy Energy Minister Alexei Makukhin, that said “1:21 A.M. on April 26

an explosion occurred in the upper part of the reactor, causing fire damage and destroying

part of the roof. At 3:30, the fire was extinguished. Personnel at the plant were taking

measures to cool the active zone of the reactor.” The report also stated that no evacuation

of the population was necessary.40

On the morning of April 28, after several reports from scientists around Europe

and Scandinavia picking up signs of radiation, Sweden contacted the Kremlin, which up

until then had been silent on the issue to the public.41 Unable to keep silent, in the

38 “Feature Stories." The Human Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident. UN Report 2002, 2002. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. . 39 Ibid 40 Hoffman, David E. The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy. New York: Doubleday, 2009. Print. 41 Ibid 18

evening of April 28 the Soviet government issued a statement from Moscow reporting the

establishment of a commission for the incident, headed by Boris Shcherbina, the Deputy

Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers.42 The announcement was brief: “An

accident has occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, damaging one of the

reactors. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident. The

injured are receiving aid. A government commission has been set up”. 43 Shcherbina

appointed prominent scientists from several universities and experts from various

ministries to the commission and established the headquarters close to Pripyat. The

commission then ordered the immediate evacuation of all the citizens of Pripyat,

approximately 32 hours after the incident.44 In the following days, the commission

evacuated approximately 116,000 people from Belarusian and Ukrainian territories near

the explosion site.45

On April 29, Gorbachev called a Politburo meeting to discuss what to tell the

public and the outside world. The announcement they decided to make stated that an

“accident had destroyed part of the reactor building, the reactor itself, and caused a

degree of leakage of radioactive substances.”46 It declared that two people had died and

“at the present time, the radiation situation at the power station and the vicinity has been

stabilized.”47 They added a section for the affected socialist states saying that Soviet

42 Nibak, Vasiliĭ Ivanovich. Chernobyl: Truth and Inventions. Kiev: Politvidav Ukraini, 1987. Print, 11 43 Hoffman, David E. The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy. New York: Doubleday, 2009. Print. 44 Nibak, Vasiliĭ Ivanovich. Chernobyl: Truth and Inventions. Kiev: Politvidav Ukraini, 1987. Print, 11 45 Nibak, Vasiliĭ Ivanovich. Chernobyl: Truth and Inventions. Kiev: Politvidav Ukraini, 1987. Print, 11 46 Hoffman, David E. The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy. New York: Doubleday, 2009. Print. 47 Ibid 19

experts had noted radiation spreading in the western, northern and southern directions

from Chernobyl. 48 “Levels of contamination are somewhat higher than permitted

standards, however not to the extent that calls for special measures to protect the

population.”49

On May 15, Gorbachev finally addressed both the public and the world on

nationally broadcast evening news. He explained that nine people had died and 299

others were injured but that the bravery and heroism of the firefighters and clean-up crew

had succeeded in controlling the danger. 50 He used this time to criticize the U.S. and

other foreign press for printing extreme and malicious lies and to promote peace and talks

about nuclear development with President Reagan.51

The western criticism of the Soviet government’s response to the Chernobyl

incident was extreme but not completely unwarranted. The Soviet government was reluctant to give out information to the public and especially to diplomatic representatives in Moscow, partially because they did not yet know the extent of the damage, but also partially because of the remnants of the old Soviet regime where information was a privilege for those in power. A dichotomy quickly grew between what the Soviet population was hearing from the Soviet government and what was being reported by foreign news sources. This cleavage did nothing to quell the already rising tide of skepticism in the public sphere.

48 Ibid 49 Ibid 50 YouTube. Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster: Gorbachev Speaks, May 14, 1986. ABC News, 23 May 2012. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. . 51 YouTube. Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster: Gorbachev Speaks, May 14, 1986. ABC News, 23 May 2012. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. . 20

The firefighters who were first to respond to the explosion were ill equipped and

uninformed about the situation they were running into. And even after they became ill

hours later, they were quietly treated and their families brought to them in the hospital in

Priypat. Firefighter Vasily Ignatenko was one of the first men to climb up to the reactor

to try to assess the situation. He died fourteen days later of acute radiation poisoning. His

wife, Lyudmilla Ignatenko was near when he died and as she and other family members

who lost men to acute radiation poisoning asked to take the bodies in their zinc caskets to

be buried at home. They were told, “that the dead were now heroes, you see, and that they no longer belonged to their families. They were heroes of the State. They belonged to the State.”52 The families of the dead and dying paid for their stay in the dormitories

near the hospital where their loved ones stayed, and were taken under military guard to

and from the cemetery in Moscow where the men were buried. Lyudmilla explained in an

interview 10 years after her husband’s death that after the funeral in Moscow, “Right

away they bought us plane tickets back home. For the next day. The whole time there was

someone with us. He would not even let us out of the dorm to buy some food for the trip.

God forbid we might talk with someone — especially me.”53

The initial victims of the Chernobyl incident were quickly buried and hailed as

heroes; their families were silenced and remained uninformed about the exact

circumstances of the victims’ death. Sergei Sobolev was appointed deputy head of the

Executive Committee of the Shield of Chernobyl Association; he was tasked with distributing allowances to the families of the deceased “liquidators” of the fire. His

52 Aleksievich, Svetlana, and Keith Gessen. Voices from Chernobyl. Normal: Dalkey Archive, 2005. Print. 53 Aleksievich, Svetlana, and Keith Gessen. Voices from Chernobyl. Normal: Dalkey Archive, 2005. Print. 21

instructions were "Here is money, divide it between thirty-five families, that is, between

thirty-five widows.” One widow has a little girl who's sick, another widow has two

children, and a third is sick herself, and she's renting her apartment, and yet another has

four children.” At night I would wake up thinking, "How do I not cheat anyone?" I

thought and calculated, calculated and thought. And I couldn't do it. We ended up just

giving out the money equally, according to the list.”54

Everyone in the area surrounding the Chernobyl power plant was ill prepared, and

ill informed during to the incident. One Priypat resident recalled standing outside on the

porch with her children, while her neighbors did the same, watching the distant glow of

the reactor fire.55 Her husband stayed by the radio to listen for news which didn’t come until the following day in the form of tanks and soldiers with gas masks telling people to pack lightly since they would be returning the three days.56 Yet more astonishing then the

perpetuation of misinformation at this point in the disaster when people’s lives are at

stake, was the deliberate withholding of information valuable to the health of the public.

