FINAL REPORT TONATIONAL COUNCIL FOR SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN RESEARC H

TITLE :

POLICIES TO CONTROL WATERPOLLUTION 1917-72 :

AGENDA SETTING IN THE USS R

AUTHOR :

Ronald G . Oechsler

CONTRACTOR :

Indiana University

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR :

Ronald G . Oechsler

COUNCIL CONTRACT NUMBER : 801-1 4

DATE :

October 198 9

The work leading to this report was supported by funds provided b ythe National Council for Soviet and East European Research . Th eanalysis and interpretations contained in the report are those o fthe author .

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This paper is a political science study of Soviet policies t o

control water pollution over the period 1917-1972 . It construct s

a chronology of seven pollution control initiatives over tha t

period as case studies to examine how issues have reached th e

decision-making agenda of the leadership of the USSR . It serve s

as an introduction to the history of a critical curren t

environmental issue, as an analysis of "agenda setting" for th e

rulers, and as a reminder that promulgation of decrees an d

resolutions by the highest authorities has been no assurance o f

compliance or effective action in the society at large .

The anti-pollution initiatives examined are :

1. The 1922 Russian Republic decree on public sanitation ,the first anti-pollution law enacted by the Bolshevi kgovernment ;

2. The 1937 USSR decision on industrial emissions and afurther attempt to tighten emission controls in 1938 -3 9

3.

The 1960 USSR Council of Ministers resolution o nintegrated water management ;

4.

The codification of Soviet water legislation, 1960-70 .

5.

The protection of Lake Baikal .

6.

The Supreme Soviet resolution of September 1972 orderin gintensified measures to safeguard the environment .

7.

The environmental resolution of the Central Committe eand Council of Ministers of December 1972 .

The study concludes that officials of the Soviet bureaucrac y

were highly influential in proposing new policies and having the m

placed on the agenda of the leadership . The most influential

actors among them were directors of Academy of Science researc h

institutes and policy councils . Senior officials of the healt h

commissariat were also influential in the 1920s and 1930s .

However, officials of ministries responsible for day-to-da y

v

management of water resources and related activities did not pla y

an active role beyond the 1950s . The author ascribes thei r

failure to do so not just to preoccupation with other, perhap s

conflicting priorities, but also to a desire not to call attentio n

to their poor performance in carrying out their existing wate r

quality responsibilities .

vi

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This study seeks to improve our understanding of agend a

setting in the Soviet Union by analyzing how one importan t

issue--the problem of water quality--gained access to the polic y

agenda from 1917 through the early 1970s . By examining th e

origins of key pollution control initiatives mounted during thi s

period, the study seeks to cast some light on three basi c

questions .

First, who participates in agenda setting in the USSR? Doe s

the impulse to grapple with problems such as water pollutio n

originate primarily within the top leadership and the centra l

party apparatus? Or is agenda setting a broader process in whic h

numerous institutions and individuals may participat e

meaningfully?

Second, what channels are available for placing issues ont o

the dockets of leadership bodies in the Soviet Union? Are thes e

channels open enough to ensure consideration of a wide variety o f

policy initiatives ?

Third, what makes an issue ripe for leadership consideration ?

What role do crises and trigger events play in the movement o f

issues onto the national agenda? How do institutional and polic y

changes affect agenda setting ?

WATER QUALITY AS A CASE STUDY

OF SOVIET AGENDASETTING

The problem of water quality is an ideal topic for a study o f

agenda setting in the Soviet Union . The issue has gained acces s

to the top agenda at numerous points in modern Soviet history .

Measures to control the discharge of municipal wastes were firs t

enacted in the early 1920s when the population was threatened by a

wave of epidemics caused by contaminated drinking water . The

controls were later expanded to industrial emissions at the height

2

of Stalin's industrialization drive in the 1930s . The pollution

problem returned to the policy agenda in the post-war period an d

became the subject of intense leadership consideration under th e

Brezhnev-Kosygin administration in the late 1960s . Concern ove r

the problem culminated in the early 1970s when the issue of wate r

quality became a regular focus of Soviet policy making . This wa s

illustrated by a variety of indicators, including repeated appeal s

by top officials for stricter pollution controls, creation o f

specialized agencies to manage water quality, a dramatic rise i n

budget appropriations, a major overhaul of Soviet wate r

legislation and the passage of sweeping environmental resolution s

in 1972 . The water quality issue thus presents numerous instance s

of successful policy initiation on an issue of major importance t o

Soviet society .

The development of more effective emissions controls als o

represents an important break with traditional Soviet attitudes ,

which have viewed natural resources mainly as inputs to production

rather than objects of careful management and protection .' Th e

laws and institutions established in the mid-1970s, moreover, have

institutionalized the problem within the structure of the Sovie t

government, ensuring continued attention for years to come . Thi s

combination of high-level visibility, large-scale change an d

lasting consequences makes the water quality problem an especially

fruitful topic for reaching mid-range generalizations on the

processes of agenda change in the USSR .

The political and technical complexity of the problem furthe r

increases its appeal as a case study . Water pollution is a n

example of what Ostrom calls a "common-pool flow resourc e

'Soviet views on natural resources are analyzed by Marshal lI . Goldman, The Spoils of Progress : Environmental Pollution in,the Soviet Union (Cambridge, Mass . :

M .I .T . Press, 1972) ,esp . pp . 211 ff . See also Philip R . Pryde, Conservation in th eSoviet Union (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1972) ,pp . 1-9 ; and Donald R . Kelley, Kenneth R. Stunkel, and Richar dR . Wescott, The Economic Superpowers and the Environment : Th eUnited States, the Soviet Union, and Ja p an (San Francisco :W .H . Freeman, 1976), pp . 20-27 .

3

problem ." 2 A common-pool flow resource is a resource owned i n

common by a large number of users each of whom has an independen t

right to use it for his or her own purpose . At low levels o f

utilization, use of the water body by individual users generall y

does not impair the rights of others . As demand for the resourc e

increases, however, actions that are perfectly rational for eac h

individual user can impose large externalities or spillover cost s

on the community of users . If unchecked, such externalities ca n

ultimately destroy the resource for all but a few .

Where common-pool flow resource problems arise, rationa l

self-interest dictates the need for a collective solutio n

involving restraints on individual users . If collective action i s

predicated on voluntary agreement, however, the chances of actio n

are small since some users will inevitably hold out to reap th e

benefits foregone by the others . For this reason, effectiv e

solutions to common-pool flow problems generally require some for m

of non-voluntary, governmental organization with coercive power s

sufficient to ensure compliance with restrictions on individua l

uses .

Developing such solutions, however, involves majo r

difficulties . Conflicts among water users are one of the mos t

important sources of difficulty . Since water is used for a

variety of purposes (e .g ., municipal water supply, industria l

cooling, waste removal, recreation, irrigation, fishing ,

transport, electric power generation), water quality levels tha t

are satisfactory for some users are unacceptable to others . In

the USSR, differing water requirements often give rise to shar p

conflicts among industrial and governmental agencies engaged in

2 Vincent Ostrom, "Water Resource Development : Some Problemsin Economic and Political Analysis of Public Policy," in Austi n

Ranney, ed ., Political Science and Public Policy_ (Chicago :

Markham, 1968), pp . 123-50 ; and Vincent Ostrom and Elinor Ostrom ,"A Theory for Institutional Analysis of Common Pool Problems," i nGarrett Hardin and John Baden, eds ., Managing theCommons (San

Francisco :

W .H . Freeman and Co ., 1977), pp . 157-72 .

4

the exploitation and management of water resources . Thi s

complicates problem identification, since in addition to sortin g

out substantive matters, the policy makers must mediate among man y

conflicting social, economic, bureaucratic and professiona l

interests .

Disparities in economic and geographic conditions creat e

further difficulties . In the Soviet Union, water resourc e

problems commonly pit heavily industrialized, water-defici t

regions in the European part of the country against less developed

regions in Siberia and Central Asia . This adds important regional

overtones to the issue . Regional differences also tend to inhibi t

the development of a system-wide perspective, since as long as th e

problem is confined to major industrial and population centers ,

the need for nationwide pollution control initiatives i s

obscured . Due to the diversity of local conditions, environmenta l

protection agencies must also incorporate elements o f

decentralized management to function effectively . Flexibility and

local control, however, conflict with the Soviet penchant fo r

uniform, centralized responses to problems . Finally, owing to the

technical nature of the problem, its perceived severity will ten d

to be in constant flux, varying with the sensitivity of wate r

quality measuring technology and the effectiveness of availabl e

purification equipment .

ORGANIZATION

The study consists of analysis of seven important anti -

pollution initiatives undertaken by Soviet officials between 191 7

and 1972, presented chronologically . Chapter II examines the 192 2

Russian Republic decree on public sanitation, the first anti -

pollution law enacted by the Bolshevik government . Chapter II I

traces the origins of the 1937 USSR decision on industria l

emissions and examines a further attempt by sanitary officials t o

tighten emission controls in 1938-39 .

5

Chapter IV carries the analysis into the post-war period b y

studying the initiation of the 1960 USSR Council of Minister s

resolution on integrated water management . This action marked th e

first serious attempt to improve the planning and utilization o f

water resources at the republic and national level . Chapter V

concludes the study by examining three key initiatives of th e

1960s and 1970s : (1) the codification of Soviet wate r

legislation ; (2) the protection of Lake Baikal ; and (3) th e

sweeping environmental decrees adopted by the Soviet leadership i n

1972 . Chapter VI summarizes the findings of the analysis and

assesses their implications for the study of agenda setting in th e

USSR .

RESEARCH HYPOTHESE S

The central hypothesis of this study is that officials o f

bureaucratic organizations are a major source of agenda items in

the Soviet Union . Applied to the problem of water pollution, thi s

hypothesis is restated as follows :

Hy p othesis 1 . Officials of specialized bureaucrati cinstitutions were highly influential in gaining the inclusio nof the water quality issue on the leadership's decisio nagenda from 1917 through 1972 .

The hypothesis was inspired by Downs' observation that burea u

officials--including those in the Soviet Union--are motivated no t

only to influence policy implementation, but also to shape th e

contents of the agenda and the alternatives from which decision s

are made . Bureau officials in the USSR are further assumed to

possess vital resources needed to influence agenda setting ,

including technical and administrative expertise, information ,

analytical resources, access to internal communications channels

and contacts with senior policy makers . Such resources are likel y

to be important in mobilizing concern about water pollution, give n

the technical complexity of the problem and the policy makers '

need for the assistance of bureaucratic institutions in developin g

effective responses . This combination of motivation, resources

6

and leadership need is hypothesized to provide Soviet bureau

officials substantial potential influence in agenda setting .

Examination of this hypothesis will provide a preliminary

answer to the first question posed in this study--i .e ., wh o

participates in agenda setting in the USSR? A full picture o f

agenda setting, however, also requires insights into the factor s

that facilitate the success or failure of policy initiatives b y

Soviet bureau officials . These factors are the subject of th e

second and third hypotheses .

Hypothesis 2 . The probability of the water quality issu ereaching the agenda increased when bureau official ssuccessfully defined the problem as a pressing nationa lconcern .

This hypothesis is derived from Downs's analysis of change i n

large bureaucratic institutions . According to Downs, larg e

organizations are reluctant to change existing policies becaus e

these represent an enormous investment of time, effort and money .

To adopt new policies, such costs must be incurred all over again .

As a result, new policies tend to be undertaken only if thei r

putative benefits are relatively high . 3 The agenda settin g

process is likely governed by a similar cost-benefit calculus ,

since by adding new issues to the agenda, the policy makers ris k

losing the benefits of existing policies and commit themselves t o

spend time and effort developing replacement policies . The second

hypothesis applies this analysis by postulating that the issue o f

water quality will be accepted as a legitimate and necessary focu s

of policy making only when bureau officials demonstrate to th e

leadership that pollution is a truly pressing national concern .

Hypothesis 3 . The probability of the water quality issu ereaching the decision agenda increased when bureau official sdeveloped viable policy alternatives .The third hypothesis reflects the preference of policy maker s

to deal with problems that they can do something about as oppose d

to those which are unsolvable or beyond their ability t o

3lnside Bureaucracy, p . 195 .

7

resolve . 4 This tendency is likely to be particularly strong i n

bureaucratic political systems, where the disincentives to addres s

new problems are relatively high . Moreover, as Jones has noted ,

decision making procedures in the USSR typically call for both th e

agenda item and the proposed decision to be circulated fo r

interagency clearance simultaneously . 5 As a consequence, issue s

are more likely to be accepted for decision making when a viable ,

broadly supported policy proposal has been developed . The thir d

hypothesis is intended to determine the importance of this facto r

in explaining the movement of policy issues onto the decisio n

agenda in the USSR .

The methods used to evaluate these hypotheses are outline d

below. Since the analysis of influence is of particular concern ,

attention will first be devoted to specifying how the influence o f

bureau officials on the Soviet agenda will be assessed .

METHODOLOGYAND DATA

The following methodology will be used to determine whethe r

bureau officials influenced the entry of the water quality issu e

onto the agenda . First, for each initiative studied, primar y

Soviet sources will be examined to ascertain the views of agenc y

officials, academic researchers, ad-hoc groups and Party and Stat e

officials concerning the water quality problem . The principa l

data sources will include : the central press, specialized

journals, research reports, conference proceedings, candidates '

dissertations, internal agency documents and other materials o n

water resource policy . Information from related policy area s

(e .g ., health policy, agriculture, fishing, water transport ,

hydropower, science policy, nature conservation) will also b e

reviewed for insights into the positions of the participants an d

the level of official and expert concern over the problem .

4Kingdon, Agendas . Alternatives, and Public Policies, p . 150 .

5 Ellen Jones, "Committee Decision Making in the Sovie tUnion," World Politics 36 (January 1984), p . 178 .

8

Using this material, a chronological account will b e

constructed indicating : (1) the identities and affiliations o f

the individuals and groups participating in discussing the issue ;

(2) the policy proposals developed to address the problem ; (3) th e

channels used to bring these proposals to the attention of senio r

policy makers ; and (4) the response of senior Party and Governmen t

leaders . The progress of the issue will be traced until it eithe r

gains access to the national or regional agenda or ceases t o

command attention from the policy community . 6

If the issue reaches the national agenda, we will seek to

determine whether this was influenced to a significant degree b y

the initiatives of agency officials and other participants . Fou r

criteria will be used to determine whether influence was exerted :

(1) timing--the sponsor's proposal was conceived and communicate d

to the policy makers prior to the placement of the issue onto the

agenda ; (2) similarity in content--the proposal and subsequen t

leadership discussions and/or actions embody similar description s

or analyses of the problem and similar means of addressing it ; (3 )

interaction--prior to the issue's entry onto the agenda, th e

sponsoring individual had direct or indirect contact with one o r

more senior officials capable of placing the issue on th e

leadership agenda ; (4) participation--the sponsoring individua l

participated in formal decision making activity once the issue wa s

placed on the agenda .

The second hypothesis--which posits that agenda access wa s

facilitated when officials demonstrated that the water qualit y

6Per our earlier discussion, the water quality issue will b econsidered to have reached the policy agenda when the followingcriteria are present :

(1) mention by ranking Soviet officials ;(2) references in annual and five-year plans ; (3) increased pres scoverage ; (4) commissioning of research programs ; and (5 )discussion at Party Congresses, Supreme Soviet sessions an dsimilar fora . The issue will be considered to have reached th edecision agenda when there is evidence of : (1) creation o flegislative drafting committees ; (2) circulation of draf tproposals for interagency clearance ; and (3) designation o fofficials or agencies to implement the anticipated policy .

9

problem was a pressing national concern--will be operationalized

by two indicators .

The first is linkage to leadership polic y

priorities . Such linkages have been shown to increase th e

visibility of emerging issues and change the context in which th e

leaders view them . 7

The second indicator is linkage to crises and focusin g

events . The data will be examined to determine whether bureau

officials explicitly sought to link the water quality issue wit h

leadership priorities, crises or other significant events .

The third hypothesis proposes that the development of a

viable policy proposal increases an issue's chances of reaching

the Soviet decision agenda . A policy proposal will be considered

viable if there is a broad consensus among the participatin g

agencies that : (1) the proposed measure was an appropriat e

response to the water pollution problem ; and (2) the proposal wa s

consistent with political, budgetary and technical constraints .

7 See Gustafson, "Environmental Issues Become Legitimate, "pp . 48, 51 .

1 1

CHAPTER I I

THE INITIATION OF THE 192 2PUBLIC SANITATION LAW

This chapter examines the role of bureau officials i n

initiating the USSR's first major decree on the control of water

pollution and other environmental health hazards . This action ,

taken by the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) i n

September 1922, placed responsibility for water quality squarel y

within the emerging Soviet public health bureaucracy an d

established a rudimentary system of pollution monitoring an d

inspection procedures . Although its implementation was hampered

by administrative and practical problems, the resolution exerted

significant influence on later anti-emissions efforts in the USSR .

Analysis of its origins sheds important light on the role o f

ministerial officials in placing issues on the leadership's agend a

during the early years of Soviet rule .

The Chapter contains two sections . The first discusses th e

roots of the 1922 law, which can be traced to a series of effluen t

treatment guidelines adopted by the tsarist health ministry i n

1908 . The second section examines the sanitation proposal s

sponsored by Nikolai Semashko, the first Soviet health commissar ,

and his deputy Aleksandr Sysin, and traces how these proposal s

were placed on the government's agenda .

THE 1908 EFFLUENT STANDARD S

Although anti-pollution laws had been in force since the tim e

of Peter the Great,- the Russian government first became seriously

concerned about water pollution in the late 1800s . The driving

force was a group of reform-minded physicians serving in th e

1A decree adopted in 1719 banned the dumping of any debri sinto the Neva River, punishable by "beating with the knout orlifetime exile ." M. V . Verzhblovskii, "Iz istorii gigieny vody vRossii" [From the history of water hygiene in Russia), GigienaiSanitariia, no . 8 (1958), p . 37 .

1 2

zemstvos, or local self-governing boards established in the Grea t

Reforms of the 1860s . These physicians perceived a direc t

relationship between the country's poor sanitary conditions an d

its extremely high mortality rate--then twice as high as i n

Western Europe . 2 The leader in this movement was Fedo r

F Fedorovich Erisman (1842-1915), a native of Switzerland wh o

emigrated to Russia in 1866 . Erisman's belief in the importanc e

of sanitation was clearly stated in his 1872 textbook :

The immediate goal of hygiene is to study the influence onman of all possible phenomena of nature, . . . to examine theinfluence of those manmade conditions within which man lives ,. . . and finally, to find the means to ameliorate th eactions of all natural and manmade conditions which ar eunfavorable to the human organism .

Motivated by similar concerns, the Moscow Zemstv o

commissioned Erisman in the late 1860s to conduct an intensiv e

investigation of the region's sanitary conditions and thei r

influence on public health . The results of the research wer e

published in a mammoth, 19-volume compendium which documente d

widespread sanitary deficiencies, particularly in the area o f

water supply and sewage removal . Armed with these findings ,

Erisman gained support for the creation of a series of researc h

institutions to carry on further work of this type . In 1882, he

founded the Department of Hygiene at Moscow University, and

several years later formed the Moscow Hygienic Institute . In

1891, he organized the Moscow Sanitary Station, the first loca l

institution specifically devoted to improving public healt h

conditions . These institutions served as a training ground fo r

numerous water pollution specialists, the most notable of whic h

was Grigorii Vitalevich Khlopin (1863-1929), author of Russia' s

first monograph on effluent treatment methods in 1901 .

Spurred by the work of Erisman and his associates, publi c

health organizations began to focus attention on the problem o f

2 In the mid 1800s, the death rate in St . Petersburg was 42 . 4per 1,000 population . This compared with annual death rates o f29 .9 per 1,000 in Brussels, 28 .5 in Paris, and 25 .0 in London .Ibid ., p . 82 .

