ABSTRACT
The environmental movement in the smaller Eastern European countries is much less advanced than it is in the USSR. Grass roots initiatives aimed at cleaning up the Soviet environment are apparently encouraged by the Soviet State. Just as competition with the United States (US) has apparently tended to accelerate Soviet environmental expenditures, US spending on the military-industrial complex and foreign aid has usually produced increases in Soviet arms expenditures and promises of military aid to the Third World, beginning in the Khrushchev era. In practice, Soviet affirmative action is most striking in predominantly nonwhite Central Asia. At the time of the revolution, this area was extremely poor and had scarcely been integrated into the Czarist Empire. William Mandel also argues that the big change in Soviet environmental policy occurred in 1966 and coincided with a special issue of Soviet Life devoted to the problem.
