Informal Environmental Movement in the Industrial Cities of the European North of Russia (Second Half of the1980s – Early 1990s)

Abstract

A long list of scientific publications is devoted to the environmental history of industrial regions of the Soviet Union. However, the Arkhangelsk and Vologda Regions have not been studied sufficiently in this respect. At the same time, by the 1970s, such cities of the European North of Russia as Cherepovets, Sokol, Arkhangelsk, Novodvinsk, Kotlas and Koryazhma were faced with an extremely difficult environmental situation. Attempts of state and municipal regulation of the environment failed to make any significant improvements. Day after day feeling the effects of industrial emissions on their health and realizing the local authoritiesʼ lacking both powers and financial resources to change the environmental situation, the population decided to take this issue into their own hands. Starting from the second half of the 1980s, an informal environmental movement had been developed in the cities of the European North of Russia. Thе article studies the history of this movement as well as the forms and methods of the struggle carried on by its members in order to improve the environmental situation. The resources used in the research include previously unpublished documents kept in the archives of Cherepovets, Novodvinsk, Vologda and Arkhangelsk, as well as local newspapers. The results demonstrate that the informal environmental movement was a significant socio-political force in the region. Its activists made the authorities abandon their plans of increasing the cities’ industrial capacity and start developing comprehensive programmes aimed to improve the environmental situation.