1 3

water quality around the turn of the century . The prestigiou s

Pirogov society discussed the subject at its congress in 1896 .

After the congress, a group of hygienicists petitioned th e

government to adopt special legislation on the dumping of harmfu l

wastes into rivers and streams . These urgings went unheeded ,

causing the Society to return to the problem at its 1898 and 190 2

congresses . These entreaties eventually prompted the Medica l

Council of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (which was responsibl e

for health administration) to organize a scientific commission ,

headed by Khlopin, to investigate the condition of Moscow' s

waterways in 1906 . 3

After a further round of studies, the Khlopin Commission i n

1908 submitted a draft decree to the Medical Council entitled ,

"Sanitary Requirements (Sanitarnye Trebovaniia) Which Must b e

Satisfied by Effluents Being Discharged into Surface Wate r

Bodies ." The decree required effluents to be at least as pure a s

the water into which they were discharged and that they contain n o

toxic substances or disease-causing bacteria . It also proposed a

series of requirements concerning temperature, color, acidity and

dissolved oxygen that effluents had to satisfy prior to thei r

discharge into a surface water body . The Medical Council adopted

the draft later that year, thereby establishing Russia's firs t

emissions standards .

The Trebovaniia evoked an immediate protest . The busines s

community objected to the difficulty and expense of treatin g

emissions . Leading hygienicists objected to the statute's failur e

to take into account the mixing and dilution of wastes with th e

water of the receiving river or stream . In expectation of th e

dilution, critics contended, wastes containing substantiall y

higher concentrations of impurities than naturally present could

3 These actions were part of a broader effort, also directe dby Khlopin, to overhaul the entire body of imperial medical andsanitary legislation . Draft codes were also prepared on th esanitary protection of air and soil, as well as housing sanitatio nand anti-epidemic measures .

1 4

be discharged without endangering human health or the condition o f

the water body .

The Medical Council sought to accommodate these criticisms b y

modifying the standards in 1910 . But this did little to diffus e

industrial opposition, which by then had gained the support of th e

Moscow Stock Exchange Committee and influential trad e

associations . The movement to repeal the controls reached a head

in 1911, when the Ministry of Trade and Industry held a specia l

conference to hear the industrialists' complaints . On the advic e

of the conference, the Ministry created a new advisory body- -

referred to as the Temporary Committee--to revise the 190 8

Trebovaniia in light of the objections of industry and th e

hygienicists . During the next several years, the Committe e

organized a series of research expeditions in the Moscow regio n

and conducted pioneering research on the emissions of variou s

branches of industry . The commission's work, however, was cu t

short by the outbreak of World War I and the ensuing revolution .

As a consequence, the revised emissions standards were neve r

developed .

Thus, by the end of the tsarist period the contamination o f

water by harmful wastes was beginning to be viewed as an issu e

requiring special government attention . Under the prodding o f

Erisman and Khlopin, the issue of water pollution had bee n

discussed within the Medical Council, which responded by issuin g

initial effluent treatment guidelines in 1908 . These guidelines

lacked the imprimatur of the tsar or authoritative State bodie s

and thus had little practical impact . Nonetheless, their adoptio n

shows that the problem of water quality had been incorporated o n

the agenda of the health bureaucracy and was starting to be take n

seriously by senior officials .

EARLY SOVIET INITIATIVE S

Following the Revolution, the problem of polluted water attracte d

further attention as proponents of improved sanitation attaine d

key positions in the medical establishment . The leading health

15

figure in the period was Nikolai Aleksandrovich Semashk o

(1874-1949) . A long-time Party member and personal associate o f

Lenin, Semashko was the chief architect of Soviet health polic y

from the revolution until 1930 . 4 Exiled by the tsaris t

authorities shortly after completing his medical studies, Semashk o

had no experience in zemstvo medicine . But like many zemstv o

physicians, he was a firm believer in the need for better publi c

hygiene, which he described as the "cornerstone and guidin g

element (konstitutsionnyi priznak)" of Soviet health policy .

Semashko's commitment to preventative medicine may also hav e

influenced Lenin's thinking on health policy, which went alon g

similar lines .

Semashko's principal advisor on sanitary matters wa s

Aleksandr Nikolaevich Sysin (1879-1956) . A hygienicist b y

training, Sysin graduated from the Moscow University medica l

faculty in 1908, and later worked as a sanitary physician in th e

zemstvos of Nizhnyi-Novgorod (now Gor'kii), Khar'kov, Saratov an d

Moscow . These experiences led to appointment as director of th e

sanitary-epidemiological department of the Soviet health ministr y

in 1918, a position he held through 1931 .

Under the influence of Semashko and other officials, the

Soviet state took several actions in the years after th e

revolution to address the unsatisfactory sanitary condition s

inherited from tsarist regime . The first step in this directio n

was taken in March 1918, when the Eighth Party Congress include d

in the Party Program a commitment to implemen t

decisive measures to improve health and sanitation, includingthe improvement of the sanitary condition of populated place s(particularly soil, water, air) and the passage of sanitar ylegislation .

4 Semashko received a medical degree from Kazan' Universit yin 1901 . However, he spent most of his pre-1917 career as aBolshevik political activist, including 10 years as a clos eassociate of Lenin during the latter's exile in Europe . Hereturned to Russia in September 1917, and after the Octobe rrevolution, was named head of the Medical-Sanitary Department o fthe Moscow Soviet .

1 6

This was followed in July 1918 by the consolidation of th e

medical-sanitary units of the various government bureaus into a

single People's Commissariat of Health (known by its Russia n

acronym, NKZdrav) . The idea of placing health affairs under on e

roof was also the brainchild of Semashko, who considered i t

essential to improving Russia's appalling sanitary conditions and

high disease rates . This action was achieved despite th e

opposition of other department heads, who were reluctant t o

relinquish control over their own medical units . As Semashk o

later recalled :

The economic managers (khoziaistvenniki) were against it .Our position was touch-and-go . Only the strong support o fVladimir Il'ich [Lenin] saved the resolution and by a noverwhelming vote the People's Commissariat of Health wa screated .

The government took a further step to address the pollutio n

problem in February 1919, when the Supreme Council of the Nationa l

Economy (VSNKh, or Vesenkha) established the Central Committee fo r

the Protection of Water Bodies from Industrial Pollution . Thi s

agency, known as Tsentrvodookhran, was the successor to th e

Temporary Committee on water pollution created by the Imperia l

Ministry of Trade and Industry in 1911 . Its principal function s

included studying the influence of industrial wastes on wate r

quality ; developing standards for regulating industrial emissions ;

and advising factories on the design and construction of wast e

treatment devices . 5 These capabilities were augmented in 192 1

with the establishment of the Moscow Sanitary Institute, a muc h

expanded successor to the sanitary station founded by Erisman ,

after whom the institute was named . 6

5P . S . Belov, Tsentral'nyi komitet po okhrane vodoemov, pp .25-30 . Under Belov's leadership, the Committee organized severa lmajor expeditions to chart water quality levels in the Mosco wbasin and elsewhere . Like its predecessor, it was less successfu lin fostering improved industrial waste treatment due to lack o fcooperation from the factories it sought to assist .

6 The institute's title was the Moscow Sanitary Institut eNamed After F . F . Erisman, hereafter the Erisman Institute .

17

Initially, most of the energies of NKZdrav and affiliate d

health organizations were taken up with the war on epidemics ,

which swept the country in successive waves until the earl y

1920s . 7 When the epidemic threat began to recede, Semashko turned

his attention to strengthening control over environmental healt h

hazards as a means of averting further disease . He first raised

the issue in late 1921 at a meeting with his to p

advisors--including deputy commissar, Z . P . Solov'ev, and Sysin .

At the meeting, Semashko instructed his assistants to develo p

proposals to improve NKZdrav's procedures for monitoring wate r

pollution and other sanitary problems and to augment the financia l

and administrative resources available to the local sanitar y

inspectors . Sysin took charge of these efforts and, in Februar y

1922, presented a list of recommendations to NKZdrav's kollegiia ,

or policy making board . The kollegiia approved most of Sysin' s

suggestions, and instructed him to draft a resolution fo r

submission to the Sovnarkom . The draft was circulated withi n

NKZdrav in the Spring of 1922, and was reviewed at the Sixt h

All-Russian Congress of Bacteriologists and Epidemiologists in Ma y

of that year .

At this point, the initiative encountered two importan t

setbacks . The first came in April or May 1922, when a decree wa s

enacted transferring the financing of most health care program s

from the republic level to provincial and oblast' soviets . Thi s

action sharply reduced the funds available to combat sanitar y

problems, since the regional soviets simply delegated thei r

responsibilities to city and village soviets which were even les s

7 The incidence of typhus rose from 21 .9 per 10,000 resident sin 1918, to 265 .3 in 1919. It reached a peak of 393 .9 per 10,00 0in 1920 . Field estimates that ten million people died fromepidemics between 1916 and 1924 . Field, Soviet SocializedMedicine, pp . 51-2 .

1 8

capable of financing health services . 8 The overhaul in healt h

financing thus rendered unworkable one of Sysin's key

recommendations, which was to increase the number of loca l

inspectors funded by NKZdrav . The second adverse development wa s

another alarming outbreak of cholera, the incidence of which rose

from 2,700 in April to nearly 17,000 in July 1922 . In the rush to

respond to this epidemic, Sysin's draft decree was set aside an d

appeared in danger of being forgotten .

In a last-ditch effort to salvage the initiative, NKZdra v

included a special appeal for new sanitation legislation in a

report on anti-cholera measures forwarded to the Presidium of th e

All-Union Central Executive Committee, or VTsIK, in July 1922 . Th e

appeal apparently struck a responsive chord, for the VTsI K

subsequently authorized NKZdrav to incorporate its proposals in a

draft decree to be submitted to the Sovnarkom . In compliance with

this order, Sysin drafted a decree entitled, "On the Sanitar y

Organs of the Republic ." The document was presented to th e

Sovnarkom and adopted without further change on September 15 .

The decree gave local sanitary inspectors the right to carr y

out sanitary inspections at factories and other establishments an d

to order the removal of conditions posing a threat to publi c

health . If the orders were not followed, sanitary officials coul d

petition higher-level soviets to fine the guilty parties . In

exceptionally dangerous cases, proceedings could be initiated t o

shut down the offending enterprise pending resolution of th e

matter in the courts . Although these powers were far mor e

circumscribed in practice than they appeared on paper, the 192 2

decree nonetheless established the basic monitoring and contro l

procedures which have governed Soviet water quality contro l

measures to the present day . The decree also placed the contro l

of water quality among the priorities of the health system ,

8 Ibid ., p . 344 . According to Davis, the decree marked amajor decline in the priority of the health sector and had a majo rnegative influence on the long-term development of Soviet medica land sanitary programs .

1 9

thereby giving the issue a toehold on the governmental agenda .

This implied a continued claim on the time and attention of the

policy makers in the future .

CONCLUSIONS

The record indicates that bureau officials were influentia l

in placing the issue of water sanitation on the leadership agend a

in the early years after the revolution . This case thus support s

the first hypothesis under consideration in this study . The

movement of the issue onto the agenda appears to have been closel y

related to the linkage with the cholera epidemic underway at th e

time . This provides partial support for the second hypothesis .

However, this case fails to support the third hypothesis tha t

agenda access was linked to development of a viable proposal by

bureau officials .

2 1

CHAPTER II I

EMISSION CONTROLS DURINGFORCED-DRAFT INDUSTRIALIZATIO N

The rudimentary emissions controls adopted in 1922 helped

curb some of the most serious water pollution difficultie s

experienced by the USSR at the time .1 Such limited measures ,

however, were inadequate to cope with the massive growth i n

emissions generated by the program of rapid industrializatio n

launched by Stalin in 1929 . As the industrialization drive gaine d

momentum, officials of NKZdrav and other agencies began to pres s

for more effective anti-pollution measures . This chapter examine s

two key bureau initiatives undertaken during this period and

assesses their influence on the Soviet policy agenda .

The first initiative was an attempt by a group of sanitar y

officials--including Aleksandr Sysin--to promote the USSR's firs t

controls on industrial emissions in the mid 1930s . Proposals pu t

forth by these officials were clearly influential in th e

Sovnarkom's decision to adopt a major industrial pollution contro l

law in September 1937 . The second initiative was an attempt b y

some of the same officials to promote more fundamental wate r

management reforms in 1938 . These changes failed to reach th e

agenda .

THE 1937 ANTI-POLLUTION LAW

The Emergence of a SeriousWater Pollution Problem .

The launching of the First Five-Year Plan (1929-1932) place d

great strains on the USSR's water resources . During this period ,

'By 1925 the incidence of infectious diseases had falle nbelow pre-war levels . This was accompanied by a reduction i nmortality rates in European Russia from a peak of 46 .7 deaths pe r1,000 population in 1919 to 18 .1 in 1928 . The improvement stemmedin part from the efforts of sanitary inspectors to protec tdrinking water from domestic and industrial wastes .

2 2

industrial production expanded 140 percent, while output o f

machinery tripled . Fuel and metal production also gre w

impressively . Absent even partial data, it is impossible to gaug e

how rapidly emissions grew during these years . But judging from

industrial output figures, the volume of effluent produced b y

Soviet factories increased from two to three times during th e

course of the plan . Municipal emissions likely grew at a simila r

rate, reflecting the rapid growth of the urban population .

The increase in domestic and industrial emissions led to a

sharp decline in water quality . Although the national press di d

not begin reporting environmental problems until the 1950s ,

serious pollution was reported in specialized publications almos t

from the start of the Plan . In 1930, for instance, the journal o f

the All-Russian Conservation Society reported a mass fish kill o n

the Volga above Gor'kii due to wastes from a local leathe r

works . 2 The Erisman Sanitation Institute found heavy pollutio n

from pulp and paper plants near Moscow beginning in 1931 . Late r

sources document similar incidents in Siberia and elsewhere . 3

The deterioration in water quality was first viewed as a

problem in the country's urban areas . Most Soviet cities had mad e

limited progress in developing up-to-date sewer and wast e

treatment facilities prior to 1927 . Plagued by inadequat e

financing and shortages of equipment and materials, local sewe r

systems became increasingly overloaded and in some cases brok e

2 Okhrana prirody, 1930, no . 8-10, p . 215 . The VserossiiskoeObshchestvo Okhrany Prirody (VOOP), a voluntary society formed i n1924, has focused mainly on traditional nature preservatio nactivities . In the 1930s and 1940s, it lobbied for the creatio nof nature preserves (Zapovedniki) and for better hunting an dfishing rules . In the 1950s, the Society gradually began to spea kout for laws against air and water pollution . See Phili pR . Pryde, Conservation in the Soviet Union (Cambridge : Cambridg eUniversity Press, 1972), pp . 20-21 .

3 The Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine was reported to havecaused heavy pollution of the oral river, including a large fis hkill in 1933 . Similar events occurred in the Kuznets basi nmetallurgical region in the early 1930s . See priroda, no . 9(1957), pp . 55-60 ; and no . 3 (1959), pp . 49-54 .

2 3

down entirely . The result was a sharp rise in the volume o f

untreated effluent pumped into rivers, canals and undergroun d

wells . This was accompanied by breakdowns in urban trans-

portation, housing and other services, producing a serious crisi s

by the early 1930s . These problems attracted the attention of to p

Party and Government bodies which gradually began to address som e

of the most pressing water quality difficulties facing th e

nation's cities .

One of the first indications of high-level concern came i n

August 1930 when the RSFSR Sovnarkom took note of a report by th e

Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) documenting widesprea d

lags in the expansion of municipal services, including constan t

"disruptions in satisfying industrial requirements for water ." The

Sovnarkom's response, though, was limited to minor admin-

istrative changes which did little to alleviate the problem . 4

Piecemeal efforts gave way to a more concerted approach in Jun e

1931 when the urban crisis became the focus of a plenary sessio n

of the Central Committee . Although the evidence is sketchy, th e

impulse for the session may have come from Lazar M . Kaganovich .

This is suggested by Kaganovich's prominent role at the plenum ,

which included delivering the main report . Kaganovich' s

initiating role would also have been consistent with his positio n

as first secretary of the Moscow city party committee, which gav e

him direct responsibility for the urban problems resulting fro m

industrialization . As Secretariat member and key advisor t o

Stalin, Kaganovich was also well-positioned to participate in th e

formation of the Central Committee's agenda .

In his plenum report, Kaganovich paid particular attention t o

the topic of water pollution . Questions of sewer construction ,

4NKVD and Gosplan, for example, were instructed to increas efunds for municipal services and to give water and sewer program sbetter access to scarce construction materials . No change wa smade in the administration of urban services, which remained unde rthe control of the NKVD and its Chief Administration for Municipa lServices . "Po dolkadu Narkomvnudela, " paras . 1 and 10 .

2 4

Kaganovich stated ,

are questions which deal directly with the protection o fworkers' health . It is necessary to ensure that each soviet ,step by step, kilometer by kilometer, encompasses its cit ywith a network of sewer lines, constructs fields offiltration [to purify effluent], and puts its city int oproper sanitary condition .

Kaganovich's concerns were clearly reflected in the resolutio n

adopted at the close of the Plenum, which noted that the rise i n

untreated emissions had created "entirely unsatisfactory sanitar y

conditions" in many urban areas . To remedy the situation, th e

Central Committee called for major changes in the construction ,

financing and operation of municipal services, and ordered th e

preparation of a "serious, scientifically-substantiated long-ter m

plan" for the development of Moscow . It also created a cluster o f

new urban development agencies which promptly acquired significan t

expertise in pollution control . One such agency was the Academ y

of Municipal Services, which was placed in charge of research i n

the field of housing and communal services . The decision als o

ordered the creation of full-fledged Commissariats for Municipa l

Services (NKKhoz) in the RSFSR and the union-republics . 5 I n

addition, the resolution called for the institution of a specia l

effluent tax to finance the building of city sewers and wast e

treatment works . 6

5The new commissariats assumed the functions previouslyperformed by the municipal services departments of the NKVD . Fo rthe functions of the RSFSR NKKhoz, see "Ob utvertzhdeni iPolozheniia o Narodnom Kommissariate Kommunal'nogo Khoziaistv aRSFSR" [On the ratification of the Statute of the RSFSR People' sCommissariat of Municipal Services], (SU RSFSR, 1931, no . 3, art . 10) .

6The RSFSR VTsIK and Sovnarkom established the effluent ta xin August 1931 . (SU RSFSR, 1931, no . 51, art . 385) . Water andsewer services had been partially financed through user fees sinc ethe 1920s . (SU RSFSR, 1921, no . 62, art . 445) . The 1931 tax ,however, was based not on the amount of water consumed, but on th evolume of industrial effluent entering city sewer lines and localwater bodies . The tax varied according to the volume an dconcentration of the effluent, with treated wastes being chargedone-half as much as unpurified emissions . Proceeds from the taxwere to be deposited in the budgets of city and settlement soviets

2 5

The above measures failed to halt the spread of the problem .

As before, outlays for sewage treatment remained inadequate, whil e

shortages of labor, building materials and equipment continued t o

hamper sewer construction . In response, the government create d

several additional specialized institutions . The most prominen t

was the All-Union Institute for Water Supply Engineering an d

Hydrogeology (Vodgeo) . Formed by the Commissariat of Heav y

Industry in January 1934 out of the former Central Committee fo r

Water Protection, Vodgeo quickly established itself as the leadin g

institution for the design of large-scale waste treatmen t

installation s

By the early 1930s, then, the issue of water pollution wa s

again beginning to attract the attention of senior Party an d

Government officials . The actions taken at the time, however ,

were mainly addressed to the improvement of urban sewer systems ,

suggesting that top policy makers had yet to perceive the need fo r

more forceful controls over the discharge of industrial an d

municipal wastes . This focus began to broaden in 1934, a s

officials of the public health and urban services bureaucracie s

became increasingly active in pressing for tighter emission s

regulations .

