ABSTRACT
Economists have long argued that pollution is a negative externality, which is a convoluted way of saying that private polluters are usually able to pass the costs of their pollution on to someone else or to society in general: those who are downwind or downstream. Pollution was seen as a natural consequence of capitalist greed, and since there was no such thing as private ownership of the means of production in the Soviet Union, there was no such thing as pollution. This chapter examines how the process of glasnost' and the decision to allow the formation of nongovernmental groups has affected the environmental movement. The temptation was to avoid some of the private costs by transferring them to the environment at large, particularly since the area is normally so desolate. Lake Baikal, for most Soviet citizens, has been one of the most publicized cases of environmental abuse, and one about which there has been virtually a national consensus.