Chief engineer for the Institute for Nuclear Energy of the Belarusian Academy of

Sciences Marat Filippovich Kokhanov was responsible for handling samples of milk,

soil, domestic and undomesticated animals to be tested for radioactive chemicals. 57 She

recalled, “After the first tests it became clear that what we were receiving couldn't

54 Ibid 55 Voices from Chernobyl. 2011. NPR All Things Considered. National Public Radio, 11 July 2011. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. . 56 Ibid 57 Voices from Chernobyl. 2011. NPR All Things Considered. National Public Radio, 11 July 2011. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. . 22

properly be called meat — it was radioactive byproducts. Within the zone, the herds were

taken care of in shifts — the shepherds would come and go, the milkmaids were brought

in for milking only. The milk factories carried out the government plan. We checked the

milk. It wasn't milk, it was a radioactive byproduct.” Despite this, products from these

animals, and their milk “were being sold in the stores.”58

For weeks and months following engineers and scientists were required to go into

the “zone” (a 30 kilometer radius around reactor no.4) to extract samples from the

ground, food, soil, water, plants, animals and people. What they found was extremely

disturbing; the thyroid activity for adults and children was one hundred, sometimes two

and three hundred times the allowable dosage.59 Lactating and breast-feeding women had

cesium in their breast milk, and a roentgen image of food products, (salami and eggs) in a

local market revealed that it was not truly food but “a radioactive byproduct”.60 The most

horrifying factor of all was these scientists and engineers, officials and bureaucrats

“compiled our reports, we put together explanatory notes. But we kept quiet and carried

out our orders without a murmur because of Party discipline.”61 This mindset of those

working directly for the Party was a relic of the pre-Glasnost Soviet mentality. The

inability of the Party officials to give the people accurate information about the dangers

constituted by the Chernobyl explosion only further exacerbated the void between society

and the government.

58 Voices from Chernobyl. 2011. NPR All Things Considered. National Public Radio, 11 July 2011. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. . 59 Ibid 60 Ibid 61 Aleksievich, Svetlana, and Keith Gessen. Voices from Chernobyl. Dalkey Archive, 2005. Print. 23

The intellectuals and professionals who operated within this void could either

adhere to their “Party discipline” and cling to the decaying Soviet system or embrace the

reality that was hurting the rest of society. Those who chose to step forward into the

public arena and state the truth about the Chernobyl disaster, what it did the environment,

and how this affected the health of the population, put the control into the hands of the

public, the workers. The majority of the workers were not prepared or equipped to

respond to the shift in the power base. Several interviews with coal miners in Donets

Basin, Ukraine prior to the 1989 strike revealed a feeling of helplessness, and

hopelessness. The workers held a strong belief that they had no power to change their

working circumstances. They were working in toxic conditions and the environmental

destruction around the mine was exceptional to the point that workers could see the

surrounding ecosystem deteriorating.62

The CPSU Central Committee and Council of Ministers put together a resolution in 1987 entitled “On the Fundamental Restructuring of Environmental Protection in the country” to address the warnings of the scientific community and in January of 1988 a new executive agency was organized, the State Committee for Nature Protection of the

U.S.S.R. or Goskompriroda. 63 This committee assumed the responsibility for

orchestrating and empowering environmental protection laws. The resolution for the

creation of the committee written in 1988 gave it an overwhelming agenda to “carry out

the comprehensive environmental protection activities of the country; environmental

62 Mandel, David. Rabotyagi: Perestroika and after Viewed from below : Interviews with Workers in the Former Soviet Union. New York: Monthly Review, 1994. Print, 81 63 Pryde, Philip R. Environmental Management in the Soviet Union. Cambridge [England: Cambridge UP, 1991. Print, 10 24

monitoring, long range environmental planning, promulgating norms and standards,

overseeing the design, sitting and construction of environmentally sensitive facilities,

issuing waste disposal permits, managing nature preserves, monitoring endangered

species, and hunting, environmental education, international cooperation and

coordination.”64

This would have been a difficult task for any environmental agency in the west to

take on with their 10 plus years of experience in environmental management. For a brand

new agency, coming to life in a stagnant political system full of despotism, it was nearly

impossible. Goskomprioroda was not given the necessary personnel, funding or authority

to carry out its mission.65 Despite this, the agency was required to subsume many

regulatory responsibilities from the Ministry of Health, mostly functions regarding

industrial pollution that plagued most industrial centers and their contiguous cities.