A key proponent of tighter pollution regulation during th e

1930s was S . N . Stroganov (1881-1949) . One of the USSR's leadin g

sanitary engineers, Stroganov had worked in Moscow's municipa l

services since 1906, and thus was deeply familiar with th e

shortcomings in the city's water and sewer systems . As a membe r

of several influential advisory boards--including NKZdrav' s

scientific-technical council--Stroganov was also well-positioned

and "used exclusively for carrying out sanitary engineering measures . "

7 "Khronika--Iz rabot instituta Vodgeo" [Chronicle : From thework of Vodgeo], Sanitarnaia tekhnika, no . 4 (1934), p . 1 .Vodgeo's 1934 work plan included contracts with such industria lgiants as the Magnitogorsk and Balkhash Metallurgical Combines, a swell as with Moscow, Baku and other major cities .

2 8

water systems were "exposed to the threat of bacterial an d

chemical pollution . . . . Such pollution was extremely severe eve n

on the mightiest rivers ." Where regional or centralized sewe r

systems existed, the majority of industrial enterprises had faile d

to link up with them and were continuing to discharge their waste s

directly into nearby rivers and streams . Attempts by sanitar y

inspectors to correct the situation were said to be "highl y

ineffectual" owing to the failure of many enterprises to receiv e

funds for waste treatment from their directing bodies . Finally ,

the study revealed that local sanitary zones frequently failed t o

stem contamination of drinking water sources due to legal an d

administrative shortcomings .

Responding to these criticisms, the conference adopted a

resolution outlining a series of corrective actions . Thes e

included : improvements in the procedures for establishin g

sanitary-protective zones around key water resources ; "mor e

persistence and follow-through" by VGSI and NKKhoz in monitorin g

industrial emissions ; and the passage of legislation requirin g

enterprise directors either to construct waste purification work s

or to link up with local sewer systems . The conference resolutio n

also urged forceful action to limit emissions by a series o f

pollution-intensive industries which had thus far neglected to d o

so . 10

Significantly, these suggestions were offered as modifi-

cations to a "draft law on the sanitary protection of open

waterbodies," which had been submitted to the conference fo r

comments .

Published sources contain no further references to the draf t

law following its review at the May 1936 conference . But in July

1937, the USSR Central Executive Committee and Sovnarkom issued a

joint resolution ordering a major expansion of controls ove r

industrial and municipal emissions . The first section of th e

10Major offenders included factories belonging to th esynthetic fibers, coke, leather, cellulose, chemicals and dyes industries .

2 9

measure provided detailed instructions concerning th e

sanitary-protective zones established to safeguard local drinkin g

water sources and other waterbodies used by the population .

Included were specific rules concerning the types of zones to be

instituted in various localities, the procedures for establishing

them and the kinds of wastes prohibited from being discharged int o

the protected waterbodies . These were followed by a series o f

regulations on factory emissions, including : (1) a clause

prohibiting the discharge of industrial wastes within th e

territory of cities or workers' settlements ; (2) a rule requirin g

operating enterprises either to connect with local sewer system s

or build their own purification devices by 1942 ; and (3) a

requirement that newly constructed enterprises be allowed to star t

production only after local sanitary officials certified tha t

appropriate emissions control measures were in place .

The Sovnarkom's action signified an important expansion o f

Soviet pollution control policies . First, the new measures wer e

nationwide in scope, whereas the 1922 decree applied only to th e

Russian republic . They were also primarily addressed to th e

control of industrial emissions, a topic largely ignored by th e

earlier decree . The 1937 decision, moreover, reflected a

recognition that significant resources would have to be investe d

to improve water quality levels in the USSR . This contrasts wit h

the earlier expectation that regular sanitary inspections woul d

suffice to bring the problem under control . The 1937 resolution

is thus correctly viewed as marking the start of a new stage i n

Soviet water pollution control efforts .

This case provides support for all three hypotheses unde r

examination in this study . There is persuasive evidence tha t

Academy (S . N . Stroganov) and Ministerial (M . F . Vladimirskii )

individuals influenced the placement of the water quality issue o n

the national policy agenda in January 1935 . There is als o

reasonable basis to conclude that bureau officials -- Stroganov ,

Sysin and Lebedevaia -- influenced the key phase of agenda settin g

in 1937 . Bureau officials explicitly sought to link the water

3 0

quality problem to the leaders' desire to improve urban service s

in the early and mid 1930s . Finally, the program advanced at th e

May 1936 conference provided a viable, broadly supported polic y

alternative closely similar to the Sovnarkom's resolution .

THE1937-38WATER MANAGEMENT PROPOSAL S

On the heels of their apparent success in fostering the 193 7

industrial pollution controls, VGSI and NKZdrav officials nex t

sought to convince the leaders of the need for a fundamenta l

reform of the country's approach to managing water resources . Th e

basic vision for the reform had been articulated a decade earlie r

by E . L . Kenig . In a book of essays published in 1929, Kenig ha d

characterized the USSR's water industry (vodnoe khoziaistvo) a s

fundamentally incapable of meeting the needs of industry ,

agriculture and the domestic population for clean, inexpensive

water supplies . In his view, this reflected the dispersal o f

water management functions over a wide range of agencies, eac h

responsible for a particular type of water use . The consequenc e

was a proliferation of uncoordinated, single-purpose project s

which often had detrimental impacts on the broader community o f

water users . In place of this departmental approach, Kenig

proposed that all activities involving water be consolidated into

a separate branch of the economy directed by a network of basi n

and national agencies dedicated to the integrated use (kompleksno e

ispol'zovanie) and protection of water resources .

Kenig's ideas attracted little official attention at th e

time . However, given the USSR's proliferating water resourc e

problems--and the government's demonstrated receptivity to th e

water quality issue earlier that year--Sysin and his colleague s

apparently perceived that the time was ripe to advocate thes e

proposals a second time in the latter months of 1937 . This wa s

done in a series of articles published in the journa l

Vodosnabzhenie i sanitarnaia tekhnika (Water Supply and Sanitary

3 1

Engineering) . 11 The first article, which appeared in August ,

called on the country's economic planners to include measures t o

address the water management problem in the Third Five-Year Pla n

(1938-1942), then being prepared . This appeal, countersigned by

Lebedevaia, was issued by the Board of the All-Union Scientific -

Technical Society of Water Supply and Sanitary Engineers (VNITO) ,

a professional society representing practitioners in this field .

This was followed in September 1937 by an extraordinary ope n

letter, "To the Chairman of the USSR Sovnarkom, Comrad e

V .M . Molotov," signed by Sysin, N . I . Fal'kovskii (Chairman of the

VNITO Board), K . K . Troshin (Director of the Academy of Municipa l

Services) and N . M . Ushakov (Gosplan) . 12 As with the firs t

article, the letter contained a series of suggestions for th e

upcoming economic plan . The third appeal was expressed in a n

editorial in the November issue of the journal entitled, "Plac e

Water Supply Questions in the Center of Attention . "

The thrust of the articles, stated most succinctly in th e

open letter to Molotov, was that water supply and effluent remova l

had become a dangerously weak link in the Soviet economy . The

problem had been exacerbated by the failure to devote sufficien t

attention and resources to water resources in either the First o r

Second Five-Year Plans . As a result, the nation's rivers had bee n

contaminated "over tens and hundreds of kilometers," water suppl y

systems had become badly overloaded and domestic fishing resource s

had been severely depleted . To dispel the impression that th e

problem was limited to a few industrial centers, the Novembe r

1Vodosnabzhenie i sanitarnaia tekhnika is the official orga nof Soviet water management professionals . During the 1930s, i twas jointly published by the All-Union Scientific-Engineerin gSociety for Water Supply and Sanitary Engineering (VNITO) ; Vodgeo ;Souiuzvodstroi (the water engineering institute of th eCommissariat for Heavy Industry) ; NKzdrav and NKKhoz .

12 "Predsedatel'iu Sovnarkoma SSSR tov . V . M Molotovu," ibid . ,no . 9 (1937), pp . 1-3 . The article stated that the appeal hadbeen sent to the Sovnarkom's staff secretary (upravliaiushchi idelami) on July 14, 1937 .

3 2

editorial noted that thirty out of forty water bodies surveyed b y

Vodgeo had been revealed to be in an extremely polluted condition .

The articles also documented severe disruptions in wate r

supply systems, due to the tendency of planners and designers "t o

forget about water" in deciding the location of new industria l

plants . As a result ,

a whole series of extremely important regions ar eexperiencing significant difficulties in water supply(including the Donbass, Minsk, Cheliabinsk, Khar'kov, [and ]Sverdlovsk regions) .

Such problems, the authors stated, had reached a point where the y

had become a major constraint on further economic development, " a

bottleneck in the economic life of the country," and a brake o n

the development of socialist industry . This was accompanied b y

serious errors and miscalculations in hydropower construction ,

requiring the expenditure of enormous sums on fix-up work . Fo r

example, it had been necessary to build a dam around the entir e

Gor'kii automobile factory--at a cost of 200 million rubles--t o

prevent the plant from being flooded by the recently commissioned

Cheboksary hydroelectric dam .

To correct this situation, the officials advocated a serie s

of reforms very similar to those advanced by Kenig . Included wer e

the development of regional and basin-wide water resource plan s

(general'nye skhemy) ; compilation of a comprehensive wate r

inventory (vodnyi kadastr) showing the quantity and quality o f

available resources ; the organization of special water supply and

waste treatment groups by each industrial commissariat ; and th e

allocation of more equipment and personnel for resolving wate r

supply and emissions problems . To underscore the urgency of th e

situation, the letter to Molotov concluded that without rapi d

implementation of the proposed measures, "the normal developmen t

of the national economy and the satisfaction of defense needs will

be impossible . "

The above proposals appear to have fallen largely on dea f

ears . A careful reading of the Third Five-Year Plan guidelines ,

for example, provides no evidence that a major shift in water

3 3

resource policy was initiated at that time . A scanning of majo r

Party and Government decisions and specialized water qualit y

publications reaches the same conclusion . In short, the sponsor s

failed to exert any influence on the policy or decision agendas .

Without access to internal Party documents, it is impossible t o

determine conclusively why the initiative failed . Several

tentative observations, however, can be gained by examining thi s

case in light of the hypotheses elaborated above .

The first observation concerns the channels used t o

communicate the reform proposal to the leadership . In contrast t o

the previous cases, the 1937-38 VNITO initiative was no t

communicated directly to the leadership via an official report o r

memorandum, but was articulated in a series of articles publishe d

in the professional press . This guaranteed that it would reach a

wide expert readership, but provided no assurance that the messag e

would be received by the agenda gatekeepers . The drafter s

apparently sought to increase the proposal's saliency by couchin g

it as an "open letter" to Sovnarkom Chairman Molotov . Whil e

certainly provocative, this gambit had little appreciable effect ,

thereby underscoring the difficulty of placing issues on th e

agenda by such indirect channels .

Second, the sponsors clearly attempted to link their proposa l

to an important policy matter--the USSR's defense capability- -

which had been elevated at the time to the status of a suprem e

national priority . They also endeavored to capitalize on th e

country's increasing water resource problems--which they describe d

as having reached crisis proportions--and to warn of even mor e

severe difficulties in the event their reforms were no t

undertaken . These tactics also failed to influence th e

leadership . This suggests that such linkages, while clearl y

important, are not a sufficient condition for the success o f

agenda initiatives in the USSR .

A third observation pertains to the uncertain viability o f

the reform proposals tabled by the VNITO coalition in 1937-38 . I n

contrast to both the Semashko-Sysin proposals in 1922 and the

3 4

VGSI's proposed curbs on industrial and municipal emissions i n

1937, the 1937-38 proposals represented a radical break wit h

existing policies on the management of Soviet water resources . I n

addition, apart from a few short-lived experiments in the earl y

1930s, the proposals originated by Kenig and advanced by the VNIT O

group had not been tested on either a regional or national level .

This lack of practical experience may have added to th e

leadership's unwillingness to undertake such reforms at that time .

Finally, the failure of the VNITO initiative suggests tha t

the existence of an open window of opportunity, such as wa s

apparently presented by the Sovnarkom's May 1937 water pollution

action, does not guarantee that follow-up initiatives wil l

succeed, even if they involve closely related issues .

35

CHAPTER IV

THE GENESIS OF THE 196 0USSR WATER MANAGEMENT DECISIO N

Following the passage of the 1937 industrial pollutio n

control statute, the issue of water quality disappeared almos t

completely from the Soviet policy agenda .' This absence ende d

abruptly on April 22, 1960, when the USSR Council of Minister s

adopted a major resolution on the management of Soviet wate r

resources . 2

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROBLEM

By the mid 1950s, the Soviet Union's water pollution proble m

had become nationwide in scope and in many areas had reache d

critical size . Unlike the situation in the 1930s, the centra l

press devoted extensive coverage to the issue, documenting sharpl y

1The only anti-pollution legislation adopted in this perio dwas an unpublished resolution of the Council of Ministers in Ma y1947 entitled "On measures for the elimination of pollution an dthe sanitary protection of water sources ." Judging from Sovie tsources, this resolution was essentially an updated version of th e1937 measure . As such, it did not represent a significant newinitiative to address the water quality problem . See Gigienaisanitarnia, no . 1 (1948), pp . 1-6 ; T . E . Nagibina, "Zadach isanitarnoi okhrany vodoemov" [Tasks of the sanitary protection o fwaterbodies], Okhrana prirody i zavovednoe delo v SSSR, no . 1(1956), p . 42 ; and O . S . Kolbasov, Ekologiia: Politika bravo(Moscow : Nauka, 1976), p . 115 . See also the correspondingresolution adopted by the Moldavian republic, in O . S . Kolbasov ,comp . Okhrana prirody : Sbornik zakonodatel'nykh aktov [Natur econservation : a collection of legislation] (Moscow : Gosiurizdat ,1961), p . 259 . Such follow-up legislation often conforms closel yto the original law .

2"O merakh po uporiadocheniiu ispol'zovaniia i usileniiuokhrany vodnykh resursov SSSR" [On measures for regulating th eutilization and protection of the water resources of the USSR], S PSSSR, 1960, no . 9, art . 67 . Hereafter referred to as the 1960 resolution .

36

higher pollution levels in rivers and lakes throughout the USSR . 3

Numerous fish kills were also reported, including major incident s

on the Kama river in 1955 and 1956, and in the Tiumen' oblast i n

1956 . 4 This was accompanied by a sharp decline in internal

fishing output, which by the mid-1950s had fallen below pre-World

War II levels . 5

Much of the blame for these developments was placed o n

municipal officials who had failed to install proper waste

purification devices . This failure was partly a result o f

inadequate central budget funding for sewage disposal facilities . 6

Even where funds were earmarked for such purposes, less than a

quarter of the planned projects were constructed . Delays of ten

or more years in the completion of urban waste treatment systems

were also commonplace . Industry compliance with anti-pollutio n

requirements was equally shoddy, with many enterprises relying on

settling ponds or other stop-gap measures to dispose of thei r

wastes . 8 Such practices did little to safeguard surface wate r

3 See A . I . Dzens-Litovskii, "Okhrana prirodnykh vodoemov "[The protection of natural waterbodies], Priroda, no . 11 (1956) ,pp . 19-24 . Also Izvestiia, January 11, 1954, p . 2 ; August 15 ,1954, p .

2 ; Pravda, June 26,

1956, p .

3 ; Priroda, no . 12

(1957) .For an extensive compilation of articles covering the entir e1950-72 period, see Philip R . Pryde, Conservation in the Sovie tUnion

(Cambridge :

Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp .

140-41 .

4lzvestiia, April 12, 1956, p . 2 ; Priroda, no . 9 (1957), p . 59 .

5L . Minkovich, "Vazhnyi istochnik uvelicheniia rybnyk hresursov" [An important source for increasing fish resources] ,Priroda, no . 6 (1959), pp . 81-85 .

6G . S . Gorin, "Moskovskii vodoprovod i kanalizatsiia "[Moscow's water and sewer systems], yodosnabzhenieikanalizitsiia, no . 11 (1957) . As in the pre-WWII period ,centralized funding for sewer construction in the 1950s continuedto lag behind the growth of the urban population .

8A Gosplan official reported that only 83 of the 40 1industrial waste treatment facilities specified in the 1958 RSFS Reconomic plan were actually built . Izvestiia, April 14, 1959 ,p . 2 .

37

resources and led to the contamination of soil and undergroun d

water resources .

In addition to castigating local officials, pres s

commentaries roundly criticized the Ministry of Health (MinZdrav )

for the ineffectiveness of its pollution control programs . The

agency's effluent treatment standards were also lambasted fo r

embodying the old and discredited "theory of self-purification, "

which many experts viewed as a major contributing factor in th e

spread of pollution . 9 In addition, the system of fines and

effluent charges imposed by MinZdrav for the disposal of untreate d

wastes was criticized as being almost entirely ineffective, sinc e

the penalties were routinely included in enterprise budgets and

few of the proceeds were used for municipal sewage programs .

In addition to the rise of pollution, serious water suppl y

difficulties came to light . The First Secretary of Cheliabins k

oblast' reported, at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956, tha t

the region's water supply situation was so tight that the Part y

obkom had to ration water daily among factories an d cities.10

Acute shortages were also reported at the Twenty-First Congress i n

January 1959, prompting Khrushchev to throw his personal suppor t

behind the construction of a 500 kilometer canal to avert a wate r

9 The theory had been formulated in the 1930s based on wor kby American sanitary engineers . It essentially relied on th emixing and dilution of wastes in the receiving stream as asubstitute for artificial waste treatment . By the early 1950s ,many Soviet health experts had come to view the theory as a majo robstacle to progress in controlling pollution . This promptedbitter debates between the critics and MinZdrav official sresponsible for incorporating the theory in Soviet effluen ttreatment guidelines . See V. Orlov, "Vodoemy dolzhnyi stat 'chistymi" [Waterbodies must remain pure], Izvestiia, September 6 ,1956, p . 2 ; I . Dzens-Litovskii, Priroda, no . 11 (1956) ;Vodosnabzhenie i sanitarnaia tekhnika, no . 7 (1957), pp . 13-19 ;and Gigiena i sanitariia, no . 12 (1958), pp . 39-43 .

10N . V . Laptev, Pravda, February 23, 1956, pp . 5-6 . Thisunusual intrusion by the Party in a local governmental matte rindicates how serious the problem had become .

3 8

crisis in the republic of Kazakhstan . 11 Elsewhere, water supply

difficulties were intensified by irrational forestry an d

agricultural practices, which caused the drying up of small river s

and the clogging of major waterways with silt and submerge d

timber .

By the mid-1950s these problems had become the focus o f

serious concern by government officials and academic experts .

Joined by a common perception that existing attempts to contro l

emissions were seriously flawed, these officials began to pres s

for more comprehensive abatement measures .

THE CAMPAIGN FOR ENVIRONMENTAL LAW S

The need for more stringent environmental controls was firs t

taken up by the Academy of Sciences in a widely-publicized

campaign for comprehensive national and republic conservation law s

(zakony po okhrane prirode) . These laws sought to comba t

environmental pollution through blanket prohibitions agains t

irrational resource use and other environmental abuses . Thei r

implementation was to be entrusted to a network of special

environmental control agencies which would consolidate th e

functions of the various departmental inspectorates for water ,

forests, fish stocks, minerals and other resources .

The campaign's most prominent supporter was Aleksand r

Nikolaevich Nesmeianov (1899-1980), president of the USSR Academ y

of Sciences . Although his early writings did not foreshado w

this, 12 beginning in the mid 1950s Nesmeianov became a n

11Pravda, February 6, 1959 . Kazakhstan's request was made b yD . A . Kunaev, Chairman of the Kazakh Council of Ministers, an dK . I . Satpaev, President of the republic Academy of Sciences . ForKhrushchev's reply, see pravda, January 28, 1959, pp . 2-10 . Seealso, I . Novikov, "Irtysh-Karagandinskii Kanal" [Th eIrtysh-Karaganda Canal], Pravda, April 3, 1960, p . 4 .

