ABSTRACT
In Uzbekistan, people who had known for years of their republic's environmental problems had little opportunity until the mid-1980s to raise the issue publicly, given censorship of the media and the charges of subversion that were sure to follow an incautious utterance. The April 26, 1986 explosion of a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in the Ukraine focused prolonged world attention for the first time on the Soviet environmental crisis. In Uzbekistan, the cotton monoculture was demonstrably the greatest cause of environmental ills. The Aral basin had been producer of 95 percent of all Soviet cotton. Scientists have predicted that cotton production in the Aral region may in future be completely wiped out by ecological changes occurring there. In terms of human costs, the most excruciating impact is on longevity and health, especially of small children in those large families that are the pride of Central Asian tradition.