In 1989, Goskomprioroda issued their first report about the state of the Soviet

environment; it listed 68 cities with the highest level of air pollution and 44 other “highly

polluted” cities.66 The information contained in the report was false and the stats and

figures were considerably lower than they should have been. In the report Moscow had

only exceeded allowable nitrous oxide and carbon monoxide levels by 20-30 percent,

when in reality, because it had far more cars than any other Soviet city, it had exceeded

levels far beyond that number.67 The Soviet Press used their journalistic freedoms to find

the truth for themselves and in February of that same year, the newspaper

64 Pryde, Philip R. Environmental Management in the Soviet Union. Cambridge [England: Cambridge UP, 1991. Print, 11 65 Ibid, 11 66 Ibid, 21 67 Ibid, 21 25

Sotsilisticheskaya Industriya reported that the hydrocarbons in the city of Moscow

exceeded standards by 100 percent.68 More people had access to the newspaper report

then the Goskompriroda report, and people had no reason to believe what their

government was telling them by this point. A survey taken in 1989 by USSR Goskomstat

revealed that 1 in 10 people surveyed considered the environment to be the country’s

most serious problem out of twelve major problems enumerated, and that the government

was incapable of managing it.69

1989 continued to be a tumultuous year for the Soviet government. A miners strike erupted in the Kuznetsk Basin that year and it spread quickly from

Mezhdurechensk to nine other cities in the region. Within the week the strike had spread to involve around 100,000 workers protesting poor working conditions, being unpaid, and the extreme environmental degradation creating unhealthy conditions for their families in the nearby cities.70 This strike was a threat to the industrial segment of the Soviet

economy and effected iron smelters, steel mills, thermal power plants, paper and pulp

mills, and thousands of factories, the main culprits in the maltreatment of the ecology in

the USSR.71 The strike itself was not a part of any recognized environmentally

movement; but concern for the environment was an essential part of the reason for the

strike. The poor mining conditions and environmental management of the mines

themselves pushed the workers to the breaking point. They knew their concerns, filtered

68Pryde, Philip R. Environmental Management in the Soviet Union. Cambridge [England: Cambridge UP, 1991. Print, 21 69 Weiner, Douglas R. Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation, and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988. Print, 35 70 Parks, Michael. "Soviet Miners' Strike Grows; 100,000 Join In." New York Times 17 July 1989: 1-2. Print,1 71 Ibid, 1 26 through the usual channels were not being taken seriously because nothing was being done to fix them.

The strike was a grassroots attempt to gain the attention of the Party officials, the fact that it spread so quickly and that so many workers were fed up enough to join in demonstrates the level of displeasure increasing within the society. It also demonstrates a lack of funding and support from the environmental organizations and Goskompriroda.

The academic based environmental organizations like the Socio-Ecological Union, gave no official financial or personnel support to the strike. Goskompriorda was also absent from taking any role in the strike even though it raised two key environmental issues for the region. The Soviet government issued a reduction on open-pit mining, which caused massive devastation to the local landscape. The government had also recently revealed a plan to build a slurry line, which would divert water from the area, already dangerously low on a supply of clean water. 72

The strike did garner support from the Soviet press, Sovetskiya Rossia which printed, “Until recently, perestroika has been a revolution from above, but now is getting strong support from below.”73 The newspaper went so far as to point the finger of blame at the Soviet government; it condemned “those who did not heed them who were afraid of or unwilling to start a dialogue on equal terms who were slow in putting into life a program of transformation s as outlined by the party or in resolving specific problems and meeting peoples demands.”74 The government had, up until the Chernobyl incident

72 Parks, Michael. "Soviet Miners' Strike Grows; 100,000 Join In." New York Times 17 July 1989: 1-2. Print, 2 73 Ibid,1 74 Ibid,2 27

maintained some appearance of control and Glasnost had given the public the impression

that they were entrusted with the dispersing of information and knowledge. However, the

press used the government’s misdeeds as a platform and employed their journalistic

freedoms to give voice to the voiceless public.

Sergei Zalygin was one public ally that belonged to neither the official

environmental organizations, nor the Party, though he was a member of the Soviet

Writers Union. He was the first non-Party member to take charge of Novyi Mir, and

under perestroika, he was able to print long-banned books, and give voice to his first

passion, environmental management. Zalygin was originally a hydrologist and he was

part of the campaign to stop the River Diversion project. He wrote in an article in 1987

about the government’s decision to stop the river diversion, “In rejecting the river

diversion project, our government has made a necessary and irreversible turnaround

toward public opinion.” 75 He also named the participants in the discussion and in the

campaign against the project, “we were the public: scientists and writers, both

individually and as official groups, and other people of every age and profession. It was

probably the first time in our history that a problem in the national economy had been

discussed so broadly.”76

Yet, despite the decrease in censorship and increase in availability of information,

the state of education about environment in the Soviet Union remained inadequate. The

social environmental movement in Russia was based on responsiveness to problems that

75 Zalygin, Sergei. "TURNAROUND.—Lessons From a Discussion." Novy Mir [Moscow] 20 May 1987: 4-24. Print, 4 76 Ibid, 4 28

the public could see, or that were affecting their health and well-being. The lack of

education was a barrier to public participation in an intellectually based environmental

program. Education in environmental management and protection was limited to

professional academics who maintained their power and influence through their

monopoly on information. This, to the public was no more trustworthy than the

government issuing it reports and ignoring the problems they dealt with every day. In

May 1987 in the city of Kirishi, another public demonstration of exasperation started.

The city was located near the Volkhov River, and a biochemical plant had been dumping

harmful chemicals into the river for 12 years. 77 Residents of Kirishi had been falling to a

disease never before seen in the region and the government was petitioned to look into

the case. The 12 years passed and nothing was done.