12 See A . N . Nesmeianov, "Preobrazovanie prirody" [Th etransformation of nature], Priroda, no . 1 (1952), pp . 3-4 . Thetone of the article was typical of the domineering,

3 9

increasingly outspoken advocate of stronger conservation laws and

institutions . In an address to the Academy in 1957, for example ,

Nesmeianov described the squandering of the country's mineral an d

other natural resources as "a very acute problem" that demande d

urgent countermeasures .

Yet it appears that no one is dealing with this problem on anational scale . It is hardly likely that this abnorma lsituation will be radically corrected in the near futur eunless systematic researches are initiated, taking int oaccount the total nexus of geological, mineralogical, mining ,technological and economic problems involved .

Nesmeianov reiterated his concerns in an article published i n

Pravda in June 1957 . Although steps were being taken to comba t

water and air pollution, Nesmeianov noted, "it would be wrong no t

to see serious shortcomings in this exceptionally responsibl e

matter ." The diffusion of environmental control functions among a

host of departmental inspections was pinpointed as a particularl y

important limitation . Under this system, drinking water supplie s

were supervised by the sanitary inspectors, fish resources by th e

fishing inspectors and forestry resources (which played a key rol e

in regulating streamflow) by the forestry inspectors--all of who m

acted independently of each other . Nesmeianov was also critica l

of the Ministry of Health, which he accused of "lack[ing] th e

powers and the means to put a stop to the actions of othe r

departments and ministries" responsible for air and wate r

pollution . Rectification of these failings, he argued, wa s

essential if further severe and, possibly, irreparabl e

environmental damage was to be averted . Nesmeianov returned to

this theme in a strongly-worded article published on the eve o f

the Twenty-First Congress in January 1959 . On this occasion, he

again called upon Party and Government leaders to devote "constan t

and all-round concern" for the rational use of natural resources ,

stressing that volunteer citizen efforts, while helpful, were n o

substitute for decisive government intervention .

man-versus-nature philosophy of the Stalinist era .

40

Along with his public pronouncements, Nesmeianov provided

strong support for environmental initiatives within the Academ y

and personally directed interagency efforts to develo p

environmental protection measures for the Seven-Year Plan

(1959-1965) . 13 He thus exhibits all the characteristic s

associated with entrepreneurial bureaucratic officials in th e

USSR . With his wide-ranging contacts in academic, administrativ e

and political circles, Nesmeianov was well positioned to injec t

the environmental issues into higher decision making circles . 1 4

Under Nesmeianov's leadership, a vigorous campaign fo r

broader environmental laws was launched by the Conservatio n

Commissions of the national and republic Academies of Science in

1955 . These Commissions had been established by the Academ y

Presidium in March of that year at the suggestion of severa l

members of the former Commission on Nature Preserves . Th e

national Commission was headed by G . P . Dement'ev, a prominen t

geographer, and included representatives of numerous Academ y

institutes, government ministries, the All-Russian Conservation

Society, and similar groups . 1 5

The first step in the Academy's campaign, ordered at the

Commissions' first plenary session in May 1955, consisted of a

review of existing environmental legislation . The review ,

completed the following year, revealed major inadequacies and led

to a decision to press for new statutes on the utilization of al l

components of the natural environment, including water, land, air ,

13The latter was done through his chairmanship of a specia lGosplan commission established in 1957 .

14For a discussion of the career patterns and persona lcontacts of Soviet research directors and their role in polic ymaking, see Richard S . Soll, Arthur A. Zuehlke, Jr . and RichardB . Foster, The Roll of Social Science Research Institutes intheFormulation and Execution of Soviet Foreign Policy (Stanford ,Calif . : Stanford Research Institute, 1976), pp . 53-55 .

15The Ministry of Health was represented by T . E . Nagibina ,deputy chief USSR sanitary inspector for water pollution, and S .N . Cherkinskii, director of the department for water quality standards .

4 1

soil, natural landmarks and nature preserves . This decision wa s

indicated in an article by leading Academy scientists in earl y

1957, which stressed that "the time has come (nazrel vopros) for

putting the preservation of natural riches in proper order ." Th e

authors recommended doing this through the enactment o f

comprehensive environmental codes and the creation of a unifie d

state environmental protection agency, staffed by trained

inspectors at the regional and local level . Using a phrase late r

popularized by Brezhnev, the authors depicted the adoption of suc h

measures as a "sacred task" (krovnoe delo) and a matter of extrem e

national economic importance .

Judging from an Izvestiia editorial in mid 1956, senior Party

and State officials initially rejected the need for such measure s

on the grounds that environmental abuses were best controlle d

through public opinion and volunteer efforts . The soil for new

legislation, however, turned out to be more fertile at th e

republic level, and it was here that the Academy's efforts me t

with considerable success . With the authorization of Nesmeianov ,

Shcherbakov, and Dement'ev, the conservation commissions o f

several republics began drafting environmental codes in earl y

1957 . The work first reached fruition in Estonia, wher e

I . G . Eikhfel'd, President of the Estonian Academy of Sciences ,

introduced into the Supreme Soviet a draft law prepared by th e

republic's Conservation Commission . The legislature adopted the

measure with little apparent opposition in June 1957 . The

following month the republic government adopted a second measure ,

also drafted by the Conservation Commission, which established a n

Administration for the Conservation of Nature attached to th e

republic Council of Ministers .

The Estonian measures embodied traditional conservationis t

approaches emphasizing the removal of ecologically sensitive area s

from utilization . Where this was not practicable, the developmen t

of special rules was authorized to protect particularly valuable

42

natural resources . 16 Practical questions pertaining to th e

treatment of emissions, on the other hand, were largely passed

over . Notwithstanding this limitation, the Estonian initiative s

were greeted enthusiastically by the central press and th e

environmental community . This, in turn, prompted similar effort s

in other republics . 1 7

Nesmeianov, however, viewed the republic statutes as only a

first step in the improvement of national policies and

institutions . This conviction was evident in his 1957 Pravd a

article, which noted that "in scientific and public circles th e

question of further improving [all-union conservation] legislatio n

is being discussed at the present time"--implying that a national -level initiative was already well underway . The existence of th e

initiative was confirmed in early 1958 when D . I . Shcherbakov

reported that a USSR conservation statute was being prepared

within the Academy at that very time . This was followed by a n

announcement at the June 1958 all-union environmental congress i n

Tbilisi that a draft USSR conservation law had been sent to highe r

instances, presumably including the USSR Council of Ministers an d

the Supreme Soviet .

Over the next several years, the Academy's draft law receive d

support from a wide range of groups and institutions . The Tbilis i

16In addition to establishing new nature preserves, th eEstonian conservation law extended republic control to "objects o fnature (parks, plants, rivers, lakes, and so forth) whic h. . . need protection for scientific, cultural, or aestheti cconsiderations ." Violators were subject to jail sentences of u pto two years . Ibid ., p . 330 .

17The Moldavian Conservation Commission forwarded aenvironmental code to the republic Council of Ministers in 1957 .The measure was passed in 1959 . Similar initiatives wereintroduced in Latvia, Lithuania and elsewhere . Such measures ,however, often met with concerted opposition and lengthy delays .As a result, by 1960 seven of the fifteen union-republics ha dstill not adopted conservation laws, with the most notabl eholdouts being the larger republics, including the RSFSR and th eUkraine . For a summary and analysis of the republic conservatio nlaws, see O . S . Kolbasov, Ekologiia : Politika-Pravo [Ecology :Policy and Law] (Moscow : Nauka, 1976), pp . 119-28 .

43

environmental congress passed a resolution characterizing the la w

as an "urgent state task ." Support also came from Gosplan' s

Commission for the Preservation and Renewal of Natural Resources ,

which included the passage of such a law and the creation of a

national environmental control agency among a package of measure s

recommended for inclusion in the Seven-Year Plan . In early 1960 ,

a major conference of Soviet geographers added its approval ,

citing the proposed measures as the most effective means o f

eradicating serious obstacles in the path of rationa l

environmental management .

Thus by the late 1950s, Nesmeianov and other leading Academ y

officials had successfully placed the issue of controlling wate r

pollution and other environmental abuses on the agenda of severa l

republics and had begun to make headway in promoting environmenta l

change at the national level . The growing sensitivity t o

environmental problems generated by the Academy in turned spawne d

specific proposals to combat water quality problems . The mos t

important of these is examined in the following section .

PROPOSALS FOR INTEGRATEDWATER MANAGEMENT

After the failure of the Stroganov and Sysin initiative i n

1937-1938, the issue of integrated management of water resource s

continued to percolate within the research community . 18 Thes e

discussions helped keep the issue alive and set the stage for a

second attempt to foster water management reforms in the mi d

1950s . The sponsor of the latter initiative was Vasili i

18See V . I . Turichnovich and M . I . Lapshin , Osnovyregulirovaniia kachestva vody [Fundamentals of the regulation o fwater quality] (Moscow : AN SSSR Sektsiia po Nauchnoi Razrabotk eProblem Vodnogo Khoziaistva, 1950), pp . 92-93 . The authors urgedthat "every water source or waterbody . . . along with itscatchment basin be considered a [single] water managemen tcomplex," and be developed by an appropriate institution charge dwith "the planned management of the quantitative and qualitativ easpects of the basin's water resources," p . 93 .

44

Vasil'evich Zvonkov (1890- ) . A transportation engineer wit h

extensive experience in the design of large-scale water projects ,

Zvonkov held a series of influential positions in the scientifi c

hierarchy during the 1940s and 1950s : vice director of th e

Section on Transport Problems ; member of the Council for the Stud y

of Productive Forces (SOPS) ; President of the Academy' s

East-Siberian branch ; and member of the scientific-technica l

council of the State Committee for New Technology (Gostekhnika) .

After completing these assignments, Zvonkov returned to full -

time involvement in water resource matters in 1956, when he wa s

appointed as the USSR's representative on an international Expert s

Panel on the integrated management of water resources . The pane l

had been established by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC )

of the United Nations to examine the administrative, economic and

social dimensions of multipurpose river basin development, and t o

prepare recommendations for international scientific exchanges . 1 9

Participation on the panel apparently had a major impact o n

Zvonkov, for upon his return from the January 1957 ECOSOC session ,

he became the country's leading advocate of multipurpose wate r

management systems .

Zvonkov first argued the need for a reorganization of th e

water industry in an article in the Academy's journal in mi d

1957 . The article stressed that the USSR's rapidly expandin g

water demands could only be satisfied through a "more economical ,

integrated utilization of water resources," based on the fulles t

possible consideration of the requirements of all water users . In

Zvonkov's view, a comprehensive approach was especially critica l

in the treatment and disposal of effluents, wher e

not only must more effective methods of purifying effluent sbe developed, but there must also be a significan t

19Panel members included : Arthur Griffin (Chairman, U .K .) ,Egbert De Vries (Netherlands), Jan Ober (France), and Gilber tWhite (U .S .) . See, Inte g rated River Basin Development : Report by4 Panel of Experts (New York : United Nations Department ofEconomic and Social Affairs, 1958) .

4 5

strengthening of control over the quality of [effluent ]treatment .

Zvonkov proposed that the centerpiece of the planning proces s

should be the development of comprehensive plans and design s

(plany-skhemy) for entire river basins and river systems .

Such plans must incorporate an assessment of the quantity andquality of available water supplies and of the volumes o fwater required for various economic purposes . . . Thes eplans must serve as the foundation of further detaile dplanning of [all] corresponding water management facilities .

The article concluded with a recommendation that the Academ y

strengthen its research on water resource questions and devote to p

priority to the most rapid possible introduction of integrate d

water management principles as the basis for resolving th e

nation's mounting water resource difficulties .

The Academy Presidium accepted this proposal, and in lat e

1957 appointed Zvonkov to head its newly-established Council o n

Water Management Problems (Sovet po Problemam Vodnog o

Khoziaistva), which was charged with coordinating all Academy an d

ministry research on water planning and development . 20 During th e

next several years, Zvonkov used this Council as a vehicle fo r

developing his proposals and mobilizing support for them amon g

government institutions . His first step was to reorient th e

Academy's water research away from a multitude of narrow technica l

studies and toward the completion of policy-related analyses an d

assessments . This was accomplished at the Council's coordinatin g

20The Council was the successor to the Academy's Section fo rthe Scientific Elaboration of Water Management Problems . TheSection had been set up in 1939, apparently in response to th eproposals by the Stroganov group . With the exception of a 195 0monograph on water quality and the compilation of a preliminar ywater resource survey (vodnyi kadastr) in 1956, the section' sinitial efforts were limited to the study of stream hydrology ,flood control and similar technical matters . See I . A . Kuznetsov ,"Razvitie issledovaniia v oblasti vodnogo khoziaistva [Th edevelopment of research on water management]," Vestnik ANSSSR ,no . 3 (1957), pp . 125-47 ; and E . V . Blizniak, ed . ,Vodokhoziaistvennyi kadastr SSSR (Metodika sostanovleniia) [TheWater Management Survey of the USSR (Methodology of Compilation) ](Moscow : AN USSR, 1956) .

4 6

session in December 1958, when it was decided to focus Academy

research on "the elaboration of principles and methods for th e

integrated utilization of water resources," and the adaptation o f

such principles to the problems of various geographical regions .

In early 1959, a comprehensive research plan was developed to

guide these efforts . The application of an integrated approach t o

hydropower development was then discussed at a major conference on

the operation of the Kama reservoir on the Volga in April 1959 .

This gathering, the first wide-ranging examination of the economic

and environmental dislocations caused by Soviet hydropowe r

development, produced a broad interagency consensus on the need

for a more balanced approach to the design, construction, and

operation of hydroelectric power plants .

Finally, Zvonkov drew up a full-scale report identifying th e

legal and institutional changes needed to begin the transition t o

a system of multipurpose water development . The report wa s

contained in a collection of articles edited by Zvonkov which wa s

published by the Academy in March 1960 . The urgent tone of th e

report, and the prominence given to its policy recommendations ,

make it clear that Zvonkov intended the document to be read b y

individuals with decision-making authority . Zvonkov began hi s

article by affirming the principle of multipurpose water resource

management as an idea whose time had come .

For a long time, practically to the present day, [water] us ebore a branch character, i .e ., was carried out for a singl epurpose . . . However, along with the expanded constructionof water management facilities, the idea has taken hold tha tthe utilization of water resources must have a multi-branch ,integrated character wherever this is technically an deconomically feasible .

The need for multipurpose water use was underscored, Zvonko v

noted, by the growing water shortages gripping the Urals ,

Kazakhstan, the Donbass, Western Siberia, "and such large citie s

as Moscow and Ivanovo," where existing water resources wer e

"already insufficient" for industrial and domestic needs . A

comprehensive approach was particularly essential to resolve th e

trade-offs involved in large-scale water transfer projects,

47

including the Donets-Donbass, Irtysh-Karaganda and Dnepr-Krivo i

Rog canals, and the proposed Kama-Vychegda-Pechora river diversio n

project . 21 A third critical imperative was the need to stem th e

escalation of water pollution, which in Zvonkov's words wa s

inflicting "enormous, incalculable harm on the population," majo r

losses to agriculture, and upwards of 3 billion rubles per year i n

damage to the fishing industry .

In these circumstances, the protection of water bodie sdemands constant attention, uninterrupted accounting andcontrol of all changes occurring in [them], and constan tregulation of water use . This applies not only to th eprotection of waterbodies from pollution but also to thei rprotection from obstruction and exhaustion, and th eprotection of underground waters as well .

Zvonkov outlined three "top-priority" measures to resolve th e

above difficulties . The first was a greatly expanded researc h

program aimed at developing water surveys (kadastry), water -

management balances (vodokhoziaistvennye balansy), cost-benefi t

analyses and long-range multipurpose use plans (perspektivnye

kompleksnye skhemy) for all major river basins and economi c

regions . Pollution abatement was to be a major component of suc h

plans, which were to encompass ,

the organization of systematic accounting of all instances o factual and potential pollution . . . The elaboration of plan sand designs indicating the most rational measures fo rprotecting water resources, the amount of construction work ,the scale of the needed capital investments . . . [and ]deadlines for building the indicated facilities .

Zvonkov's second proposal was the adoption of sophisticate d

legal provisions for regulating the use and protection of wate r

resources throughout the USSR . Such legislation, Zvonko v

21The latter was a plan to divert part of the flow of theVychegda and Pechora rivers into the Kama, a tributary of th eVolga . The project was developed by Gidroproekt (the hydropowe rengineering agency of the Ministry of Electric Stations) in th elate 1950s as part of a comprehensive effort to restore th eCaspian Sea to its earlier level . For a detailed discussion o fthe Caspian problem, see Philip Micklin, " The Falling Level of th eCaspian Sea," Soviet Geography : Review and Translation XII I(November 1972) : 589-603 .

4 8

stressed, must go beyond purely 'prohibitive (zapretitel'nye) "

measures and incorporate concrete guidelines concerning th e

reduction of emissions by industrial, agricultural and municipa l

water users . Zvonkov further counselled against repeating th e

mistakes of the Health Ministry's emissions regulations, which he

characterized as providing "permanent authorization to discharg e

effluents" without any consideration for reducing wastes by mean s

of recirculating water systems and other non-pollutin g

technologies .

It must be noted that the problem of protecting wate rresources against pollution usually permits not one bu tseveral solutions . The most prevalent solution .involvingthe treatment of wastes prior to their discharge into a wate r

body, is far from the most reliable, since the treatmentfacilities can fail to operate due to overload, changes inthe composition of the wastes, . . . and lack of thenecessary reagents .

Zvonkov's third proposal was for the establishment of a ne w

government agency, adequately financed and "endowed wit h

appropriate powers and authorities," to take charge of th e

regulation and protection of water resources .

Public support for these ideas came from many of the sam e

groups and institutions which backed the Academy's conservatio n

law proposals . Gosplan indicated its support in an article by a

senior economist published in Izvestiia . The article repeated

Zvonkov's key recommendations almost verbatim, including the cal l

for systematic accounting and planning of water resources, th e

preparation of a comprehensive Genskhema for the country's rive r

basins, and the creation of a government agency for the use an d

protection of water resources . Further support was provided b y

M . I . L'vovich, senior hydrologist of the Academy of Science' s

Institute of Geography and a leading figure in the All-Unio n

Geographical Society . In a report to the Society's 1960 all-unio n

congress, L'vovich stressed tha t

only an integrated water management balanc e(vodokhoziaistvennyi balans) and integrated planning canensure the rational utilization of water resources i naccordance with the requirements of the national economy .

4 9

Comprehensive planning efforts were also advocated by

S . L . Vendrov, a Moscow University expert on the environmental

impacts of hydropower development . Speaking at the 196 0

geographers' congress, Vendrov urged the immediate compilation o f

a national water survey as the first step toward drafting a

"unified scientific water management plan ." Such a plan, he

stressed, was needed to ensure proper management of the Sovie t

Union's water resources "and to prevent the reckless and

thoughtless utilization of such resources . "

Zvonkov also utilized the press as a sounding board for hi s

water management proposals . In July 1959, Izvestiia printed a n

article which bore unmistakable imprints of Zvonkov's ideas . In

addition to urging the installation of closed-cycle water systems ,

the article made a strong pitch for the establishment o f

basin-wide water management institutions . Although several

republics had recently established special environmenta l

committees, the article asserted that such bodie s

will not solve the whole problem of protecting waterbodies .After all, many rivers flow through the territory of severa lrepublics . Consequently in the basin of one river there ar eseveral masters . But there must be only one master . Iwould be more correct . therefore, toestablishbasin-wid einspectorates, rather than inspections for each admin-istrative region. Without the permission of these inspect -orates not a single industrial enterprise should b econstructed .

Zvonkov also appears to have inspired the publication in

Komsomol'skaia pravda of another detailed expose on the water

pollution problem in April 1960 . The article repeated many o f

Zvonkov's recommendations, including the proposal for a

comprehensive water resource plan and the creation of basin-level

management institutions . The piece was accompanied by an article

written by Zvonkov which made the same points even mor e

emphatically .

The efforts by Zvonkov and others to promote more vigorou s

anti-pollution measures did not go unnoticed by the Soviet polic y

makers . The first sign of heightened official interest in th e

problem came in November 1959, when the USSR Council of Ministers

50

adopted a resolution on the use and protection of undergroun d

water resources . Included were more stringent restrictions on th e

discharge of industrial and municipal wastes into wells and othe r

places which could lead to the contamination of underground wate r

supplies . A further indication of leadership concern was provide d

in a report to the Third Congress of the All-Union Geographical

Society in early 1960 . The report noted that in the perio d

preceding the Congress, the Society's Moscow branch had

played an active part in drafting a conservation law for th eRSFSR; [and] the Buriat branch and the East Siberian an dBaikal sections, supported by the Society as a whole, [had ]campaigned successfully for the preservation of Lake Baika land its natural resources . "

The congratulatory tone of the statement indicates a prio r

knowledge that legislation on such matters was forthcoming ,

suggesting that these and other environmental measures may hav e

been taken under review in the latter part of 1959 .

Conclusive evidence of the issue's placement on the agend a

came on April 22, 1960, when the Sovnarkom issued a wide-rangin g

resolution on the management of water resources and the regulatio n

of water pollution . The resolution transferred responsibility fo r

controlling emissions to a network of republic and basin-leve l

agencies for the rational use and protection of surface and

underground water resources . It also created special department s

within the USSR and republic Gosplans to coordinate wate r

management and ordered the preparation of a comprehensive

long-range plan (general'naia perspektivnaia skhema, or Genskhema )

to guide the multipurpose development of the USSR's wate r

resources . These actions marked a major expansion of Soviet water

pollution control efforts as well as the implementation of many o f

the principles advocated by Soviet water experts since the 1920s .

CONCLUSIONS

The April 1960 water management decision was a thir d

important issue placed on the agenda largely through the effort s

of Soviet agency officials . The driving force behind the issue

5 1

was Academy official V . V . Zvonkov . Zvonkov had formulated

comprehensive water quality reform proposals in the late 1950s an d

was aggressively lobbying for them in leadership circles .

Coinciding with the emergence of critical water suppl y

difficulties, Zvonkov's actions were apparently instrumental bot h

in persuading policy makers to address the USSR's water problem s

and in shaping key elements of their response . The initiative was

apparently transmitted to the policy makers through interna l

Academy channels and was likely aided by concerns over growin g

water shortages . The proposal was also broadly consistent wit h

political realities at the time . On these grounds, the initiative

supports all three hypotheses on the agenda setting process se t

forth in this study .

This case thus further underscores the role of entrepre-

neurial officials in shaping the Soviet agenda concernin g

specialized policy matters . Zvonkov's success in this regard wa s

closely related to his ability to mould a small research counci l

into a source of policy-relevant advice . It came in spite of

failure of the ministries directly responsible for water qualit y

to play any significant role in the campaign for the 1960 law .

This was an unexpected finding . Given NKZdrav's pivotal role i n

the 1922 and 1937 decisions, we fully expected officials of th e

ministries of health, communal services and fishing to be amon g

the leading advocates of a strengthening of these earlie r

controls . This expectation was initially borne out at th e

Twentieth CPSU Congress in 1956, when M . D . Kovrigina, then USS R

Minister of Health, launched a blistering attack on th e

"scandalous" condition of the nation's water resources and urged a

review of current policies in order to improve the effectivenes s

of water quality regulations . 22 MinZdrav officials, however ,

22 Pravda, February 28, 1956, pp . 8-9 . Kovrigina's deputy fo rwater pollution matters was similarly outspoken at the time . Se eT . E . Nagibina, "Zadachi sanitarnoi okhrany vodoemov" [Th esanitary protection of waterbodies], Okhrana prirody izapovednoedelo v SSSR, no . 1 (1956), pp . 36-46 . See as well the strongly-

5 2

subsequently became much less outspoken and appear to have playe d

little or no role in proposing environmental policy changes for

the remainder of the decade . 2 3

This low profile appears to have been part of a deliberate

effort to protect the agency's programs from being reduced o r

dismantled . 24 In this instance, concerns for bureaucrati c

survival, rather than spurring policy initiation, apparentl y

triggered a defensive posture aimed at raising as few doubts as

possible about the ministry's ability to discharge its effluen t

control responsibilities .

A similar dynamic was evidently in effect within the Ministr y

of Fishing which, despite the severe impact of pollution o n

domestic fish output, also played no visible role in initiatin g

worded editorial in MinZdrav's journal, "Usilit' bor'bu z avypolnenie reshenii XX S"ezda KPSS v sanitarnoi okhrane vodoemov "[Editorial : Strengthen the struggle for the realization of th edecisions of the Twentieth CPSU Congress on the sanitar yprotection of waterbodies], Gigiena i sanitariia, no . 3 (1957), pp . 3-6 .

23 S . V . Kurashov, who took over as Minister of Health i n1959, was especially non-committal in his public statements abou twater pollution . See, S . V . Kurashov, "Zabota za zdorov"e naroda "[Concern for the people's health], Pravda, February 18, 1960, p . 3 .

24MinZdrav was put on the defensive in the late 1950s when agroup of dissident health officials mounted a widely publicize dattack on the water quality standards developed by S . N .Cherkinskii . See Ia . M . Grushko, "Vazhnye voprosy okhran yvodoemov : O normakh dopustimykh kontsentratsii vrednykh veshchest vv vode" [Important questions concerning the protection o fwaterbodies : On the norms of the permissable concentrations o fharmful substances in water], Priroda, no . 7 (1959), pp . 47-50 ;and V . Orlov, Izvestiia, June 6, 1956, p . 2 . Cherkinskii sough tto parry the attacks by mobilizing the ministry's editorial board sand expert committees in defense of the current standards . See ,"Postanovlenie Biuro Otdeleniia Gigieny, Mikrobiologii iEpidemiologii Akademii Meditsinskikh Naukh ob itogakh diskussii osanitarnoi okhrane vodoemov" [Resolution of the Bureau of th eDepartment of Hygiene, Microbiology and Epidemiology of th eAcademy of Medical Sciences, on the results of the discussion o nthe sanitary protection of waterbodies], ibid ., no . 8 (1958) ,p . 85 . MinZdrav officials, however, were unable to silence th ecritics, who continued to publish negative assessments of existin geffluent regulations well into the 1970s .

5 3

the 1960 measures . 25 The explanation appears to lie in th e

ministry's shift to ocean fishing in the 1940s and 1950s . Thi s

enabled the agency to meet its production quotas despite a sever e

decline in the catch of commercial fish from the Caspian Sea an d

other internal fishing reservoirs . 2 6

The unexpectedly passive stance of these two agencie s

underscores the importance of self-protection and other internal

disincentives in restraining bureau policy initiation in the USSR .

Such inhibitions were clearly much weaker in the Academy o f

Sciences, reflecting the agency's commitment to scientifi c

research as well as the presence within its leadership o f

environmentally-conscious administrators such as Nesmeianov an d

Zvonkov . The Academy's deepening environmental role is furthe r

illustrated in the following chapter, which examines three ke y

policy initiatives of the late 1960s and early 1970s .

25In the 1950s, researchers at the Institute for River an dLake Fishing (GosNIORKh) tried to drum up interest in the problem .See L . S . Berdichevskii, "Bor'ba s zagriazneniem vodoemov(Soveshchanie po voprosam vliianiia stochnykh vod na rybno ekhoziaistva" [The struggle with the pollution of waterbodie s(Conference on the influence of waste waters on the fishin gindustry)], vestnik AN SSSR, no . 6 (1957), pp . 111-14 ; andM . N . Zadubin, Okhrana rybokhoziaistvennykh vodoemovotzagriazneniia promyshlennymi stochnymi vodami i drugimi otbrosammi[The protection of fishing-industry waterbodies from pollution b yindustrial wastes and other refuse] (Moscow : Pishchepromizdat ,1958) . These efforts notwithstanding, senior fishing official sremained largely disinterested in the pollution problem .

26 See L . G . Vinogradov, et al ., "Resursy rybnogo khoziaistva "[Resources of the fishing industry], in I . P . Gerasimov ,D . L . Armand, and K . M . Efron, Prirodnye resursy Sovetskogo Soiuz ai ikh ispol'zovanie i vosproizvodstvo [Natural resources of th eSoviet Union and their utilization and reproduction] (Moscow :Izdatel'stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1963), pp . 217-42 .

r

CHAPTER V

WATER POLLUTION BECOMES A REGULAR AGENDA ITEM :THE 1968-72 ANTI-POLLUTION DECISION S

INTRODUCTION

The 1960 water management decision prompted major improve-

ments in the control of water pollution in the USSR . 1 Within a

year of its adoption, all fifteen union republics had forme d

special agencies to coordinate water resource planning an d

regulate industrial and municipal emissions . 2 By 1965, thes e

agencies had created regional inspections in half of the country' s

largest river basins and acquired a professional staff of ove r

1,400 persons . In that year, the basin authorities reviewed th e

designs for some 9,000 effluent treatment facilities and partici-

pated in acceptance commissions for over 1,000 new enterprises .

In Leningrad and other industrial centers, they conducted basin -

wide inspections which provided the first systematic data on wate r

quality since the 1930s . 3 The new agencies also actively promote d

the assimilation of low-waste technologies, reflecting the growin g

acceptance of ideas pioneered by Zvonkov . In addition, they helped

modify the operating rules of large hydropower projects, helpin g

1P . N . Shternov, "Okhrana vodoemov SSSR ot zagriazneniia "[Protecting the USSR's waterbodies from pollution] , Vodnyeresursy, no . 1 (1972), p . 163 . Shternov headed the Stat eInspection for Protecting Water Sources of the USSR Ministry o fLand Reclamation and Water Management (Mindvodkhoz) in the mid -1960s and 1970s .

2Most republics established State Committees for theMultipurpose Use and Protection of Surface Water Resources . InBelorussia, a State Committee for Environmental Protection wa screated with responsibility for supervising all natural resources .

3See N . F . Fedorov, et al . in Materialy vsesoiuznoi nauchno--tekhnicheskoi konferentsiiPookhrane poverkhnostnykh i podzemnyk hvod ot zagriazneniia [Materials of the all-union scientific-tech-nical conference on the protection of surface and undergroun dwaters from pollution], 4 vols . (Tallinn, 1967), I : 59-62 .

5 6

to improve water quality during low water months . 4 Finally, new

statutes were adopted clarifying the role of the local sanitar y

inspectors in pollution control, addressing another long-standin g

problem pinpointed by the April 1960 resolution . 5

As a result of these reforms, by the mid 1960s Sovie t

officials were able to report improvements in water quality along

the middle Volga, the Don, the Dnepr, and other areas . Few

observers, however, harbored any illusions that republic and loca l

measures alone could reverse the damage caused by decades o f

neglect and underinvestment . Thus, in addition to implementin g

the 1960 statute, Soviet water officials also actively lobbied fo r

more stringent controls within leading policy circles .

Notwithstanding these efforts, the issue of water pollutio n

did not return to the national decision agenda until after th e

removal of Khrushchev as Party leader in October 1964 . This

reflected three factors . The most important was the succession o f

domestic and foreign policy crises which beset the USSR from mid -

1960 on . These difficulties--which included major foreign polic y

setbacks, successive crop failures, and a sharp decline i n

industrial performance--absorbed much of the leadership's ener-

gies, crowding other, less immediate concerns from the agenda . 6

Access to the governing bodies was further hindered by th e

sweeping policy initiatives mounted by Khrushchev in response t o

4The new operating rules were set forth in 1961 by the RSFS RGosvodkhoz . See Polozhenie oporiadke isp ol'zovaniia vodnykh,resursov vodokhranilishch RSFSR [Statute on the procedure fo rutilizing the water resources of reservoirs of the RSFSR ](Moscow : Gosvodkhoz RSFSR, 1961) .

5Pravila okhranypoverkhnostnykh vod ot zagriaznenii astochnymi vodami [Regulations for the protection of surface wate rresources from pollution] (Moscow : Ministerstvo Zdravookhraneni-ia, 1961) . This statute was drafted by S . N . Cherkinskii' sCommittee for the Sanitary Protection of Waterbodies . It replacedsimilar rules adopted in 1954 .

6 The crises are chronicled by Michel Tatu, Power in th eKremlin : From Khrushchev toKosygin, trans . Helen Katel (NewYork : Viking Press, 1968) .

57

these policy challenges . The agricultural community was particu-

larly disrupted by Khrushchev's ill-prepared scheme to expan d

agricultural irrigation . In conjunction with this project, th e

functions of the republic water management agencies (known a s

gosvodkhozy) were expanded to encompass the design and implementa -

tion of all large-scale irrigation and drainage projects in thei r

respective regions . While increasing their bureaucratic standin g

and influence, the additional responsibilities limited the abilit y

of gosvodkhoz administrators to focus on water pollution . Con-

sequently, by the end of the Khrushchev period, their influenc e

as policy initiators had been sharply eroded .

A third key agenda barrier during the early 1960s was Nikit a

Khrushchev's personal disinterest in the environment and hi s

rejection of formal restraints against ecological abuses . Thi s

had an especially detrimental effect on Lake Baikal . According to

reports published after his removal, the First Secretary was s o

incensed by the resistance to the proposed pulp mills at the lak e

that he banned further debate on the issue from 1962 on . 7 As a

result, no major decisions were adopted on Baikal or relate d

matters for the remainder of his time in office .

With the advent of the Brezhnev-Kosygin leadership in Octobe r

1964, environmental pollution again became the focus of wide -

ranging debate . The intensity of the debate quickly surpasse d

that of all previous Soviet environmental controversies . Onc e

again, the central role in promoting new policy undertaking s

belonged to activist officials of bureaucratic and scientifi c

institutions . On this occasion, however, the issues found a

receptive climate among leadership circles . The turning poin t

came in 1967-68, when high-level resistance to vigorous anti -

7 O . Volkov, "Tuman ne rasseialsia" [The cloud has no tlifted], Literaturnaia gazeta, April 13, 1965, p . 2 . See also "Adni-to idut" [The days slip by], ibid, June 2, 1966, pp . 2-3 ; andBoris Komarov, The Destruction of Nature in the Soviet Union ,trans . by Michael Vale and Joe Hollander, with a foreword b yMarshall I . Goldman (White Plains, New York : M . E . Sharpe, 1980) ,p . 6 .

5 8

pollution measures finally crumbled, allowing environmental issue s

direct access to the ruling bodies .

Unlike previous occasions, the agenda opening of the late -

1960s was relatively long-lived . During this interval--whic h

lasted until the mid-1970s--the Party and Government leadership

adopted a series of landmark decisions which elevated wate r

quality to the status of a major national priority . The most

important of these were :

o "Additional measures for the protection of Lake Baikal, "USSR Council of Ministers, February 1969 .

o "Fundamentals of water legislation of the USSR and th eUnion Republics," USSR Supreme Soviet, December 1970 . 9

o "On preventing pollution of the Volga and Ural Rive rbasins," CPSU Central Committee and USSR Council o fMinisters, March 1972 .10

o "On further improving nature protection and the rationa luse of natural resources," USSR Supreme Soviet, Septem-ber 1972 .

o "On strengthening the protection of the natural environ-ment," CPSU Central Committee and USSR Council ofMinisters, December 1972 .

8 Resheniia Partii i Pravitel'stva po khoziaistvennymvoprosam [Decisions of the Party and Government on economi cmatters], 10 vols . (Moscow : Politizdat, 1967-76), 7 : 255-59 ;hereafter, Resheniia .

9yedomosti Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR, 1970, no . 50, art . 566 .Also, Pravda, December 12, 1970, pp . 2-3 ; trans . in Current Digestof the Soviet Press, XXII, no . 52, pp . 7-12 ; hereafter referred toas CDSP .

10Sobranie postanovlenii Pravitel'stva SSSR [Collectedresolutions of the Government of the USSR] 1972, no . 5, art . 30 ;hereafter, SP SSSR .

11Vedomosti Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR, 1972, no . 39, art . 346 .Also, Pravda, September 21, 1972, p . 1 ; trans . in CDSP, XXIV ,no . 38, pp . 18-19 .

12 SP SSSR, 1973, no . 2, art . 6 . Also, Resheniia, vol . 9, pp .347-76 .

5 9

The new legislation was accompanied by a sharp rise i n

environmental spending . As shown by Table 1, budgetary alloca-

tions by the central government quadrupled between 1970 and 1975- -

twice the rate of the preceding decade . A major share of th e

increase--approximately a billion rubles in 1972-75---went for th e

construction of effluent treatment facilities in the Volga basin .

Table 1

USSR : Central Budgetary Allocations fo rEnvironmental Protection

Year Million ruble s

1960 11 01970 4511971 52 81975 1,800

------------------------------------------- -

Sources : 1960-71 from Shternov, "Okhrana vodoemov SSSR o fzagriazneniia" [Protecting the USSR's waterbodies from pollution] ,Vodnye resursy, no . 1 (1972), p . 164 . 1975 from E . Ignat'ev ,P . Konstantinov, and V . Sokolovskii, "Sel'sko-khoziaistvenno eproizvodstvo i okhrana priroda" [Agricultural production an denvironmental protection], Ekonomika sel'skogo khoziaistvo, no . 3(1976) .

The period also witnessed a major expansion of the adminis-

trative apparatus for controlling water quality . By the mid- -

1970s, the network of basin agencies encompassed all of the USSR' s

key river basins (see Table 2) .

6 0

Table 2

USSR Regional Water Management Agencie s

YearBasin

InspectionsHydro-chem . Labs Total

StaffObject s

Controlled

1966 49 68 1431 38,20 01973 86 77 3000 84,00 01974 102 94 4371 91,430

Sources : P . N . Shternov, "Okhrana vodnykh resursov, "p . 22 ; I . I . Borodavchenko, "O merakh po vypolneniiu postanov-leniia TsK i SM SSSR 'Ob uluchshenii okhrany prirody i rat-sional'nogo ispol'zovanii prirodnykh resursov'" [On implementin gthe CC and CM USSR resolution, "On measures for improvingenvironmental protection and rational use of natural resources" ]Obzornaia informatsiia (Minvodkhoz SSSR) [Information review] ,no . 12 (1973), pp . 8-9 ; and Iu . P . Belichenko and Iu . G . Egorov ,"O rabote organov vodnogo nadzora" [On the work of the organs o fwater supervision], Ekspress informatsiia (Minvodkhoz SSSR )[Express information], vol . 2, series 4 (1975), pp . 24-26 .

Another important change was the widening Soviet participa-

tion in international environmental activities . The centerpiec e

of these activities was a broad program of U .S .-Soviet bilatera l

research on water management, signed at the Moscow summit in 1972 .

Simultaneously, issues of water quality and environmenta l

pollution became firmly institutionalized in the governmental ,

social and education systems . The process included the creatio n

of major new research institutes ; consolidation of environmenta l

monitoring functions in the expanding Hydrological and Meteoro-

logical Service (Gidrometsluzhba) ; inclusion of a separate sectio n

on environmental protection in the 1971-75 USSR Five-Year Plan ;

and the addition of conservation courses to the secondary schoo l

and university curricula . Finally, in 1977, commitment t o

preserving the environment was written into the new Sovie t

Constitution .

By the early 1970s, therefore, the water quality issue ha d

clearly been transformed into a what Walker terms a "recurrin g

6 1

policy problem ." 13 Unlike discretionary items, which reach th e

agenda mainly as a result of crises or ad-hoc initiatives b y

individual leaders, recurring problems flow more or less predic-

tably from past decisions .

