The largest fresh- water reservoir in the world, Lake Baikal was polluted from 1996 to 2008 by the industrial wastes of the Baikalsk cellulose and paper combine. Water pollution caused by industry (discharge of waste water, chemical products, metals) and agriculture (insecticides, pesticides), as well as untreated urban sewage, a common phenomenon in the countries of the Communist bloc, also affected Lake Lagoda in the USSR, the Baltic and Black Seas, and rivers like the Ob, the Volga and the Don (USSR), the Vistula and the Oder (Poland), the Elbe (GDR) and the Danube, Eastern Europe’s great international waterway.

Built in the 1970s in an active seismic zone, Metzamor was closed down in 1988 (after an earthquake) and put back into service in March 1995. The 66 VVER and RBMK (Chernobyl) Soviet reactors, built in Eastern Europe and the ex-USSR, pose serious safety issues (including no automatic shut-down in case of earthquake, aging and design problems in the cooling and command systems), particularly the plants in Kola (which came close to blowing up during a severe storm in 1993), Leningrad, and Lithuania (RBMK). The international community has helped improve their security.

“Soviet citizens have to preserve nature and protect its riches” The absence of independent public opinion in the Eastern-bloc countries prevented ecological consciousness from emerging. Official propaganda, which covered up the catastrophes, focused on poster campaigns and national parks, first created in Poland in the 1950s and the USSR in the 80s. By the late 70s, the first informal ecological movements came into being, in Poland for example. In the USSR, Perestroika and Chernobyl led to a certain consciousness raising as well as the founding of the first “Green” parties and movements in late 1989-early 1990 in Estonia and Lithuania, and shortly thereafter in Ukraine and Moldavia.

Both military personnel and civilians from across the USSR were involved in the Chernobyl clean up. They intervened directly on the Chernobyl site (to rein in the catastrophe, clear the radioactive wreckage, and build a sarcophagus, as well as those who continued cleaning up the site into the 1990s) without knowing the risks or being efficiently protected. Altogether, some 600,000 people were involved in the clean-up. The highly debated human costs range from 47 casualties (according to the UN) to nearly 60,000 deaths plus 165,000 people left handicapped (according to ONGs and other groups). The authorities had called upon their dedication, and had promised high salaries, medals and social benefits.

The 45,000 severely irradiated inhabitants of the city of Pripyat (2 miles/3 km from the Chernobyl plant), were evacuated by the Army 30 hours after the catastrophe, which they were not aware of. They were precariously resettled in the contaminated regions of Polesskoya, then in a newer city, Slavutych. From May to August, more than 100,000 people living within a radius of 20 miles/30 km around the plant were evacuated, and given a lump sum compensation of 4,000 rubles per adult and 1,500 per child. Altogether, 250,000 people were evacuated. Pripyat is now a ghost town, in a highly radioactive zone.

In the early 1960s, Soviet authorities diverted the Amour-Daria and Syr-Daria Rivers, which fed into the Sea of Aral, in order to develop intensive, irrigation-dependent cotton farming in the Kazakhstani and Uzbek Deserts. Dwindling from 26,300 sq. mi./68,000 sq. km in 1960 to 6,500 sq. mi./17,000 sq. km. in 2005, the sea soon turned into a salty desert. The high salinity killed off all the animal and plant species living there and ruined the nearby fishing ports. The high levels of emerging pesticides and insecticides caused a marked increase in both infantile mortality and cancer rates.