Finally, in the spring of 1987 another outbreak of the same disease “ravaged the

town and killed 11 children under age 5”. 78 One man with a photo of his deceased child

took to the streets of the main square in the city and within a week, the whole city joined

him in his demonstration of grief and anguish. This anguish led to a twelve thousand-

person demonstration on June 1, 1987, children’s day, when the people demanded that

the factory be closed.79 This mass demonstration was spontaneous and unplanned but an

eye opening experience for the people of Kirishi. In the aftermath of the demonstration,

the citizens organized themselves and organized meetings at schools and factories. When

77 Weiner, Douglas R. A Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachëv. Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1999. Print.Ibid, 435 78 Ibid, 435 79 Ibid, 436 29

the factory was closed on June 2, the people organized a system of round-the-clock monitoring to ensure the factory stayed closed.80

This movement came out of the citizens’ comprehension of what had happened to their city and their offspring, and their response came from the only tools they had to be heard- their existence. There was no official organizing contribution, no humanitarian association or government intervention. The people of Kirishi were exasperated and coming to terms with the realization that their government could not or would not protect them from environmental harm. There were no organized environmental coalitions that

could or would step in and speak for them, it was up to them to advocate for themselves,

and this constituted the social movement.

80 Weiner, Douglas R. A Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachëv. Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1999. Print Ibid, 436 30

Chapter 4: Exposing Eco-Glasnost

In 1989, a team of researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of

Geography created a classification system for the environmental conditions around the country the defined three states of degradation: crisis, conflict and catastrophe. 81 The crisis state denotes areas where ecological systems have been so destroyed that recovery would take centuries, and the conditions present a health threat to surrounding populations, e.g. Lake Baikal and Chelyabinsk and Chernobyl. The conflict state refers to areas in which the degradation is reversible like agricultural lands, or lands with widespread overgrazing, or intense cultivation, for example Chernozem. The final state, catastrophe, denotes areas which are so heavily degraded the damage is irreversible or irreplaceable such as the lower Volga region, and the south Urals industrial belt and the

Aral Sea. According to Boris Kochurov, the lead researcher on the team, 3.3 percent of the Soviet territory could be classified as in a catastrophic state in 1989.82

Kochurov and his team of researchers were just a small part of a burgeoning effort among academics and intellects to understand the effects of and account for the environmental degradation in the Soviet Union. Under the banner of glasnost, they

81 Peterson, D. J. Troubled Lands: The Legacy of Soviet Environmental Destruction. Boulder: Westview, 1993. Print, 11 82 Kochurov Boris, “Na puti k sozdaniyu ekologicheskoi Karty SSSR” Priroda, No.8, 1989, pp 10-17. 31

publicized their research and findings in journals, magazines, reports, and newspapers. 83

The Academy of Sciences and other colleges and universities around the Soviet Union

used the easing of censorship and the “privileged” nature of information to create “eco-

glasnost.”84 The creation of this informational opening required the advent of a

rehabilitated social system and fortune ushered in a leader to institute the necessary

reforms. This chapter will examine regional environmental degradation in order to

illustrate growing public awareness of the ecological issues and their affect on public

health.

Mikhail Gorbachev took power in the Soviet Union in March 1985 and began a

set of restructuring reforms known as perestroika. By the late 1980s these included

sweeping political, economic and social reforms introducing limited free market

relations, private economic enterprise and democratic elections to name a few of the

changes. This “revolution from above”, as Gorbachev described it, also had a profound

impact on the Soviet protection of priroda. It opened up the civic engagement aspect of

environmental conservation. The literal translation of priroda is “nature”, but for an

enhanced understanding of the word and how it relates to the Soviet environmental

movement, priroda signifies “mother nature, a nurturing and even moral realm, while

also suggesting, the ambient environment and all ecological systems”.85 The most

important agent for this was glasnost, or the decrease in state imposed bans and other

forms of censorship within the mass media and in general life.

83 Kochurov Boris, “Na puti k sozdaniyu ekologicheskoi Karty SSSR” Priroda, No.8, 1989, pp 10-17 84Peterson, D. J. Troubled Lands: The Legacy of Soviet Environmental Destruction. Boulder: Westview, 1993. Print, 193. 85 Robinson, Nicholas A. "Perestroika and Priroda Environmental Protection in the USSR." Pace Environmental Law Review Spring 5.2 (1988): 374-87. Print, 351. 32

The opening of the dam of information to the public, which had a drastic effect on

Russian society, also sparked a fountain investigative research into the effects of the

monumental industrial projects on the population and environment. The flow of

information extended to relations with Western nations, and many Soviet scientists

eagerly took advantage of this opportunity. Dr. Evgeny A. Shvarts from the Institute of

Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences helped the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

begin its work in the Soviet Union in 1988 by instituting a project to protect the nature of

the Lower Volga. To gather public support for the project Shvarts simultaneously

published several articles in the leading scientific journals, “Proceedings of the Academy

of Sciences” in Russian, and “Doklady of the Russian Academy of Sciences” in English

as well as local journals.86 His work with the WWF helped him to realize that any sort of

activist response to environmental degradation or nature preservation had to shift away

from the “altruistic approach of the past” toward an “active contribution to the direction

of preserving a healthy habitat for humankind.”87 This direction had to come from the

intellectual class, who held all the information and research regarding the truth about the

Soviet environment.

