ABSTRACT
Environmental degradation in Russia is well documented by scholars who relate the ongoing water, air, and ground pollution to the former Soviet Union’s widespread, fast-paced industrial development and its accompanying urbanization (e.g., Glavin, 2006; Pryde, 1991; Weiner, 2000; Wood & French, 1989), which continues to a certain extent in the Russian Federation. Not by coincidence, most of the Soviet era’s development schemes-and thus environmental catastrophes-occurred in less populated and geographically peripheral regions such as in Ukraine (Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion), Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan (Aral Sea depletion and salinization of agricultural lands), Chelyabinsk (home to a factory for plutonium production for nuclear power), Norilsk (nickel mine and smelter), and countless places in Siberia, the Arctic, and the Far East, where extraction of heavy metals and hydrocarbons continues. To build the communist dream and advance the region economically, politically, and socially, plans to industrialize and urbanize the entire Soviet Eurasian landmass meant exploiting rich natural resources in the peripheral regions.