The rest of this chapter examines how the water pollutio n

issue became a regular agenda item in the early years of the

Brezhnev regime . Three key initiatives will be addressed : (1 )

the codification of Soviet water legislation ; (2) the protection

of Lake Baikal ; and (3) the comprehensive environmental resolu-

tions adopted in 1972 .

THE CODIFICATION OF,WATER LEGISLATIO N

Like the previous issues, the reform of Soviet water legisla-

tion progressed to the agenda in a series of stages . The issu e

was first raised in the late 1950s by a group of Uzbek lega l

scholars specializing on agricultural law . In 1958, as part o f

the rejuvenation of Soviet law after Stalin's death, these jurist s

formulated a draft land-water code for their republic . Althoug h

primarily aimed at improving the use of water for irrigation, th e

draft also contained measures to stem pollution by farms an d

factories . The draft code was favorably received at a 195 9

conference in Tashkent, sponsored by the Legal Department of th e

Uzbek Academy of Sciences and the Institute of State and La w

(IGPAN) of the USSR Academy of Sciences . Shortly thereafter, th e

Presidiums of the Uzbek and Kazakh Supreme Soviets formed legisla-

tive drafting committees to develop formal proposals for submis-

sion to republic authorities . These actions were apparently

sponsored almost entirely by republic officials, since apart fro m

13 Jack L . Walker, "Setting the Agenda in the U .S . Senate : ATheory of Problem Selection," British Journal- of Politica lScience, 7, Part 4 (October 1977), p . 425 .

6 2

Central Asia and Belorussia, no coordinated nationwide codifica -

tion program was launched at th e time.14

The codification initiative quickly attracted attention in

Moscow . In 1959, the All-Union Institute of Legal Sciences an d

the Codification Department of the RSFSR Ministry of Justic e

drafted a water code for the Russian republic . This document wa s

approved by the Ministry of Justice and circulated among leadin g

agricultural agencies for comments . Simultaneously, Izvestii a

published an article recommending the adoption of a simila r

overhaul of all-union water legislation .

The movement broadened significantly in 1961 when IGPAN hel d

a major conference to coordinate the legislative drafting effort s

underway in the various republics . The conference was organized

by Georgii A . Aksenenok (1911 - ), a corresponding member of th e

Academy of Sciences who headed IGPAN's department of land law .

Aksenenok was then the USSR's foremost expert on natural resourc e

law and a leading conservation advocate . He was widely known

within higher Party and Government councils, as illustrated by hi s

frequent service as a consultant to the Legislative Proposal s

Committees of the Suprem e Soviet.15

Under Aksenenok's leadership, the 1961 conference produced

broad agreement on the need for unified national and republic

statutes on the use and protection of water resources . Aksenenok

also provided a rough outline of the proposed law, which he

believed should take the form of "Fundamentals of Water Legisla-

tion" (Osnovy vodnogo zakonodatel'stva, or Osnovy) for the USSR .

14A draft land-reclamation code was also undergoing inter -agency review in Belorussia in the late 1950s . T . Basov, " Opravovom regulirovanii i okhrane vodnykh resursov v Belorussko iSSR" [On the legal regulation and protection of the wate rresources of the Belorussian republic], ibid ., pp . 135-46 .

15An article commemorating Aksenenok's 60th birthday state dthat he had "systematically participated" in the work of th elegislative commissions of both chambers of the Supreme Soviet .The article further noted that his proposals "were reflected i nthe preparation and adoption of laws on land" and other natura lresources . Vestnik AN SSSR, no . 2 (1971) .

6 3

This would be followed by the enactment of detailed codes (ko-

deksy) for each union republic . Aksenenok's proposed draft wa s

strongly supported by many conference participants, includin g

RSFSR Gosvodkhoz chief Kornev, who argued that it would go a lon g

way toward correcting the "basic cause" of the country's pollutio n

problems . Officials from the republic gosvodkhozy were als o

strongly supportive of Aksenenok's proposal to establish an all -

union State Committee to direct water management for the entir e

USSR .

Aksenenok's initiative was paralleled by a second codifica-

tion effort sponsored by Gosplan's Department of Water Resources .

This department, one of the institutions established by the 196 0

water management resolution, was headed at the time by Iurii V .

Aleksandrovskii, who had also participated in the 1961 IGPA N

conference . Gosplan established a panel to draft a new water la w

in 1962 . The draft was completed by the end of the year, and

thereafter was circulated among interested agencies .

Thus, by late 1962 the movement to codify Soviet water la w

had garnered support from important segments of the legal an d

bureaucratic community . Given the passage of a major water

decision only two years earlier, it appeared only a matter of time

before either the Academy or Gosplan proposals reached the agenda .

During the next several years, however, neither initiativ e

attracted high-level attention . The reasons included leadership

preoccupation with other matters and Khrushchev's persona l

disinterest in environmental problems . An added factor was th e

failure of the legal community to coalesce around a specifi c

policy proposal . In the months following the 1961 conference ,

consensus on the need for a new water law gave way to pervasiv e

disagreements over the form and content of the proposed statute .

Particularly heated conflicts arose over the proper division o f

functions between the national and republic governments . A

further legal conference was held in 1963 to iron out thes e

differences, but it failed to produce solid backing for any singl e

proposal . Thus, to the extent that senior officials expressed

6 4

interest in the issue, the lack of consensus among legal expert s

hindered development of a coordinated proposal for official

consideration .

The need for further legal research prompted Oleg Stepanovic h

Kolbasov, then a senior researcher at the All-Union Institute o f

Juridical Sciences in Moscow, to turn his full attention to th e

subject of water legislation in 1962 . Kolbasov, a graduate of th e

Tomsk University law faculty, had established his environmental

credentials by editing the first compendium of Soviet conservatio n

legislation the preceding year . During the next several years ,

his scholarly output included a series of original articles an d

books and a comprehensive monograph on the codification of Sovie t

water law .

In addition to his research, Kolbasov actively promoted wate r

law codification within higher Party and State organs . His

entrepreneurial skills were particularly evident in early 1964 ,

when he published an article in Izvestiia urging a renewed effor t

to reform Soviet water legislation . Recognizing that the climat e

was not propitious for serious environmental initiatives, Kolbaso v

couched his appeal largely in terms of the payoffs for farm

production . 16 In this way, he placed the water issue squarely i n

the context of the just-completed Central Committee plenum o n

agriculture .

Kolbasov's proposal appears to have found a receptiv e

audience . In July 1964, the Commission of Legislative Proposal s

of the USSR Supreme Soviet established a "deputies preparator y

committee" to begin work on a new water statute . To advise th e

committee, an expert subcommittee was created, consisting o f

approximately fifty scholars, agency officials and water resourc e

specialists . Kolbasov was appointed staff director (uchenyi

16 The main thrust of the article was that existing water la wwas almost exclusively oriented toward extensive rather tha nintensive farming . Thus, it failed to promote the increasedefficiency in land and water use that was essential in th econditions of the 1960s .

6 5

sekretar'), giving him overall responsibility for the draftin g

effort . The creation of this committee signifies that the issu e

of water law codification had gained access to a portion of th e

Supreme Soviet's agenda . Further confirmation of this came i n

December 1964, when the committee's 1965 work plan was approved b y

the legislative proposals committees of both chambers of th e

legislature . The issue had survived the leadership changeover th e

preceding October and was now advancing higher on the nationa l

agenda .

During the next 18 months, Kolbasov's panel debated the broad

outlines of the proposed law . This was a vulnerable stage in th e

codification process, since the initiative had not yet bee n

formally endorsed by the new leadership . Two developments ,

however, helped clear the way for its entry onto the Politburo' s

decision agenda . The first was Brezhnev's personal endorsement o f

long-overdue improvements in farming practices--so-called "in-

tensification measures"--in his speech to the March 1965 Centra l

Committee plenum on agriculture . 17 "In the first place," he

stated, "it is necessary to establish proper order in the area o f

land use, to put an end to instances of a squandering and preda-

tory relationship to land ." The speech also advocated "elaborat e

measures" for combatting soil erosion, a subject which environmen -

talists had unsuccessfully pressed for years . Brezhnev spoke ou t

again on the subject at the 23rd Party Congress in March 1966 .

The land is an enormous source of wealth for society and th ebasis of our agricultural production . Preserving this wealt hand its productive utilization, raising soil fertility, thestruggle against wind and water erosion, and the carrying ou t

17A key element of these measures was a program of lan dreclamation and irrigation intended to free Soviet agricultur efrom the caprices of the weather and ensure stable and increasin gcrop yields . Its goals were a three million hectare increase i nirrigation in Central Asia, southern Russia and the Ukraine ; anddrainage of six million hectares in Belorussia and the non-blac kearth region of the northwestern RSFSR . In contrast to Khrush-chev's irrigation efforts, Brezhnev's program was buttressed by asharp rise in farm prices and an unprecedented increase in capita linvestment . See Gustafson, Reform in Soviet Politics, pp . 25-33 .

6 6

where necessary of reforesting work, must be viewedasanimportant governmental matter.

Brezhnev's remarks signalled a new openness within the leadershi p

to the reform of land and water management . This created an

potentially receptive climate for improvements in water legisla-

tion, a subject directly bearing on the reclamation program .

The second breakthrough came in early 1966 when the codifica-

tion of natural resource law gained the support of Nikola i

Podgornyi, who had been designated Chairman of the Presidium o f

the USSR Supreme Soviet in December 1965 . Podgornyi's support wa s

clearly expressed at the March 1966 Party Congress, when he

declared that the time had come

to bring our legislation on the procedures for utilizing th eland, mineral resources, forest and water resources and othe rquestions into conformity with the demands of the presen tday .

Podgornyi's interest in natural resource law appears to have bee n

related to his support for improvements in consumer welfare ,

which--like the environment--had also been long overshadowed b y

the Stalinist preoccupation with heavy industry . In a speech i n

Baku in May 1965, Podgornyi had declared that this lopsided

priority structure was no longer acceptable to contemporary Sovie t

society .

There was a time when the Soviet people consciously acceptedmaterial restrictions for the sake of the priority develop-ment of heavy industry and the strengthening of our defens ecapacity . That was fully justified . . . . But now collectiv ewealth is multiplying year by year, while conditions ar e

emerging that make it easier to satisfy the ever-growing.material and cultural needs of the working peo p le .

As witnessed by the growing media interest in conservation durin g

this period, the public's "material and cultural" needs clearl y

encompassed a desire for a more livable natural environment .

Podgornyi was also a supporter of the economic refor m

measures that had been adopted in September 1965 under th e

sponsorship of Council of Ministers Chairman Aleksei Kosygin .

This suggests a further point of agreement with proponents of mor e

rational management of water and other natural resources .

6 7

Finally, following his demotion to the largely ceremonial positio n

of head of state, Podgornyi appears to have been searching fo r

issues to exploit as a means of retaining influence within th e

ruling coalition . Legal reform offered a convenient platform fo r

furthering these interests .

The general tone of Brezhnev's remarks cited above suggest s

that the Party leader had not yet grasped the need for the kind s

of sweeping legal reforms that Podgornyi had advocated at th e

party congress . During the succeeding two months, however ,

Brezhnev's views on this issue shifted perceptibly . The firs t

sign came in his speech to the May 1966 Central Committee plenu m

on agricultural reclamation . On this occasion, Brezhnev was muc h

more specific than earlier in criticizing irrational agricultura l

practices . He was particularly emphatic about stemming the wast e

of valuable farmland, demanding "greater incisiveness" and mor e

careful evaluation of all requests for the allocation of croplan d

for roads, factories and hydrostations . Brezhnev further remarke d

that,

n n .•-

•I - p I .

I -

a law on land utilization . It seems to me that this proposaldeserves support . Such a law must define the procedure an dresponsibility of all organizations for the proper use o fland . "

This statement marked Brezhnev's public acceptance of the need fo r

major new land legislation . But it made no mention of the other

branches of natural resource law . This omission was remedied i n

the Plenum's concluding resolution, which explicitly authorize d

the passage of new legislation "on the fundamental principles o f

land and water use" (osnovnye nachala zemlepol'zovaniia i vodopol -

'zovaniia) . With this statement, the codification of water law

was formally added to the list of issues awaiting Politbur o

attention . After seven years of germinating, the codificatio n

issue had finally reached the decision agenda .

With Politburo endorsement now secured, codification effort s

moved into high gear . In December 1966, the Presidium of the USS R

Supreme Soviet instructed the Commission on Legislative Proposals

6 8

to prepare a comprehensive all-union water law and similar laws o n

land, minerals and forests . This marked the start of the forma l

legislative drafting process . By mid-July 1967, work had pro-

gressed sufficiently for Izvestiia to make reference to th e

expected adoption of a new water law . In June 1968, E . E .

Alekseevskii, USSR Minister of Land Reclamation and Water Re -

sources, reported that the Soviet government had taken measures t o

accelerate the codification work . Shortly thereafter, ne w

appointments were made to the Deputies Preparatory Committee i n

expectation of the unveiling of the draft law . On this occasion ,

RSFSR Agriculture Minister L . Ia . Florentev was appointed to hea d

the Committee . Then, in April 1970, the draft "Fundamentals of

Water Legislation" were published in the central press, promptin g

extensive comments from legal institutes, government officials an d

citizens . Finally, in December, a revised draft was adopted int o

law by the USSR Supreme Soviet .

THE PROTECTION OF LAKE BAIKA L

The campaign to save Lake Baikal has been widely viewed in

the literature as a rare instance of successful agenda-setting b y

a grass-roots movement of Soviet environmental activists . Al-

though bureaucratic officials participated in the movement, they

are described as having played a supporting rather than initiating

role . Given this perception, and the unique character of th e

lake, 18 the Baikal case is generally regarded as "atypical" o f

the way most issues are created in the USSR .

18With a volume of 23,600 cubic kilometers, Lake Baikal i sthe largest body of fresh water in the world, accounting fo rnearly one-fifth of global fresh water supplies . Its waters ar eextraordinarily pure, in some places transparent to a depth of 4 0meters . Baikal also strikes strong emotional chords among Soviet --and particularly Russian--citizens, reflecting its unique plac ein literature and folklore . See, Zumbrunnen, "The Lake Baika lControversy," pp . 83-84 ; and Gustafson, "Environmental Issues Ris eto Official Legitimacy," p . 40 .

6 9

The research presented here reaches a different conclusion .

While the setting and emotional level of the controversy wer e

certainly unique, our analysis shows that the forces whic h

propelled the issue onto the agenda were similar to those observe d

in our previous case studies . Once again, the key actors wer e

representatives of scientific and bureaucratic institution s

responsible for water research and development . These polic y

entrepreneurs were among the first to publicize the threat to th e

lake and were the main proponents of governmental actions to dea l

with the problem . Thus, rather than being an anomaly, the case o f

Lake Baikal further illustrates the central role of bureaucrati c

officials in spurring recognition of new policy issues in th e

Soviet Union .

The Issue Emerge s

Plans to utilize Baikal as a source of industrial wate r

supply were first announced in the Guidelines for the Sixth Five -

Year Plan (1956-60) adopted by the 20th Party Congress . 1 9

Pursuant to the guidelines, the USSR State Committee for th e

Timber, Pulp/Paper and Woodworking Industry and Forestry Manage-

ment (Gosleskhoz) and its State Institute for the Design of

Cellulose and Paper Industry Enterprises in Siberia and the Fa r

East (Sibgiprobum) formulated plans to construct two large pul p

mills in the southwestern corner of the lake . The first--th e

Baikalsk Cellulose Combine--was designed to produce 200,000 ton s

per year of ultra-pure rayon cord for automotive and aircraf t

tires at a site on the southern shore of the lake . The second

mill, the Selenginsk Pulp and Board Combine, was to be built o n

the Selenga River 50 kilometers upstream of the lake . Its produc t

was less specialized, and was to be used for making ordinar y

cardboard .

19These plans were closely linked to Khrushchev's program fo rthe industrialization of Siberia and the development of the Sovie tchemical industry .

7 0

The proposed mills generated controversy from the moment o f

their inception . Their leading Siberian critic was the limno-

logist, Grigorii I . Galazii . In the late-1950s, Galazii headed a

small research station devoted to the study of Baikal at th e

lakeside village of Listvianka . The station was subordinated t o

the East Siberian branch of the Academy of Sciences . Galazi i

first called attention to the possible damage to the lake at a

biological conference in Irkutsk in mid-1957 . The conference wa s

evidently convinced by Galazii's report, for its concludin g

resolution described the protection of Baikal from industria l

wastes as "an extremely urgent task" which needed to be addresse d

by the authorities . As an added testimony to Galazii's entre-

preneurial skills, the conference resolved to petition the Academ y

Presidium to expand his research station into a full-fledge d

Limnological Institute, an action taken in 1962 .

Galazii reiterated his concerns about the lake in August 195 8

at a major conference on the economic development of Siberi a

organized by Gosplan, the RSFSR Council of Ministers and th e

Academy of Sciences . This gathering, attended by 2,500 specia-

lists and administrators, also urged greater caution befor e

embarking on whole-scale industrialization of the Baikal basin .

At a third conference in Irkutsk in September 1959, Galazii too k

the added step of organizing a field trip to the lake to dramatiz e

the potential threat of the mills to the lake's fragile ecosystem .

This conference also adopted a special appeal requesting the USS R

Council of Ministers to reconsider the planners' proposals t o

utilize the lake's resources for industrial and hydropowe r

development .

The forewarnings of the Siberian specialists were echoed b y

the similar concerns among Moscow officials . At the forefront o f

these efforts was the prominent geographer, Inokentii Petrovic h

Gerasimov, Director of the Academy of Science's Institute o f

Geography . Together with other leading scholars, Gerasimo v

orchestrated a wide-ranging review of the Baikal question at th e

Third All-Union Congress of the USSR Geographical Society in

7 1

January-February 1960 . The discussion was reflected in th e

Congress' closing resolution, which urged tougher safeguard s

against the contamination of the nation's key water bodies .

The growing concerns over Lake Baikal coincided with Zvon-

kov's pioneering initiatives to alert the Soviet leadership to th e

broader problem of water pollution . These two issues merged i n

May 1960 when the RSFSR Council of Ministers adopted a resolutio n

ordering stricter safeguards against pollution of Lake Baikal b y

industrial and municipal enterprises . This action, taken les s

than a month after the April 1960 water management resolution ,

limited timber felling within the watershed of the lake and

prohibited the start-up of the Baikalsk and Selenginsk mill s

before appropriate effluent treatment devices were operational .

As an expression of leadership concern, the May 1960 resolu-

tion stiffened the resolve of the lake's defenders to challeng e

the mills when their plans came up for interagency review prior t o

the start of construction . The review of the Baikalsk plant bega n

in late-1960 when Sibgiprobum's designs were formally submitted to

the Academy of Sciences, Minzdrav, Gosvodkhoz, and other agencie s

in Moscow and Siberia . To focus its examination, the Siberia n

Department of the Academy of Sciences formed an interdepartmenta l

experts commission headed by M . M . Odintsov, a mineralogis t

attached to the East-Siberian branch of the Academy . In December

1961, the Odintsov commission categorically rejected the plans fo r

the Baikalsk mill, stating that the specifications submitted b y

Gosleskho z

are insufficiently substantiated on key points, . . . do no tcomply with the government's resolution on the protection an dutilization of the natural resources of the Baikal basin, an dfail to provide for the complete treatment of the effluent sgenerated by the plants .

These concerns were underscored in a letter published by commis-

sion-member Galazii in Komsomol'skaiapravda three days after the

Odintsov commission issued its report . In the letter, Galazi i

warned that disposal of industrial wastes could upset the lake's

7 2

marine life and endanger the only source of water supply fo r

nearby Irkutsk .

The plans met with similar rejections from other reviewing

bodies . The Academy's Institute of the Earth's Core urged denia l

due to the risk of earthquake activity at the site . The State

Committee for Coordination of Scientific-Technical Work--th e

forerunner to the present State Committee for Science and Tech-

nology--argued that the plant would result in excessive pollutio n

of the lake even with the most exacting waste treatment possible .

