Russia and Its Neighbors - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 237

emphasized the dangers of atomic fallout as much as the dangers of thermo-
nuclear war. The USSR had cooperated extensively in the International
Geophysical Year. Once more scientists were the leaders. As with so many
countries, the Stockholm summit initiated concern with environmental
protection, yet the Soviet Union's unofficial status hindered it having a full
effect. Moreover, as long as the country was not free, it did not really matter
what top diplomats and scientists learned at these conferences. In 1992 at the
time of the Rio Summit, the former USSR was in such turmoil that it could
not be effective, but at the Kyoto conference, it was back in shape and signed.
Ratifying the protocol was more complicated, and it did not do so until 2004
after a deal that the quid pro quo would be admission to the WTO.
The Soviet Union came late to many aspects. The Environmental Decade
did not penetrate the country the way it did the Western democracies.
Nevertheless, the ideas filtered through eventually. Some laws were enacted,
but implementation was unenthusiastic. Regrettably from 1945 to the
1980s, the influence of Russia on other countries was harmful as it exported
Communist materialism to Eastern Europe and the People's Republic of
China. This reversed with the dramatic meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear
reactor. Gorbachev's candid willingness to confront governmental and
environmental problems fostered change in Eastern Europe.
NOTES
1. Douglas R. Weiner, A Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to
Gorbachev (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2002).
2. Miron Rezun, Science, Technology, and Ecopolitics in the USSR (Westport, Conn.:
Praeger, 1996), p. 177.
3. Articles 42 and 58.
4. D. J. Peterson, Troubled Lands: The Legacy of Soviet Environmental Destruction
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993).
5. Luke Harding, “Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New
Russia. Review “Fragments of a Defunct State” by Stephen Holmes in the London
Review of Books , January 5, 2012, pp. 23-25.
6. Fagan, Adam, Environment and Democracy in the Czech Republic (Cheltenham, UK:
Edward Elgar, 2004), p. 52.
7. Fagan, pp. 60-61.
8. Petr Kehlicka, “The Development of Czech Environmental Policy 1990-1995,” Czech
Sociological Review , 7 (1999): 38-40.
9. Steven M. Davis, “Building a Movement from Scratch: Environmental Groups in
the Czech Republic,” Social Science Journal , 41 (2004): 375-392.