Yevgeny P. Velikhov, appointed vice president of the Academy of Sciences in

1977 and director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy in 1988 was one of the most influential scientists of the Soviet era and he maintained his prominence after its collapse. Velikhov admitted that he was able to rise in the political and academic ranks

86 V. Mokievskii, I. Chestin, and E. Shvarts, “Prirodu ne obmanesh” [You Can’t Trick Nature], Komsomolkaia Pravda, September 5, 1986. 87 Ibid, 185 33

because of his experience working with Western scientists.88 He was influenced by

American scientist, Victor Weisskopf’s commitment to abolishing nuclear weapons after

working on the Manhattan project. Weisskopf and Velikhov worked together on a

declaration, signed by over thirty academies of sciences, and adopted in Rome in 1982,

calling for a “nuclear free world, and the impossibility of nuclear superiority or defense

against nuclear weaponry.”89 Gorbachev read this declaration and the October following

the Chernobyl disaster, at the Reykjavík Summit meeting suggested eliminating all

nuclear weapons within a decade. Velikhov’s work was significant to the re-development of the political attitude toward conservation and preservation of the environment for a

“safe future for the children.”90

Velikhov used his position in the Academy of Sciences in the late 1980s to set

research sciences apart from other areas of Soviet life, “where other areas did suffer

badly from lack of freedom, we [scientists] need more communication, and ties with the

outside world, more freedom of discussion and opinion, otherwise there would have been

no science.”91 Velikhov pushed for creating programs similar to Western academies, including a system of grants for promising scientific projects based on bettering energy production, and industrial manufacturing. He also pushed for the commodification of applied science research, knowledge and the products of knowledge to connect research with the field of development. His work paved the way for scientist to pursue research

88 Cohen, Stephen F., and Heuvel Katrina. Vanden. Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev's Reformers. New York: Norton, 1989. Print, 159 89 Ibid, 160 90 Ibid, 162 91Cohen, Stephen F., and Vanden Katrina Heuvel.. Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev's Reformers. New York: Norton, 1989. Print,163 34 not only for the interest of the state or the “betterment” of Soviet society, but in defense of the environment and the painful effects its destruction had on the population.

In a 1989 interview, Velikhov admitted that before glasnost there was an existence of “monopolies in various areas of scientific knowledge”, academic administrators wielded their power by maintaining their control over information and knowledge. Eco-Glasnost ended this monopoly in the environmental sector of society.

The Kochurov and associates classification system highlighted focus areas for eco- glasnost. Each of the three states of degradation can be exemplified by a regional or municipal ecosystem that was under industrial attack leading up to the 80s. Chelyabinsk was in a state of crisis due to the plutonium producing factories within its city limits, while the Chernozem region was in a state of conflict due to the massive agricultural mismanagement it experienced. Finally, the tragic Aral Sea illustrates the worst category, catastrophe; the condition of the Sea was so dramatically changed by the clustering of agricultural, industrial and nuclear operations that it quickly became irreparable.

By examining these specific cases, we can observe the permeation of information into the affected communities and recognize the subsequent collective social response as an awakening. It is this awareness that characterizes the Soviet version of a social environmental movement. It differs from many Western versions in that is not a clear organized public force but rather a slow realization and skepticism that creates unrest and distrust in the Soviet management of the environment.

35

One prominent environmental study was the work of Dr’s. A.V. Akleyev and E.R.

Lyubchansky, who researched the effects of radiation in Chelyabinsk in the late 1980s.92

The focal point of their research and was the Mayak facility, which began producing

weapon's grade plutonium in December 1948. They published an article discussing three

radiation events and the normal operation of the Mayak plant that poisoned the

surrounding communities environmental and public health.93 In the early years of the

plant, working conditions were extremely unsafe and damaging to the workers’ health.

They were constantly exposed to gamma radiation through their transportation of

irradiated materials.

By 1953, “considerable plutonium body burdens, often exceeding the admissible

level, were registered in the workers of the radiochemical plant.”94 At the same time, because of the Mayak facility activities, the adjacent territories of the region were

exposed to radioactive contamination; and the most dangerous environmental problem in the plutonium production process was the early system of disposal of radioactive wastes.95 The waste was precipitously disposed into the Techa River, or into Lake

Karachay, which became a depot for liquid radioactive waste. In 1957 and explosions

that took place also leaked the radioactive material into the Techa, and in 1967 a

92 From Urals Research Center for Radiation Medicine, Medgorodok, Chelyabinsk and the Public Health Ministry of the Russian Federation, Biophysics Institute Branch respectively 93 Akleyev, A.v., and E.r. Lyubchansky. "Environmental and Medical Effects of Nuclear Weapon Production in the Southern Urals." Science of The Total Environment 142.1-2 (1994): 1-8. Print. 94 Ibid, 2 95 Ibid, 3 36

windstorm transported radionuclides from dry banks of Karachay to surrounding cities in

the Urals.96

Protective measures began in 1956 when the Ministry of Public Health

implemented hydrological engineering measures aimed at immobilizing radioactive

substances in the upper reaches of the Techa River. 97 The river system is currently in the

process of a natural deactivation that will take a few hundred years. The water

downstream is nearly free of excess radioactive cesium; however, the riverbed sediment

and the riverbanks still contain high levels of cesium and strontium.98

There were also measures taken to protect the populations living in and near

Chelyabinsk, including mass evacuation and intensive medical treatment, but it was done

in secret and without informing the public. In 1993, journalist Valery Kazansky

interviewed Georgy Afanasyev, an ex-convict who went to a newspaper to tell his story

about his time served working in the Mayak factory. Until then the public knew less

about the Chelyabinsk radioactive poisoning then the Chernobyl incident even though the

Mayak plant released radioactive material equivalent to 20 Chernobyl disasters.99 In

1979, Soviet dissident and scientist Zhores Medvedev published the book Nuclear

Catastrophe in the Urals, but his status as dissident caused his book to be dismissed and

it was not well read by the public.100 The difference was in the timing. Had Chelyabinsk

96Akleyev, A.v., and E.r. Lyubchansky. "Environmental and Medical Effects of Nuclear Weapon Production in the Southern Urals." Science of The Total Environment 142.1-2 (1994): 1-8. Print,3 97 Ibid, 3 98 Ibid, 5 99 Kazansky, Valery. "MAYAK NUCLEAR ACCIDENT REMEMBERED." Moscow News 19 Oct. 2007, 41st ed. Web. 100 Ibid 37

been at the peak of its production and polluting in the mid-80s, glasnost would have

prevented it from being covered up.

