Red past. Green future? Sustainable development for Ukraine and the post-communist nations.

AuthorVovk, Viktor

The methane explosion that blasted through the Gaegova coal mine last October added seven names to the list of nearly 4,000 Ukrainian miners killed in accidents since 1991. Newspaper reports said the victims were suffocated or crushed beneath tons J of coal. Several other miners were injured or poisoned. Although such incidents occur every few days, they represent only the acute face of mining-related trauma: as in many coal-rich nations, Ukraine's miners also suffer a shockingly high rate of lung disease and other disabilities that shorten and degrade their lives.

Mining is dangerous work, and the human cost is evident in the grimy, fatigue-etched faces of the miners. But there are other costs, too. The industry is drowning in debt, losing money fast, and kept going only by $2.3 billion a year in government subsidies. Most mines are outmoded and inefficient, and prospective private buyers are scarce. Closing the mines to save money would be politically difficult anywhere, but in politically unstable Ukraine--where 450,000 Ukrainians still work in mining and have few other choices, and economic output, though rising, remains below pre-independence levels--closing mines is almost impossible.

The dilemma of the Ukraine mining industry reflects a general theme: Like most of the nations that once formed the Soviet bloc (either as "republics" or as client states), Ukraine is struggling through a wrenching and unavoidable transition away from state socialism. Most people living in these 27 post-communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Former Soviet Union (FSU)* (see map) celebrated communism's collapse. But once the euphoria of sledgehammering the Wall and toppling statues of Lenin subsided, they awoke to a stark legacy of corruption, economic rot, and colossal environmental devastation. Moreover, generations of oppressive state control and bureaucratization have bred a widespread sense of powerlessness, distrust of institutions, and apathy.

Under the circumstances, it might seem frivolous to talk about sustainable development. But in fact it may be indispensable. The people living in the post-communist "nations in transition" nurtured great hopes of shifting to democracy and market economies, and a belief that such a transformation would swiftly create better lives. Too often, they have seen these hopes crushed. Current policies are unlikely even to restore old standards of living, much less raise them. The post-communist nations need a vision that offers an appealing future--not only better than the troubled present, but better than any the present course might lead to. A sustainable society could fulfill that vision, and the turmoil of transition offers an opportunity to shape expectations and steer development toward sustainability.

Many of the problems of the post-communist nations can be seen in the experience of Ukraine. It's helpful to begin the story of Ukraine with a quick history review, because how these nations got where they are, and why sustainable development policies might help move them onward, cannot be understood without a look back at the Soviet Union and the policies the Soviet government inflicted on its own people and environment.

Development, Soviet-Style

In the 1959 "Kitchen Debate" between U.S. President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev; Nixon memorably told Khrushchev that while Russian rockets were more powerful than U.S. rockets, "there may be some instances in which we are ahead of you--in color television, for instance."

This vignette reflects a key difference between the two Cold-War rivals: Soviet economic development policy paid almost no attention to consumers. Its goal was global military and ideological domination, and in the planners' minds that required primacy in heavy industry, not TVs and stereo equipment. For example, by the time the whole system collapsed in the late 1980s, Soviet steel production capacity exceeded U.S. capacity by almost 80 percent (160 million metric tons per year to 90 million), even though the Soviet economy was only one-eighth as large.

The single-minded focus on heavy industrial output was accompanied by the ruthless exploitation of natural resources, which were seen as limitless, of no intrinsic value, and utterly at the service of development. One feature of this policy was heavy energy subsidies that kept energy prices at about one-quarter of the real costs. Along with outdated technologies, these subsidies led firms and factories to use energy profligately. Energy intensities of production (energy use per unit of output) were 10 times higher in some sectors than in the West.

These factors combined to give the GEE and-FSU communist countries some of the worst environmental problems anywhere. By the late 1980s, air and water pollution in these countries was much worse than in their richer neighbors to the west and far worse than in countries with comparable income levels elsewhere. Vast areas of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe became heavily contaminated, public health declined, and many fossil-fuel and mineral reserves were depleted. For example, a 1997 report cited by the U.S. National Intelligence Council estimated that emissions of key air pollutants in the GEE nations in 1990 were several times higher than in Western Europe (see table, next page). The resulting rate of infant respiratory diseases in GEE countries in the early 1990s was 20 times the rate in North America. GEE economic losses related to poor health and lower productivity were put at 2 to 11 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), compared with 1 to 2 percent in Western nations.

As these examples suggest, Soviet development philosophy was suicidal. Some analysts argue that U.S. President Ronald Reagan's defense build-up in the 1980s pushed the overtaxed Soviet system over the brink. But a more nuanced explanation is that the Soviets' whole economic approach-inflexible, feedback-averse, hierarchical-was completely unsuited to long-term development. It worked well in achieving traditional industrial objectives, but was unable to cope with the post-industrial knowledge and services economy of the early 1970s. The new economy stressed energy and materials efficiency, computers and information processing, telecommunications, waste management and recycling, and other modern technologies-all alien to a system that excelled at meeting steel quotas (with 19th century technology) and making pollution.

The communist system was also incompatible with the human-capital needs of the new economy. Soviet leaders could mobilize millions of people for heroic tasks, as shown during World War II by the wholesale dismantling of factories and their reassembly hundreds of miles beyond the range of Nazi bombers. But the economic game emerging in the 1970s required an outlook that encouraged and rewarded dreaming, risktaking, and experimenting. Unable to transform itself, communist industrial society soon found its internal development potential exhausted.

Dissenting Cries and Whispers

Much of Soviet industrial development took place during the regime of Josef Stalin, who led the country from the late 1920s until his death in 1953. Millions died as a result of Stalin's purges and collectivization schemes. Not surprisingly, dissent--about anything, including environmental damage--was muted.

Shortly after succeeding Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev delivered his celebrated "secret speech" to the 20th Communist Party Conference, stunning Party members by denouncing Stalin and his brutalities. A brief political and cultural "thaw" followed. Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and other important literary works, for instance, were published between 1956 and 1963. During this time of relative relaxation, the development principle of "nature for the benefit of communism" began to be questioned. But it was to be many more years before serious environmental protests erupted.

The Chornobyl catastrophe helped inspire that dissent. In April 1986, technicians at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant north of Kyiv illegally disabled emergency backup systems while running an unauthorized test of Reactor Number 4. A series of mistakes allowed the unit's chain reaction to surge out of control. The resulting explosions and fire released eight tons of radioactive material, which were carried by winds to Ukraine, neighboring Russia and Belarus, and as far as France and Scandinavia. At least 30 people at the reactor site died immediately or within a few days. Delayed effects at minimum included a sharp increase in thyroid cancers among children and adolescents, according to a 2000 United Nations report. The toll was undoubtedly raised by the Soviet government's initial attempts to conceal the accident, which delayed evacuation measures. An estimated 150,000 square kilometers of land in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine suffered significant contamination.

The accident came amid attempts by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to liberalize the foundering Soviet system by means of perestroika ("transformation") and glasnost ("openness"). Chornobyl and the new climate of reform stimulated intense arguments over ecological issues, to some effect. Beginning in 1987, Soviet authorities issued a number of important environmental regulations and began declassifying environmentally sensitive information. Thereafter, environmental awareness and the environmental movement developed rapidly and became...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT