Planet Of The Year: The Greening of the U.S.S.R.

(2 of 3)

One sign of the Soviets' willingness to join international environmental efforts was their presence at the TIME conference in Boulder. Fyodor Morgun, the recently appointed head of Goskompriroda, made his first trip to the U.S. (and only his second journey outside the Soviet Union) to attend the meeting. And he was startlingly frank about the situation in his country. "We have started too late," Morgun told the group. "Our air is not up to the proper mark, our soil is polluted, and our forests are affected. Drastic measures were taken in the West 15 to 20 years ago to improve the environment. Now my country must get to work on this as well."

The Soviet environmental disaster has been a long time in the making. Beginning in the days of Stalin, ecological concerns were shunted aside in the rush toward industrialization. Valovaya produktsiya, a phrase that translates into "gross output" and is abbreviated as val, was at the heart of the problem. Industry bureaucrats have long been evaluated -- and rewarded -- only in terms of gross output. Rivers were fouled and forests stripped in the rush to transform raw materials into material wealth. No premium was placed on efficiency, and no environmental concerns restrained val. Trucks in Siberia, for example, are still left running every hour of every day throughout the winter because the vehicles are very difficult to start in the cold, and diesel fuel is plentiful.

Nowhere are the consequences of unchecked industrialization more obvious than in Siberia's Lake Baikal basin. Nearly 30 years ago, Minlesbumprom (the Ministry of Timber, Pulp and Paper, and Wood Processing Industry) erected the Baikalsh pulp factory on the shores of this majestic body of crystal-clear water. The crescent-shaped lake holds 80% of the country's fresh water and 20% of the world's supply. Three-fourths of the lake's 2,500 fish and plant species, including the Baikal nerpa, a fresh-water seal, are unknown anywhere else in the world.

All that is under assault. Currently, the pulp factory produces 200,000 tons of cellulose fibers a year, and its effluent, discharged directed into the lake, has created a polluted zone 23 miles wide. Clouds of yellowish smoke belching from the factory's smokestacks have settled over 770 sq. mi. of Siberian wilderness and have killed an estimated 86,000 fir trees.

The environmental offenses at Baikal and elsewhere revived the deep relationship that the Soviets have with nature. "Please believe me," said Morgun, "the people have awakened." From Armenia to Zaporozhye, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to protest everything from air pollution to nuclear-power plants. In April 10,000 people demonstrated against the conditions in Nizhni Tagil. Protesters in Priozyorsk were successful in closing a major paper plant that had been dumping waste into Lake Ladoga, the source of drinking water for 6 million people. Many of the political demonstrations in the Baltic States are linked to the environment. Said Marshall Goldman, associate director of the Russian Research Center at Harvard University: "In almost every republic in which there is a movement for independence or the assertion of political rights, it has been led by an environmental movement."