Opposition culminated in April 1962, when the Presidium of th e

Academy of Sciences sent an urgent appeal to the USSR Council o f

Ministers requesting that the plans be shelved . This appeal ,

signed by Academy President Kel'dysh, recommended that furthe r

development of the entire Baikal basin be halted until a genera l

plan (general'naia skhema) was adopted governing all the region' s

natural resources . The need for such a plan appears to have bee n

initiated by Gerasimov, who had urged a similar integrate d

approach to natural resource development at the 1960 geographi c

congress . Gerasimov's sponsorship was further indicated by hi s

publication four years later of a plan identical to that propose d

in the Academy's letter .

In seeking to halt the Baikalsk project, the Academy Pre-

sidium was in effect calling on the leadership to convert it s

decisions of April and May 1960 into concrete actions to protec t

Lake Baikal . The leadership's unwillingness to take such steps ,

however, was demonstrated the following day when Gosleskho z

received authorization to proceed with its plans to build th e

Baikalsk pulp plant . The mill's opponents thereupon apparentl y

again pressed their case before the leadership . According t o

later reports, this persistent opposition precipitated the wrath

of Party leader Khrushchev, who banned further discussion of th e

Baikal matter by the national press for the duration of his ter m

of office . Thus, while several of the protestors continued t o

oppose the plans in various fora, further progress of the Baika l

issue toward the national policy agenda was halted .

7 3

Conflict Intensifies : 1964-6 5

As with the reform of water legislation, the accession of th e

Brezhnev-Kosygin leadership in October 1964 led to renewed

controversy over Baikal . Unlike the internal bureaucratic

maneuvering of 1961-62, this stage of the conflict was prominentl y

reported by such leading national media as Pravda, Izvestiia ,

Literaturnaiagazeta--the organ of the USSR Writers' Union, an d

Komsomol'skaiapravda--the Communist youth newspaper . However ,

while these publications helped arouse public concern over th e

lake, the driving force behind the issue once again came from

professional scientists and administrators directly involved wit h

natural resource policy making .

The opening salvo was fired in February 1965, when Literatur-

naia gazeta carried an article by the writer Oleg Volkov, decryin g

the impending destruction of the lake by the Baikalsk pulp mill ,

then nearing completion . In support of his call for stronger

pollution controls, Volkov cited research by a variety of agen-

cies--including Galazii's Limnological Institute--which pointed t o

the long-term dangers posed by the mill's effluents . Shortly

thereafter, Pravda. ran an article recommending that the mill s

either be relocated to another area or that their effluents b e

transported outside the Baikal basin via a specially constructe d

pipeline . These proposals were originated by Odintsov and othe r

leading Academy scientists, who had written to the newspape r

recommending that Baikal's massive reserves of pure water b e

protected from industrial development so as to preserve thei r

usefulness for high-priority scientific research projects .

The controversy over the lake intensified in succeedin g

months with the publication of a heated exchange between Gos-

leskhoz officials--including agency Chairman Orlov--and the mills '

opponents . In defense of the projects, Orlov and his associate s

pointed to the "enormous" economic and national security benefits

7 4

which the pulp mills would provide . 20 They further stressed tha t

Gosleskhoz had no intention of starting production before al l

necessary treatment installations were ready . From their perspec-

tive, therefore, the fears over the lake "lack[ed] any basi s

whatsoever ." This prompted an angry response from Academician A .

Trofimuk, Vice-president of the Siberian branch of the Academy .

In addition to rebutting each of the points raised by Gosleskhoz ,

Trofimuk accused Orlov of adamantly clinging to his positio n

simply to prove to the leaders that he was right . Such arbitrar y

behavior, Trofimuk argued, illustrated Gosleskhoz's "complet e

disregard" not only for Baikal, "but for the fate of the ver y

branch of industry entrusted to it . "

While the press debate unfolded, inter-agency opposition t o

the plants intensified . In January 1965, an official conferenc e

sponsored by the RSFSR Gosvodkhoz adopted a resolution stressing

the necessity "of reliably guarding Lake Baikal from the discharg e

of industrial wastes ." The following month, the Siberian Divisio n

of the Academy adopted a decision urging a complete ban on th e

discharge of effluents into the lake . Shortly thereafter, Iuri i

Danilov, USSR Chief Sanitary Inspector and Deputy Minister of th e

Ministry of Health, aligned his agency with the critics o f

Gosleskhoz in a broad-ranging environmental critique published i n

Pravda . 21 This was followed by an article in the Party' s

201 . Chistakov and E . Kuznetsov, "Snova o Baikale : Neobkhod-imye utochneniia" [Once again about Baikal : Necessary correc-tions], Literaturnaia gazeta, April 10, 1965, p . 2 . Chistakov wa svice-Chairman of Gosleskhoz, while Kuznetsov headed its ad -ministration for pulp and paper production . Orlov's views wer econtained in a letter to the editor which prefaced the article .The authors pointed to the national security justification for th eBaikal pulp mills by noting that the United States had th ecapacity to produce nearly one-half million tons per year of high -strength cord .

21 Iu . Danilov, "Let us protect the water, air and soil frompollution," Pravda, June 21, 1965, p . 2 ; trans . in CDSP, Vol .XVII, no . 24, pp . 13-14 . Without calling for the plant's removal ,Danilov stated that the authorities had an obligation to ensur ethat it "does not pollute the lake in any way ."

7 5

ideological journal by P . S . Neporozhnyi, USSR Minister of Powe r

and Electrification, which characterized the potential pollutio n

of the lake as "avery real danger" to the water resources of th e

East Siberian region . These protests coincided with the beginnin g

of the interagency review of the Selenginsk pulp and cardboar d

plant . This review resulted in another series of disapprovals b y

such agencies as RSFSR Gosvodkhoz, the Siberian Division of th e

Academy of Science and Gosplan's prestigious Council for the Stud y

of the Productive Forces of the USSR (SOPS) .

The scope of the debate expanded further in late-1965, whe n

Gerasimov and Trofimuk published a comprehensive "general scheme "

for the multipurpose use of the entire Baikal watershed . Th e

plan was the outgrowth of a coordinated research project b y

Gerasimov's Institute of Geography, SOPS, Galazii's Limnologica l

Institute, and the Leningrad City Planning Institute . Its

underlying concept was that the Baikal region represented "a n

enormous natural combine" whose "product"--extraordinarily pur e

water--was becoming increasingly vital to the Soviet economy . 2 2

For this reason, development of the lake by single-purpos e

projects such as the proposed pulp mills was "absolutely impermis -

sible" from a scientific and practical point of view . In plac e

of such measures, Gerasimov and Trofimuk proposed that a Baika l

National Park-Combine (natsional'nyi park-kombinat) be established

to manage the basin's resources and exert strict control over al l

economic and industrial enterprises located there . 2 3

Thus, by late 1965 the controversy over the pulp mills ha d

spilled over into a heated bureaucratic conflict over the manage -

22 In addition to regulating the vast hydropower resources o fthe Angara River, the lake was seen as a potential water sourc efor the electronics industry, an important transport artery ,fishing resource, and a potentially profitable tourist attraction .

23 Other elements included construction of a pipeline from th eBaikalsk plant to the river Irkut ; relocation of the Selengins kplant and utilization of its structures for non-pollutin genterprises ; and the transfer of all log transportation to surfac eroads .

7 6

ment of the Baikal region . Several elements of this conflict wer e

certain to attract the attention of senior Party and Governmen t

officials . The first was the public denigration of Minleskho z

(the successor to Gosleskhoz) and its top officials by Trofimu k

and other critics . Such criticism skirted the bounds of accep-

table public discourse and implicitly challenged Party directive s

on the Siberian pulp and paper industry . The debate also -

threatened to hold up two important facilities in which substan-

tial resources had been invested and a significant part of whos e

output was intended for the defense industry . 24 Equally impor-

tant, the conflict featured the involvement of a broad range o f

research and planning agencies whose top officials enjoyed clos e

contacts with senior policy makers . Included were the Academy o f

Sciences, Gosplan and the State Committee of Science and Tech-

nology (GKNT) . 2 5

Indirect evidence that the Baikal issue was under review by

senior officials was provided in November 1965, when the RSFS R

Supreme Soviet Presidium adopted a resolution calling for bette r

implementation of the republic's 1960 conservation law . While i t

did not specifically mention Baikal, the resolution contained

explicit strictures against the very kinds of industrial practice s

that were of such concern to the defenders of the lake--i .e . ,

overcutting of watersheds, uncontrolled log rafting, tard y

completion and improper operation of effluent purificatio n

facilities and a generally lax attitude toward safeguardin g

irreplaceable natural resources .

Conclusive evidence that the Baikal matter had reached th e

top policy bodies came in mid-March 1965, when the USSR Governmen t

24The military dimensions of the Baikal cellulose plants ar enoted in Gustafson, "Environmental Issues Rise to Legitimacy," p .40 ; and Komarov, The Destruction of Nature in the Soviet Union, p .7 .

25 The GKNT was established in September 1965 out of th eformer State Committee for the Coordination of Scientific -Technical Work .

7 7

instructed Gosplan to establish a blue ribbon commission to

examine the threat posed by the Baikalsk and Selenginsk mills .

The Commission was directed by Academician N . M . Zhavoronkov, a

specialist on light isotopic elements within the Academy' s

Institute of Chemistry . The commission's membership consisted o f

dozens of engineers, scholars and water resource experts from th e

Academy of Sciences and other leading Moscow and Siberian researc h

agencies . 2 6

Following a lengthy review of the mills' designs and severa l

visits to the Lake, the Commission presented its report to a join t

session of the collegia of Gosplan, GENT and the Academy Presidiu m

in June 1966 . The principal finding was that the plants did no t

pose a fundamental threat to the lake--provided their effluen t

treatment facilities were built and operated in strict accordanc e

with design specifications . As an added safeguard, however, th e

Commission recommended long-term monitoring of the mills' waste s

as well as completion of plans for a pipeline to remove the waste s

out of the Baikal basin . Then, if the plant's purificatio n

technology failed to perform adequately, the pipeline could b e

constructed with minimum delay .

26Two additional influences cited by most analysts ar eMikhail Sholokhov's impassioned plea to save "this holy sea, ou rsacred Baikal" at the 23rd Congress (March 29-April 8, 1966), an dthe outspoken open letter, signed by 35 academicians, authors an dcreative artists, published in Komsomol'skaia pravda, May 11 ,1966 . See Kelley, "Environmental Policy-Making in the USSR," p .581 . If Volkov's account is correct, however, Sholokhov's remark scould not possibly have influenced the decision to create th especial commission . The same goes for the open letter, unless on eassumes that this document had been sent to the leadership ove rtwo months prior to publication . This seems unlikely in view o fthe public nature of the appeal and the openness of the press t osimilar "save Baikal" articles at the time . In my judgement, bot hevents are best seen as efforts to pressure the new commission t oconduct a thorough investigation . This is further suggested b yZhavoronkov's remark to Gustafson's concerning the intense publi cpressure brought to bear on the Commission at that time . See ,Gustafson, "Environmental Issues Rise to Legitimacy," Reform i nSoviet Politics, p . 42 .

7 8

While clearly not the whitewash numerous observers ha d

feared, the Commission's verdict provided a clear endorsement o f

the technological safeguards which Minleskhoz had devised t o

prevent pollution of the lake . 27 This provoked a storm o f

opposition from the mills' critics, who argued that there was n o

guarantee that the treatment works would be ready on time, or tha t

they would operate properly . Eventually, the critics argued ,

plant operators would be forced to choose between safeguarding th e

lake or keeping production lines open . In such cases, they would

inevitably choose the plan over the lake, and Baikal's unique

water quality would be destroyed . These protests failed to sway

the Committee's governing bodies, which adopted its report withou t

change . With their designs vindicated, Minleskhoz pressed forwar d

with the Baikalsk plant, which began production in late 1966 . 2 8

This ended the second phase of the debate, whereupon the issue o f

Baikal again receded from the agenda .

Baikal Redivivus : 1967-6 9

The third--and decisive--stage of the controversy began in

the Spring of 1967 and culminated in early 1969 with the adoptio n

of a second major resolution on the protection of Baikal by th e

USSR Council of Ministers . This action--which was followed by a

further joint Party-State resolution on Baikal in 1971--has bee n

27 Komarov, The Destruction of Nature, pp . 8-10 . According toKomarov, the Commission's report underwent four successive draft sbefore the authors dropped their initial conclusion that construc -tion of the Baikalsk mill would be "ruinous" for the lake .However, Komarov provides no sources for his account . Hi sanalysis is also inconsistent with other published works o nnumerous key points . For these reasons, the book was not reliedupon in this analysis .

28 The first phase of the mill was presented to the Stat eAcceptance Commission for permission to start up in December 1966 .According to later press reports, M . Gofman, Chief Sanitar yPhysician of the RSFSR Ministry of Reclamation and Water Manage-ment, refused to sign off on the plant, whose treatment device swere still not complete . At this point, Minleskhoz chief Timofee vsubstituted his signature for Gofman's thereby resolving th eremaining obstacle to the plant's commissioning .

7 9

described by Soviet and Western observers as the turning point i n

the effort to protect the lake's water resources . The 196 9

enactment can therefore be taken as evidence of the final entry o f

the Baikal issue onto the decision agenda .

As before, the central agenda participants were the Academ y

of Sciences, the Limnological Institute and the increasingl y

influential State Committee for Science and Technology .

Th e

Academy's concerns were expressed in a renewed assault on al l

forms of environmental degradation at its May 1967 Genera l

Meeting . The gathering witnessed a striking admission by Presi-

dent Kel'dysh that the Academy had "slackened its attention" t o

nature protection since its 1961 reorganization and consequentl y

had failed to take a sufficiently active stance against the risin g

tide of environmental abuses . Such problems, Kel'dysh argued, had

reached a point where the Academy was compelled to intensify it s

involvement in natural resource policy making . Similar comment s

were voiced by other speakers . 2 9

The most pointed remarks, however, were made by Academicia n

Trofimuk, who challenged the Academy "to stop making declaration s

and finally do something concrete about the [USSR's] wate r

problem ." Trofimuk thereupon launched a vigorous attack o n

Zhavoronkov's Baikal Commission, which he accused of "rashly "

(oprometchivo) advising the government that Baikal was in no wa y

endangered by Minleskhoz's pulp plants . In so doing, Trofimu k

argued, the Academy had "in essence sanctioned activities con-

nected with the pollution of this enormous water body . "

The Academy discussion resulted in the creation of severa l

new research bodies for studying environmental problems an d

developing options for resolving them . The most important fro m

the standpoint of Baikal was the Commission for the Study o f

29 The eminent economist, N . P . Fedorenko pressed for greaterprice incentives for rational resource management . Hydrometeorol-ogical Chief E . K Fedorov urged closer monitoring of environmenta lquality . Gerasimov, meanwhile, recommended that "many more "general meetings be convened to deal with other natural resourc eissues .

8 0

Productive Forces and Natural Resources . This body, whic h

reported directly to the Academy Presidium, was placed under th e

direction of Vice President N . V. Mel'nikov . Its members con-

sisted of numerous individuals--including Gerasimov, Trofimuk, an d

SOPS member Nikolai V . Razin--who had previously spoken ou t

against the Baikal pulp mills . In succeeding months, thes e

individuals sought to use the Mel'nikov commission as a soundin g

board for reviving debate over the lake within the Academy . Thi s

became apparent at the Committee's first plenum, when Gerasimov' s

urged the group to focus its attention on "helping to imp lement "

important environmental proposals that had been formulated b y

Academy research and policy councils . This remark almos t

certainly referred to Gerasimov's own plan for the comprehensiv e

development of the Baikal basin which had been the product of jus t

such a research council .

Galazii and his colleagues at the Limnological Institute wer e

a second force pressing for a change in the government's Baika l

policy . In the fall of 1968, for example, Galazii wrote i n

Komsomol'skaia pravda that he "was preparing materials for th e

Academy of Sciences" on the long-term impact of industria l

development on Siberia's water resources . The research indicate d

that the region was likely to experience a pronounced "wate r

hunger" in coming decades due to the accelerating development o f

Siberia's minerals, forests and other resources . In Galazii' s

view, this made it especially imperative to preserve the hig h

purity of Lake Baikal--the principal water source for much o f

Eastern Siberia . His article pointed out, however, that despit e

the expensive purification facilities installed at the Baikalsk

plant, the lake's water quality had already begun to decline . 3 0

30Galazii cited estimates by the Hydrometeorological Servic ethat even with the plant operating at half capacity, up to 40 0tons of toxic substances were being discharged into the lake eac hday . Sulfur compounds had also been noted at depths of up to 70 0meters as far as 20 kilometers from the plant . This was accom-panied by silt build-up and rising salt levels in the Baikal' smajor tributaries--a result of excessive logging . Ibid .

81

To stem further damage, Galazii recommended a total ban on th e

discharge of any industrial or domestic effluents into the lak e

and immediate completion of plans for the Baikalsk-Irkut pipeline .

Echoing Gerasimov's proposal, he also urged creation of a protec-

tive zone around the entire lake, including strict limits o n

industrial, forestry and log-rafting activities . 3 1

The third major proponent of more careful protection of th e

lake was the State Committee for Science and Technology . The GKNT

had become increasingly involved in environmental matters sinc e

its reorganization in September 1965 . 32 This appears to have

been a reflection of the environmental views of its Chairman, CPS U

Central Committee member Vladimir Alekseevich Kirilli n

(1913- ) . 33 The main vehicle for the GKNT's participation i n

environmental policy discussions was its Academic Council on th e

Study of the Complex Use and Renewal of Natural Resources . Thi s

body, headed by Gerasimov, had been established in July 1966 as a

cooperative venture with the Academy of Sciences . The council' s

31 These recommendations were further elaborated in late 1968 ,when Galazii published a full-length report on the findings of amajor research program carried out by the Limnological Institute ,the Baikal basin inspection of the RSFSR Minvodkhoz and th eIrkutsk Medical Institute . See G . I . Galazii, ed ., Baikaliproblema chistoi vody v Sibiri (Baikal and the problems of clea nwater in Siberia) (Irkutsk : Limnologicheskii Institut Sibirsko eOtdelenie ANSSSR, 1968) .

32 The GKNT's predecessor--the State Committee for Coordina-tion of Scientific-Technical Work--had been active in environmen-tal debates since the early 1960s, when it had organized a serie sof research councils on natural resource issues . These effort swere expanded under Kirillin . In 1965, an Academic Council on Ai rPollution was created under the direction of N . M . Zhavoronkov .In 1968, a Council on Water Resources and the Water Balance wa sestablished . Shortly thereafter, a Council on the Study of th eUtilization of Oceanic Resources was created under the leadershi pof Gidrometsluzhba Chairman, Fedorov . See "Khronika" [Chronicle] ,Gidrotekhnika i melioratsiia, no . 8 (1965), pp . 114-15 .

33Kirillin had been exposed to research and policy debates o nnatural resources in his previous position as Head of the Centra lCommittee's Department for Science and Educational Institutions in1955-63 .

82

mission was to coordinate scientific research on major problems o f

natural resource use and protection . This included forecastin g

the environmental impact of large-scale resource developmen t

projects--a task which placed the council at the center of th e

debate over the Baikalsk and Selenginsk plants . The council' s

institutional leadership in the environmental arena was furthe r

cemented in early-1966, when it adopted a five-year plan fo r

coordinating all GKNT and Academy research on natural resourc e

issues . 3 4

This initiative reached fruition in January 1969, when th e

USSR Council of Ministers adopted a special 10-point resolutio n

containing important new provisions against pollution of Lak e

Baikal . As noted above, the resolution marked a major change i n

the leadership's attitudes toward Baikal and the beginning o f

serious efforts to protect the lake's water quality from furthe r

deterioration .

