ABSTRACT
The ecological disaster spreading through the former USSR and with repercussions reaching far beyond Soviet borders had ceased to be a secret after the conference in Goteborg. The ecological crisis in the former Soviet Union is not just a minor detail of the general crisis, nor even one of the crucial factors, but rather the major factor in a crisis that should concern the Soviet Union's neighbors. The day finally came when Soviet leaders abandoned the communist ideology, removed the restrictions on access to ecological information, acknowledged the urgent necessity of environmental protection and increased the budgets for combating water, air, and soil pollution. In the European part of the country, what causes the greatest alarm among ecologists is the tendency of disaster areas to expand by pushing at the adjoining, relatively stable areas, and the merging of the “patches" and enclaves of ecological disaster to form large territorial blocks.
