Eco-glasnost and events in the political, economic, and environmental spheres since the late 1980s have radically altered the state of affairs in the former Soviet Union and what we in the West know about them. The material presented in this book is based primarily on recent Soviet sources and reflects the development of eco-glasnost in the post-Chernobyl era.
1 Much of the information was drawn from officially sanctioned government publications on the environment.
2 This official information was supplemented with a wide variety of evidence from regional and central newspapers, popular and academic journals, wire service reports, radio broadcasts, television reports, and personal interviews.
Chapter 1 presents an overview of the extent and means of pollution in the former Soviet Union and why it occurred as it did. Chapters 2–5 process and analyze the new data made available on air resources, water resources, land resources, and management of solid and hazardous wastes. Chapters 6 and 7 are devoted to the new efforts at environmental protection being made both by governmental institutions and nongovernmental groups. Chapter 6 examines the major institutional and individual actors in contemporary environmental affairs from the top down and delves into the politics and policies of environmental protection. Chapter 7 takes advantage of the fruits of democratization to take another look at environmental politics, this time from the bottom up. Finally, Chapter 8 discusses the constraints and opportunities with which these actors will be presented as they seek to transform their economies in the post-Soviet era.
As noted here and throughout the book, environmental researchers in the former Soviet Union suffer chronic difficulties in data collection and analysis. Indeed, as the volume and sources of new information have exxiv

Preface xv ploded under eco-glasnost, reliability of data and testing has grown more problematic. Accordingly, I acknowledge that this book is vulnerable to the weaknesses of the source material, particularly secondary references, and thus I have noted inconsistencies and have made clarifications where possible. Being relatively new to the arena of international cooperation, officials in the former Soviet Union have not yet focused their energies on making their data collection and analysis methodologies conform with international standards and practices. To compensate as much as possible for this state of affairs, I have, when the data permit, drawn simple analogies and comparisons to conditions elsewhere in the world in an effort to give the reader a baseline for conclusions. It must be kept in mind, however, that these comparisons are but rough approximations.
In this book, measurements are provided in metric terms. The following conversion factors are provided for common equivalents:
To convert from: hectares hectares hectares kilograms kilometers kilometers, cubic kilometers, cubic kilometers, square kilometers, square meters, cubic meters, cubic tons, metric
To: miles, square kilometers, square acres pounds miles meters, cubic acre-feet miles, square acres feet, cubic gallons tons, short
Multiply by:
0.004
0.01
2.471
2.679
0.621
1x10 9
811,030
0.386
247
35.323
264
0.907
Because this book focuses exclusively on the territory of the former
Soviet Union, the temptation is to view the environmental issues discussed as a uniquely Soviet phenomenon. Indeed, this view is reinforced by the statements of local commentators themselves, who, unfamiliar with affairs abroad because of decades of physical and intellectual isolation, frequently paint conditions inside the former Soviet Union as strikingly unique or severe. However, when one takes a step back and places the situation within a global context or relates it to conditions in other regions—advanced industrial or developing—what becomes eminently clear is that the challenges citizens of the new states are or will be confronting often are similar to challenges elsewhere in the world. Some conditions in the ex-Soviet republics truly are exceptional, but a pre-

xvi Preface occupation with hyperbole and exceptionalism will only blind us to their commonality with problems closer to home.
1. Two other books reflecting the fruit of glasnost are Murray Feshbach and
Alfred Friendly, Jr., Ecocide in the USSR (New York: Basic Books, 1992); and Philip
R. Pryde, Environmental Management in the Soviet Union (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1991).
2. Two handbooks produced by the Soviet environmental protection agency
USSR Goskompriroda were Sostoyanie prirodnoi sredy i prirodookhrannaya
deyatel'nost' v SSSR v 1989 g. (The State of the Environment and Environmental
Protection in the USSR in 1989) and Sostoyanie prirodnoi sredy v SSSR v 1988 g.
(The State of the Environment in the USSR in 1988). The Soviet statistical agency put out several reports; one used here is USSR Goskomstat, Okhrana okruzhayushchei sredy i ratsional'noe ispol'zovanie prirodnykh resursov v SSSR
(Environmental Protection and Rational Use of Natural Resources in the USSR)
(Moscow: Finansy i statistika, 1989). The author thanks Murray Feshbach,
Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., for generously sharing his copy of this handbook.