ABSTRACT
The lack of financial and other resources is well known. Less well known is the drawdown (demand) for these scarce monies for environmental clean-up and pollution abatement costs due to neglect, abuse, and destruction of the land, air, and water, due to radioactivity from military and civilian nuclear explosions and due to decisions made at the very beginning of the (former) Soviet state to have production regardless of cost. As the State Advisor on Environment and Health, Alexey Yablokov, succinctly put it: “The situation is not bad, but desperate.” Highlights include overuse of pesticides, diversion of waters from the Aral Sea, air polluted by industrial facilities and by military use of radioactive devices and reactors, three-quarters of surface waters polluted, rise in birth defects and birth deformities, and new information about the depth of radioactivity present throughout the area. Land, air, water, and radioactivity are subjected to review and analysis of their level of environmental degradation. The range of locations and quantities of radioactivity, as far as is known and for the time available, is described as well. Based on official statistics, a tabular display by region and by cause of pollution, prepared by a Soviet environmentalist/geographer is included at the end of the paper as Figure 1. Using a weighing system and some brief analysis, regional differentials 578emerge that highlight the relative degrees of degradation and implied priority regions for clean-up and abatement.