During the interview, Afanasyev vividly describes his experience in the 1957

Mayak explosion, which scattered 20 million curies of radioactive material around the

forests, fields, and lakes of the Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk and Tyumen provinces across an

aggregate area of 250 square kilometers and exposed 124,000 people to radiation.101 A

day after the explosion the inmates and the nearby towns were evacuated and measured

for radiation. “"I measured in at 800 'units.' Most of the radiation had accumulated in my

gold teeth and my hair. (Some of the inmates had swallowed their gold rings before the

evacuation.) Then we were addressed through a bullhorn by a colonel or general, who

said, among other things, that radiation would be a kind of curative treatment for some of

us and ordered everyone to march to the bathhouse.” This kind of information was

directed to the affected public but kept from the general population.102 Where the public

was misinformed about their health and the extent of the devastation to their environment

there was little done on their part, or on their behalf to protect their polluted Techa River

and devastated Lake Karachay.

Another area of increasing environmental discussion and awareness concerned

Soviet agriculture. Soviet agricultural workers were another woefully misinformed group,

they were misled by the work of scientists like Trofim Lysenko, overuse and misuse the

land; and as a result, their fields were eroded and rendered infertile. Chernozem is a black

101 Kazansky, Valery. "MAYAK NUCLEAR ACCIDENT REMEMBERED." Moscow News 19 Oct. 2007, 41st ed. Web 102Ibid 38

colored soil that is unique from other soils in its texture, mineralogy and chemical

attributes; its unique combination and way it interacts with the elements make it very

fertile. This soil is found in a narrow belt stretching across southern Siberia, the caucuses,

and into Central Asia and is used for grain growing. In 1981, soil scientists Igor

Krupenikov and Boris Arkadevich published a 10-year study on chernozem soil in

Moldova and Ukraine, which evaluated the fertility of the chernozem soil, based on

quantitative and statistical evidence.103 The study was directed at the inefficiency in

Soviet agricultural methods and collectivization farming, which pulled excessive amounts

of nutrients from the soil without replacing them, and grew warm weather crops in cold

weather regions.104 It was given to kolkhoz officials in to help them understand and better

use their soil, but was relatively unused advice and information until 1988.105

Kolkhoz agricultural managers gained the ability to self-regulate the organization

in 1969 under Brezhnev. They were quick to restructure the internal organization and

defend the interests of the farmers and workers but failed to consider the interests of their

agricultural field and continued using problematic methods to farm.106 Most collective

and state farms used chemical agents to fertilize and pesticides to get rid of harmful

insects. Chernozem soil is very vulnerable ecologically and the use of these chemicals

erodes the topsoil, which was most important for it to be fertile. Black earth requires at

least 45-48 cm of topsoil to accomplish its functions in the ecosystem, whereas other

103 Krupenikov, I Arkadevich B. . P. Boinchan, and David Dent. The Black Earth: Ecological Principles for Sustainable Agriculture on Chernozem Soils. Dordrecht: Springer, 2011. Print 104 Ibid, 135 105 Ibid, 94,95 106 Sedaitis, Judith B., and Jim Butterfield. Perestroika from Below: Social Movements in the Soviet Union. Boulder: Westview, 1991. Print, 48. 39

soils types need 110 cm.107 The thinness of the soil layer makes it easier to use for agricultural productivity, but more difficult to protect. The farmers in the chernozem regions of the Soviet Union were required to yield such a high numbers they completely eroded the topsoil and rendered much of the land temporarily unworkable.108

Agronomy has a disreputable place in Soviet history because of the food

shortages, famines, collectivization, and Lysenko’s horticultural legacy. All of these

factors pushed the kolkhoz and sovkhoz’s “agrarian deputies”, who were first elected in

1988 by their city agricultural workers and their subsequent committee chairs in the

following years, to campaign for general agricultural reforms.109 The food supply crisis in

the Soviet Union in the 1980s caused Gorbachev to be more open to these reforms and in

1989 at the Central Committee plenum, he laid out a “new agrarian program” which

provided the right of individual farmers and co-operative to exist independently of

kolkhozy and sovkhozy structure.110 This was ineffective in protecting the agricultural

fields from chemical and pesticidal degradation because farm authorities who leased out

land to farmers insisted on within farm leases, which forced the leader holders to deal

with them for supplies and land management. Chemical treatment of the soil continued.

Peasant farmers continued to resist the agricultural management in the Soviet

Union and on July 28 1989 in Moscow, the Constituent Conference of the Association of

Peasant Farms (AKKOR) and Cooperatives of Russia was held. An elected delegate in

107 Sedaitis, Judith B., and Jim Butterfield. Perestroika from Below: Social Movements in the Soviet Union. Boulder: Westview, 1991. Print, 135 108 Krupenikov, I Arkadevich B. . P. Boinchan, and David Dent. The Black Earth: Ecological Principles for Sustainable Agriculture on Chernozem Soils. Dordrecht: Springer, 2011. Print 109Sedaitis, Judith B., and Jim Butterfield. Perestroika from Below: Social Movements in the Soviet Union. Boulder: Westview, 1991. Print, 51. 110Ibid, 53 40

attendance at the meeting stated, “Since the official state system pays no attention to us

we must organize ourselves and defend our own interests.”111 The peasant farmers had

organized and elected committee members not as a political organization, but an

economic one to promote their own interests and protect their land for future use.

