Russia and Its Neighbors - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 218

Union was established as an umbrella for 150 small groups. A few of these
had been around since as far back as the 1960s. One, for example, sought
to protect historic buildings and paintings. These included sacred icons,
hence attracted religious believers. The government was more willing to
tolerate dissent on environmental issues than on other ones, because they
were not viewed as a direct political threat to the Communist system.
From the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 until the end of the Soviet Union
in 1991, autonomous institutions did not exist as they did in Western
nations. A partial exception was the Academy of Sciences, which traced
its origins back to 1724, when it was founded under the auspices of Czar
Peter the Great. Many early members were immigrant scientists recruited
from Western Europe, and they continued their home traditions of pure,
rather than applied, science. This independence came to be a hallmark of
Russian science. In the eight months of the moderate Kerensky regime
after the czar was deposed in February 1917, but before the Bolsheviks took
over in October, the interim government created several research insti-
tutes, which continued after the communist coup. Once the Communists
consolidated their power by 1921, however, they largely coopted the
academy, demanding that its members follow the party line. They were
not completely successful in this, and the academy remained one of the
few places in the Soviet Union where dissenting opinions were occasion-
ally found. The academy excelled in physics, mathematics, and chemistry
that supported the military programs in nuclear science, rocketry, and
aeronautics. Biology was weak, and ecology was nonexistent.
Besides the Academy of Sciences, the early Soviets tolerated a few other
organizations. Because Marxism was supposedly scientific, scientists were
among the few people who could criticize it. In 1925 the academy estab-
lished the Inter-Ministerial Council for Nature Protection, which was to
advise on projects. Yet when it objected to elements of the Five Year Plan,
Stalin shut it down. Nevertheless, nature lovers were viewed as harmless,
and thus tolerated. The All-Russian Society for the Protection of Nature
was established in 1924. During the 1930s, the Soviets established nature
preserves, yet their purpose was not true protection, but for study as
baselines to compare to newly developed industrial areas. 1
Until Stalin's death in 1953, Soviet scientists had minimal contact with
Western science. Even technical publications from the West were cen-
sored. The era of Nikita Khrushchev permitted slightly more freedom.
At this time the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite, and
continued with more triumphs in space, based on its military rockets.