Regardless of their environmental intentions, they wanted to ensure the continued use of

their fertile land and so journalists, professional agricultural economists, and pioneering

famers gathered to create an association to defend it.112

One of the most notorious cases of Soviet environmental degradation was the

drying up of the Aral Sea. Starting in the 1960s the Soviet government required the

Central Asian republics to place new irrigated lands into agricultural use to increase the agricultural output most importantly, of cotton and rice. 113 At that time, 4 million

hectares were irrigated in this region and were used for cotton growing, but to meet the

required targets it was necessary to increase the irrigated areas to 7 million hectares. 114 In

five years’ time, the 3 million hectare difference was made up, and the increased output

only fueled more growth of the irrigated and drained lands. This process cut the input of

the Amudarya and Syrdarya waters into the Aral Sea and caused a significant drop of the

water level in the sea, as well as growing soil salinity, and a large loss of biodiversity.115

The government responded to the problem of soil salinity in the 1970s by constructing

artificial drainage systems, collecting-drainage networks, and artificial salinizing lakes.

111Sedaitis, Judith B., and Jim Butterfield. Perestroika from Below: Social Movements in the Soviet Union. Boulder: Westview, 1991. Print, 54 112Ibid, 54 113Kosti︠ a︡ noĭ, A. G., and A. N. Kosarev. "Reasons for the Environmental and Socio-Economic Crisis." The Aral Sea Environment. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2010 Print 114Ibid 115Ibid 41

However, disposal of the artificial networks into the rivers and sea caused an increase in river water salinity, which demanded a further increase in irrigation rates.116

The salinization of the soil in the communities surrounding the Aral Sea affected

the ability of the local farming population to produce crops and their work became

unprofitable and required government subsidies. The drying up of the sea and riverbeds

stranded some fishing ports almost 50 miles from water.117 The climate also changed up

to 100 kilometers beyond the original shoreline: summers became hotter, winters became

colder, and humidity lowered due to less rainfall. This resulted in a shorter growing

season and droughts that are more common.118 The environmental mal-effects created

problems in the health of the surrounding population. Health experts examined the local

population at the start of the 90s, and found significant numbers of people suffering from

high levels of respiratory illnesses, throat and esophageal cancer, and digestive disorders

caused by breathing and ingesting salt-laden air and water. 119 The loss of fish reduced

dietary variety, which worsened the malnutrition and anemia induced by poverty after

farming subsidies failed to provide subsistence living.120 Vozrozhdeniye Island also

became a significant problem since the Soviet Union used it as a testing ground for

biological weapons. As the waters receded, health experts began to fear that the

116Kosti︠ a︡ noĭ, A. G., and A. N. Kosarev. "Reasons for the Environmental and Socio-Economic Crisis." The Aral Sea Environment. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2010 Print. 117"Aral sea - Brezhnev's desolate monument; Aral Sea has become an ecologic al disaster zone." Sunday Times [London, England] 27 Nov. 1988. Academic OneFile. Web. 13 Mar. 2013. 118 Micklin, Philip, and Nikolay V. Aladin. "Reclaiming The Aral Sea." Scientific American 298.4 (2008): 64-71. Computers & Applied Sciences Complete. Web. 13 Mar. 2013, 64 119 Ibid, 65 120 Micklin, Philip, and Nikolay V. Aladin. "Reclaiming The Aral Sea." Scientific American 298.4 (2008): 64-71. Computers & Applied Sciences Complete. Web. 13 Mar. 2013, 65 42

weaponized organisms that survived could reach surrounding cities via fleas on infected

rodents.121

All of these issues and more were brought to the forefront of public attention in

November 1988 when “Novyi Mir, a leading Soviet literary journal, held a series of

meetings to draw attention to the disaster. Speakers called for international aid and

demanded more action from the Soviet government, alleging that measures adopted were

totally insufficient.”122 In an interview after the meetings the managing editor of Novyi

Mir, Grigory Reznichenko denounced the Ministry of Water resources for being the

cause of the Aral Sea disaster.123 His was not the only voice of dissent coming to the

defense of the Aral Sea region. Female workers, scientists, and other specialists heard the

outcry of mothers in the city of Nukus where the mortality rate for children (born and

unborn) was one of the highest in the world in 1989 at 59.8 percent.124

These women announced their concerns at the first international symposium in

Nukus in 1990: “the Aral Crisis origins and solutions.” A panel of specialists in the areas

of ecology, medicine, geography, sociology, and demography announced their findings

from data analysis and field observations that the “Aral region is one ecological

catastrophe that is especially hazardous to children.125 The women of Nukus also

acknowledged their newly created committee called “Mothers, Save Your Children”,

121Micklin, Philip, and Nikolay V. Aladin. "Reclaiming The Aral Sea." Scientific American 298.4 (2008): 64-71. Computers & Applied Sciences Complete. Web. 13 Mar. 2013,65 122 "Aral sea - Brezhnev's desolate monument; Aral Sea has become an ecologic al disaster zone." Sunday Times [London, England] 27 Nov. 1988. Academic OneFile. Web. 13 Mar. 2013 123 Ibid 124 Kotlyakov, V. M. "The Aral Sea Basin: A Critical Environmental Zone." Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 33.1 (1991): 4-38. Print. 125 Ibid,36 43

which was purposed with “gathering and disseminating information necessary for…

restoring the environment in the Aral region.”126 This organization was sponsored and

headed by Nina Maksimovna, a professor at the Academy of Sciences. The disastrous

effects of the Aral Sea conditions on the health of the population became a podium on

which the communities of the region stood to voice their disgust with the conditions. The

permeation of information performed the essential groundbreaking role however, neither

the podium for nor the expression from the people individually or collectively would not

have been possible without glasnost.

Up until the March 1990 amending of article 6 of the USSR constitution, public

organizations and mass movements outside or within the political realm was discouraged.

Ecologists and other scientists studying the environmental state of the USSR had access

to privileged information not available to the public, and were pressured by Party

officials to keep the information in the academic and political arena. However, as

glasnost progressed, academics and environmentally conscious officials of the

government took a socially responsible role in helping the population understand what

was being done to their environment and consequences. As the public accessed the

information through various modes, such as newspapers and news reports, they took it

upon themselves to respond in their own interest as evidenced by the reaction of the local

populations in Chelyabinsk, the Chernozem region and around the Aral Sea.

The late 1980s brought together a unification of state sponsored environmental organizations. The inauguration of the Socioecological Union unified the academic

126 Kotlyakov, V. M. "The Aral Sea Basin: A Critical Environmental Zone." Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 33.1 (1991): 4-38. Print. 44

Student Druzhina Movements from universities across the USSR. The Druzhina group was legally registered with the state and played the minor role of monitoring State

Inspectorates.127 It was a well-organized group with a democratically elected

coordinating council. This organization and other smaller local organizations unified

under the title Socio-Ecological Union (SEU) in 1987.128 Their initial aim and focus was

on political work, with protest campaigns and participation in the creation of legislation.

They employed the conglomeration of specialists, and local activists from all of the

satellite states to bring together the regional upstart movements that were created in the

wake of peoples voiced discontentment. They targeted problem areas where activism

already had basic awareness and activism to contribute to the union. As an organizational

structure, it gave some semblance of legitimacy to the smaller groups that were operating

without any state recognition. The SEU set up a center for coordination in Moscow to

publicize each organizations activities and causes, as well as to garner support abroad.

The SEU was the Soviet intellectuals attempt to create an overarching non-

governmental environmental movement within Soviet society based on the movements

they were exposed to when working with Western academics. The average Soviet citizen

did not have this exposure and was not as receptive to the organizational structure of the

SEU and it was not effective as a catalyst for social activism. Its function was similar to

foreign non-governmental organizations, which focus on recruiting volunteers and activists, and campaigning for governmental action against environmental degradation.

127Jancar-Webster, Barbara. "Soviet Greens." Environmental Action in Eastern Europe: Responses to Crisis. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1993. 176-91. Print, 179 128Ibid, 186 45

This method was based in motivating the public with future implications and global responsibilities; rather than promoting knowledge, which was opposite to the Soviet version of activism that required knowledge and awareness of existing problems and adverse effects to spur activism.

46

Chapter 5: Conclusion

While it is impossible to conclude that Glasnost was the beginning of

environmentalism, or that Chernobyl alone promoted a nationwide recognition of the

environmental degradation within the Soviet Union, both of these events were pivotal

moments in the formation of a social environmental movement. The purpose of this paper

is not to underplay the work of official environmental organizations within the Soviet

Union, or to discount the efforts of the Soviet Government to protect the environment.

The aim of this paper is to acknowledge the social aspect of environmental activism that

emerged under the Soviet Union. The essential difference in the social activism and the

official activism was expertise. The intellectuals and party officials had control of and

access to pertinent ecological information prior to Glasnost; this gave them the ability to

organize and respond to environmental concerns. Without this access to information and

the freedom to organize, the public could not have participated in any sort of activism

from below.

Dr. Oleg Nikolaevich Ianitskii, a leading social movement sociologist, stated in

1994 that the environmental movement of the Soviet Union was “the most radical of all

[social] initiatives.”129 This social movement had no basis in academic awareness or civic

129 DeBardeleben, Joan, and John Hannigan. "Citizen Participation and the Environment in Russia." Environmental Security and Quality after Communism: Eastern Europe and the Soviet Successor States. Boulder: Westview, 1995. 127-37. Print, 124

47 responsibility; it grew out of necessity and self-preservation. Much of the environment in the Soviet Union had been degraded to a point that posed a significant threat to the health of the Soviet community. The intellectuals and academics used perestroika as a method to slowly distribute the information that they had held in trust for the Soviet government, and to take intellectual rights over their work and research. This allowed them to formulate organizations and use their knowledge to petition the government for changes to the system of environmental management.

The role that intellectuals played outside of the official environmental organizations was essential to the development of social activism because of their access to and dispersal of information. Velikov used his position and power to rid the Academy of Sciences of its monopoly on information and to open the field to discussion and participation. Akleyev and Lyubchansky’s work in the Mayak facility helped opened the communities’ eyes to the destruction and its effects. The classification system of

Kochurov and his team of researchers defined the immense amount of destruction of the ecological systems in the Soviet Union.

However, Gorbachev’s loosening on societal controls was not strong enough, the

Soviet government was already stagnating and the people were losing faith in it. Once perestroika gave them access to information including how poorly managed the resources of their nation were, and how this negatively affected their lives, the faith continued to spiral down. As newspapers printed the truth and supported the action of people in protest of the government, the government struggled to respond, and attempted to legitimize some academic environmental organizations in order to get feedback and input. This

48

failed to yield any results for the public, and they continued to suffer from their

compromised environmental conditions. Chernobyl solidified the public’s misgivings and

rightfully so, as it withheld important information that affected their health.

The incident ushered in a time of social activism from the grassroots level, people

finally felt distressed enough to campaign on their own behalf. This was not a movement

spurred by intellectuals urging for people to better care for their environment; something

that distinguished it from compared with movements in western society. The

environmental degradation caused a reflexive response to the public health issues that

arose as a result. The Soviet society in the 1980s was concerned with survival and where

their government failed to ensure their well-being they felt compelled to rebel. The failings of the government coincided with the advent of glasnost, and provided for the explosion of Chernobyl; this set up the perfect background for society to protest. They

could see the effects of pollution and feel the effects of the degradation without the

organizing methods of the environmental programs. They could understand the detriment

to their lives without the oversight of governmental committees. They responded without

the support or urging of either the government of the official environmental organizations

and thus created their own unique social movement.

49

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