The 1972 Environmental Resolution s

The need for further statutes governing all aspects o f

environmental quality arose in the mid 1960s . This was partly an

outgrowth of the Baikal controversy, which appears to hav e

fostered a consensus among environmental experts on the need t o

address pollution problems on a nationwide scale . This perception

was clearly reflected in the writings of the ecologist-autho r

Volkov, who urged that the experience gained at the lake b e

applied to "the entire problem of protecting fresh water fro m

pollution ." At Baikal, Volkov stated ,

knowledge is growing and methods are being developed tha tmake it possible to create here an independent school fo rpurification of pulp enterprise wastes . It could become th eworld's leading such school and train specialists capable o f

34 1u . P . Belichenko, "V . I . Lenin i okhrana vodnykh resursov "[V . I . Lenin and the protection of water resources], Gidrotekhnik ai melioratsiia, no . 3 (1970), pp . 12-13 . According to Belichenko ,the GKNT program envisioned the development of detailed plans fo rpollution abatement measures at many of the USSR's key wate rresources . The research was to be carried out by 177 institute sand laboratories belonging to 37 ministries and departments .

8 3

putting an end on all Soviet soil to the pollution of river sand reservoirs by industrial wastes .

A second catalyst was the occurrence of a severe pollutio n

emergency on the middle Volga in May 1967 . The crisis wa s

triggered by a massive discharge of wastes by an oil refiner y

whose treatment facilities had become inoperative . The effluent s

caused the destruction of thousands of tons of fish along the Kam a

river, a major Volga tributary, and may have disrupted the wate r

supply of the capital of Perm' oblast as well . The incident had

major repercussions both locally and in Moscow, and led to th e

dismissal of the refinery director and the chief of the loca l

Minvodkhoz basin inspection . These extraordinary sanctions ,

coupled with the unusually shrill tone of press reporting, provid e

a clear indication of the level of official concern aroused by th e

matter .

In response to such developments, government officials becam e

increasingly outspoken in defense of environmental quality . On e

example was the Procuracy, which promptly opened criminal inves-

tigations against the parties responsible for the Volga crisis . 3 5

Another new entrant to the debate was Gosplan director Nikola i

Baibakov . Having been silent on the topic since assuming thi s

post in 1965, Baibakov forcefully addressed the pollution proble m

before the USSR Supreme Soviet in October 1967 . In locating new

industrial enterprises, Baibakov stated ,

it is necessary to pay increasing attention to questions o fnature conservation and the rational use of each plot o fland . We cannot reconcile ourselves to such practices a ssetting aside of unjustifiably large sections of land fo r

35 "Called to account for polluting water," p . 3 . This markeda further intensification of the Procuracy's crack—down agains tpolluters . In December 1965, the Procuracy instituted crimina lproceedings against the director of the Kirov Chemical Plant fo rnegligence in causing a mass fish kill on the Volga . See Pravda ,December 17, 1965, p . 6 . For reports of similar actions, se eIzvestiia, February 4, 1966, p . 4 ; and August 20, 1966 ; andPravda, June 30, 1966, p . 4 . Such cases reflected a marked shif tfrom the Khrushchev years, when criminal penalties were almos tnever applied against persons guilt of environmental abuses .

8 4

construction, the excessive felling of forests, and th epollution of water and air resources .

Baibakov's environmental awareness was likely stimulated by th e

completion of the Genskhema for the USSR's water resources tha t

had been ordered by the Council of Ministers in April 1960 . Thi s

document, finally unveiled in early 1967, concluded that shortage s

of clean water were "beginning to restrain the normal developmen t

of the [USSR's] productive forces ." Given the scarcity of clean

water, the report stressed, the requirements of agriculture ,

industry and the local population can be satisfie d

only on the condition of a sharp reduction in the pollutio nof water resources by effluents and the strictest implementa-tion of the decrees of the all-union and republic government son the protection of water resources . Without a decisiv e

struggle with pollution, capital investments in watermanagement facilities (vodokhoziaistvennoe stroitel'stvo )

will not yield the required results.

The period also witnessed innovative environmental reforms a t

the republic level, particularly in the Ukraine . In March 1967 ,

the Ukrainian government established a special State Committee fo r

the Protection of Nature . The new agency was authorized t o

coordinate local environmental control activities and advis e

Ukrainian party and government officials on additional conserva-

tion measures . As an expression of the seriousness of republi c

perceptions of the problem, the Committee's budget included fund s

for over two dozen branches to supervise emissions at the loca l

level . These efforts evidently enjoyed the support of republi c

Party Chairman and Politburo member, Petr Shelest, who urged a

crackdown on industrial managers who contaminate water supplie s

"and through their wastefulness create difficulties in satisfyin g

the public's [water] needs ." 3 6

The rising concern for the environment prompted a group o f

prominent legal scholars to mount a renewed drive for the nationa l

36 "Urgent tasks of Communists in Kiev Province - Speech byComrade P . E . Shelest," Pravda Ukrainy, February 17, 1968, pp . 1 -2 ; trans . in CDSP, XX, No . 8, pp . 6-8 . Shelest also urged"intensification of the struggle" against air pollution byindustrial enterprises .

8 5

conservation law and all-union environmental protection agenc y

that had eluded them under Khrushchev's administration . Lik e

their previous initiative--and Kolbasov's more recent campaign fo r

codifying USSR water legislation--the first stage of this initia-

tive was conducted in the specialized press . Among the first to

propose such measures was the eminent Moscow University jurist, N .

D . Kazantsev, who in June 1967 reiterated his earlier proposal fo r

the passage of fundamentals of environmental law for the USSR an d

companion codes for the union republics . 37 This was followed by

an article by Kolbasov in the Academy's law journal . Kolbasov' s

proposal was clearly patterned after his earlier arguments fo r

codifying water law . Just as the water law reform had bee n

necessitated by gaps in all-union legislation, Kolbasov wrote ,

one cannot regard as normal a situation in which one of th emost important economic and cultural problems--that o fprotecting the environment--is resolved primarily in th elegislation of the union republics and does not find suf-ficiently broad reflection in federal legislation . "

To remedy this deficiency, Kolbasov proposed the adoption of a n

all-union conservation law containing detailed provisions for th e

protection of natural resources and strict requirements for thei r

enforcement . 38 The law's implementation was to be carried out b y

a new conservation agency uniting the control functions of th e

various natural resource ministries . These proposals were furthe r

discussed at a major conservation conference in Moscow in Novembe r

37N . D . Kazantsev, "Prirodno-resursnoe pravo i ego predelykak integrirovanoi otrasli prava" [Natural resource law and it sboundaries as an integrated branch of law], vestnik MoskovskogoUniversiteta, no . 6 (1967) . This contained many ideas expresse din Kazantsev's seminal article, "O pravovom regulirovanii okhran yprirody" [On legal regulation of environmental protection] vestni kMoskovskogo universitet, no . 1 (1960), pp . 5-17 .

38Kolbasov also urged that the law provide streamlinedprocedures for reimbursing downstream water users, collectiv efarms and forestry cooperatives for monetary losses incurred as aresult of the violation of environmental statutes by neighborin gfactories, dambuilders and other entities .

8 6

1967, which characterized the creation of such an agency as a n

urgent task .

In the latter part of 1967, the repeated calls for environ-

mental reform appear to have triggered an intense debate on th e

matter with the Soviet leadership . One indication of the debate

was provided by a provocative article in Literaturnaia gazeta b y

the popular writer, Vladimir Chivilikhin . The article vigorousl y

rebutted a series of arguments against tougher pollution control s

that had recently been voiced . These arguments included asser-

tions that : (1) environmental pollution is not a big problem--i n

the words of a author from Magnitogorsk, "We live there, we

manage, we breathe . Why should you worry about us?" ; (2 )

controlling pollution is excessively costly ; (3) the USSR has

enough laws on the books to deal with the problem ; (4) preserving

pristine air and water is utopian, since "in our age of constantly

accelerating and unremitting development of industry it is

impossible" to completely prevent pollution ; and (5) the mos t

appropriate response is thus a short-term campaign to curb th e

worst abuses . Chivilikhin's response suggests that his primar y

audience was not the writers' union, but high officials opposed t o

the enactment of new anti-pollution statutes . The struggle fo r

clean air, he argued ,

is not a short-term campaign ; we won't get anywhere throug hedicts and orders . . . In real life, there is only one way t osolve the problem under discussion--painstaking, sometime sagonizingly hard work . . . . So far this work has been don ewithout a plan, without coordination, and with countles sflaws and errors . I am convinced that an interdepartmenta l. . . agency with great powers must take charge of it .

The existence of behind-the-scenes controversy was furthe r

suggested by a senior official of the USSR Procuracy .

One often hears that the 20th century is the century o fmotion and of the rapid development of technology an dindustrial production . One cannot stop the growth o ftechnology and therefore, the argument goes, it is impossibl eto eliminate air pollution . You can't make an omelet withou t

breaking eggs.

A common refrain of the Stalinist era, the above proverb cap-

8 7

sulized the views of conservative officials on the inevitabilit y

of environmental damage in an industrializing USSR .

Elite resistance to environmental measures, however, appeare d

to diminish significantly following Brezhnev's strong appeal fo r

conservation in his speech on the 50th Anniversary of the Russia n

Revolution in November 1967 . Like Chivilikhin's unnamed op-

ponents, Brezhnev placed the issue squarely within the context o f

technological development . But rather than accepting the in-

evitability of environmental decay, Brezhnev called for a re -

doubling of efforts aimed at preserving the USSR's natura l

environment .

In all this, I wish to point out so as to underscore ho wimportant it is to preserve nature and to protect andmultiply its riches . (Applause .)

A prudent . zealous use ofnatural resources,, concern for the land, forests, rivers an dclean water, and for plants and animals--all this is oursacred communist task (nashe krovnoe kommunisticheskoe delo) .We must preserve and beautify our land for future generation sof Soviet people . (Stormy applause .) . . . The more rationall ywe use the riches of nature . the greater the successes thatwill be achieved by industry . agriculture and science .

This was the first personal appeal for conservation by a Part y

leader since Lenin's famous dicta 60 years earlier . Judging from

the audience's enthusiastic response, there were evidently man y

party officials who felt that such a commitment was long overdue .

The timing of Brezhnev's intervention, however, suggests that h e

was responding to, rather than initiating a new policy issue . The

long interval before Brezhnev next raised the subject at the 24t h

Party Congress in 1971 further indicates that environmenta l

protection did not rank among his most urgent policy goals .

Rather, like his earlier statements on the use of land resources ,

Brezhnev's appeal appears to have been motivated by a desire t o

advance related policy initiatives (e .g ., agricultural reform and

scientific development) and underscore certain broad themes which

8 8

were emblematic of his leadership . 39 Brezhnev's omission of any

reference to past and present environmental controversies--

especially the issue of Baikal--and his emphasis on the positive

gains from conservation further suggest that he may also have bee n

trying to temper the emotional level of the debate and prevent it

from spilling over into a generalized attack on official economic

policy .

Whatever his intentions, Brezhnev's remarks apparently tippe d

the scales in favor of those arguing for stronger environmenta l

controls . Sensing that a policy window had been opened, environ-

mental proponents undertook a further series of initiative s

designed to capitalize on the leadership's renewed receptivity .

In early 1968, the Party's leading ideological journal opened it s

pages to a broad-ranging debate under the rubric, "Our sacred

task"--a direct quote from Brezhnev's speech . The first article s

dealt with the pros and cons of an all-union conservation agency ,

suggesting that the formation of such an agency may have bee n

under serious consideration at this time . 40 The discussion

continued into the early part of 1969 . It then concluded in a

bold proposal by I . P . Gerasimov for thorough environmental impac t

analysis prior to undertaking any major natural resource project .

It is high time, Gerasimov argued, to replac e

the outmoded and dangerous tradition of viewing nature a sinexhaustible [with] a new concept, which recognizes tha tscientific knowledge is inadequate for perfect management o fnature . . . . The necessary basis for [such] rational manage-ment must be accurate scientific forecasting of thos etransformations in the natural environment whichresult fromhuman influence on nature .

39 lncluded were the need for thrift and economy(berezhlivo-st',), accountability (otvetstvennost'), the importance of basin g

policies on scientific laws (ob"ektivnost'), and the improvemen tof productivity through better management of resources (intensivnost') .

40N . Eliseev and A . Kondratenko, "Nashe krovnoe delo" [Ou rsacred duty], Kommunit, no . 5 (1968), pp . 112-17 . The writer swere officials of the Chief Administration for the Huntin gIndustry, Nature Preserves and the Protection of Nature of th eRSFSR Ministry of Agriculture .

8 9

To facilitate the required analyses, Gerasimov recommended that a

comprehensive inventory of environmental protection measures b e

compiled as a separate section of the state research plan an d

funded with the necessary budgetary and personnel resources .

This was followed by a vigorous grass-roots campaign to clea n

up the Volga basin . The campaign was sparked by a local Communis t

youth organization whose activities were highlighted in th e

national press . This was followed by a series of strongly -

worded articles by local officials decrying the failure o f

factories and municipalities to treat their effluents . Befor e

long, the campaign ignited passions almost as intense as thos e

over Lake Baikal.41 The scientific community joined the campaig n

in early September when the Academy's Council on Multipurpose Us e

and Protection of Water Resources held a major conference on th e

Volga in Togliatti . Shortly thereafter, the USSR Council o f

Ministers ordered the governments of the RSFSR and Kazakhstan t o

formulate detailed proposals for limiting the discharge o f

untreated effluent into the Volga and Ural rivers . 4 2

Then, in late 1968, senior officials of the RSFSR governmen t

joined the environmental movement by putting forth a proposal o f

their own . In remarks before the USSR Supreme Soviet, Konstanti n

G . Pysin, First Deputy Chairman of the RSFSR Council of Ministers ,

41The vice chairman of the Rostov oblast soviet accuse dlocal health officials and Minvodkhoz basin inspectors o fnegligence in carrying out their pollution control responsibiliti -es . See, "The Volga will be clean : Act together," Izvestiia, ,June 15, 1968, p . l . This led to disciplinary actions by th eParty Control Committee and the initiation of criminal proceeding sby the USSR Procuracy against the officials of a metallurgica lcombine . "After criticism : Alarm about the river," Pravda, Jun e20, 1968, p . 3 ; trans . in CDSP, XX, No . 25, pp . 20-1 . "Polluter sof the Volga are punished," Izvestiia, September 3, 1968, p . 4 ;trans . in CDSP, XX, No . 36, pp . 26-27 .

42These instructions were contained in a September 196 8resolution by the USSR Council of Ministers on the protection o fthe Caspian Sea, "O merakh po predotvrashcheniiu zagriaznenii akaspiiskogo moria" [On preventing the pollution of the Caspia nSea], Resheniia, vol . 7, pp . 105-111 .

9 0

urged that detailed anti-pollution directives be elaborated in a

separate section of the yearly economic plan for each republi c

ministry, department and region . In Pysin's view, such an

approach was essential to raise the "alarming[ly]" low level o f

compliance with the environmental provisions contained in existin g

plans . Significantly, these remarks met with approval fro m

Baibakov, who noted that Pysin and other speakers had "justifiabl y

criticized" the inadequacies in the country's environmenta l

efforts . Pysin's recommendation was implemented in the Spring o f

1968 when the RSFSR government ordered the development of yearly

and long-range environmental plans by all republic agencies a s

part of preparations for the 1971-75 Five-Year Plan . The proposa l

was then given nationwide prominence at the 24th Party Congress b y

K . M . Gerasimov, First Vice Chairman of the RSFSR Council o f

Ministers and head of the republic Gosplan . On this occasion ,

Gerasimov recommended that a separate section on nature protectio n

be included in the economic plans for all administrative an d

territorial entities in the USSR .

Simultaneously, the RSFSR became the first republic t o

establish a standing committee on nature protection within it s

Supreme Soviet . This action was apparently taken in late 1968, a t

which time the committee held its first review of regiona l

environmental problems . 43 The review highlighted widespread

deficiencies in the treatment of industrial wastes, thereb y

strengthening the resolve of republic officials to push ahead wit h

further environmental reforms . 4 4

43 "Rekam byt' chistymi" [Rivers will be clean], Izvestiia ,November 14, 1968, p . 1 . The editorial reported that the questio nof "a careful, solicitous approach to natural resources" hadrecently been discussed at a session of the Commission on th eProtection of Nature of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet . This was th efirst reference to such a commission by the national media .

44T . S . Sushkov, "Pravovaia okhrana prirody" [Conservatio nlaw], Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, no . 5 (1969), p . 3 .Apparently drawing on information from this review, Sushkov note dthat the Ministry of Petroleum Refining and the Petrochemical

9 1

As regional and local initiatives proliferated, Kolbasov an d

other Academy scholars intensified their lobbying for a nationa l

environmental law . A key stage in this effort was an all-unio n

conference organized in June 1969 by the Institute of State an d

Law . In attendance were many of the Academy's top environmenta l

experts, including SOPS Chairman Mel'nikov, GKNT environmenta l

council head I . P . Gerasimov, and IGPAN experts Aksenenok and

Kolbasov . Reports presented to the conference were notably mor e

critical than at previous gatherings . Gerasimov, for example ,

stated that environmental damage had reached "catastrophi c

dimensions" across large portions of the USSR . "This cannot bu t

evoke alarm (trevoga) for the fate of the natural environment . "

Conference participants responded by advancing a series o f

proposals, including the strengthening of criminal and civi l

penalties for pollution violations, review of foreign legislatio n

to identify concepts than might be applicable to the USSR an d

adoption of a Constitutional clause on the environment . Th e

conference further urged the "codification of legislation and th e

creation of a unified state agency for the protection of th e

environment . "

Having reached consensus on basic principles, legal scholar s

spent the next 18 months debating the contents of the propose d

law . 45 A third conference was organized in January 1971 t o

Industry had completed only two of ten treatment works planned fo r1967 . Factories in Mezhegorsk performed equally poorly, usin gless than forty percent of allocated anti-pollution investments i n1968 .

45Major contributions to the debate included : L . A .Zaslavskaia, "Issledovanie v oblasti zakonodatel'stva ob okhran eprirody" [Research on environmental law], Sovetskoe gosudarstvoprav, no . 6 (1971) ; and N . D . Kazantsev, "O nekotorykh voprosak hkodifikatsii prirodookhranitel'nogo zakonodatel'stva" [Question son the codification of environmental legislation], vestni kMoskovskogo Universiteta : Seriia prava, no . 6 (1971) . See also ,Zaslavskaia, "O sozdanii spetsialnogo gosudarstvennogo organa p ookhrane prirody" [On the creation of a special state agency fo rthe protection of nature], Uchenye zapiski VNIISZ, no . 23 (1971) ,pp . 187-95 . VNIISZ is the Russian acronym for the All-Union

9 2

identify further areas of agreement . Finally, in early 1972 ,

Kolbasov published a comprehensive article summarizing the lega l

community's recommendations for the policy makers .

Thus by early 1972, the environmental community had arti-

culated a series of proposals for protecting the USSR's water and

other natural resources . While not presented in a comprehensiv e

document such as Zvonkov's 1960 report, these ideas nonetheles s

provided a relatively coherent response to many of the USSR's mos t

pressing environmental difficulties . The centerpiece of th e

program--promoted most vigorously by Kolbasov--was the strength-

ening of environmental law . The second element was the consolida-

tion of environmental monitoring functions in the hands of a well -

funded federal agency . This was another reform advanced by lega l

and scientific officials . The adoption of detailed environmenta l

directives for industrial ministries and government agencies, an d

the consolidation of these in a discrete section of each depart-

ment's yearly economic plan, was a third proposal intended t o

improve environmental performance . As noted above, this idea had

originated within the RSFSR government . A final recommendation ,

put forth by I . P . Gerasimov, urged greater scientific researc h

and more comprehensive long-term forecasting of environmenta l

conditions .

Beginning in early 1971, there were mounting indications tha t

the leadership was becoming increasingly concerned about environ-

mental damage . At the 24th Congress, Brezhnev again called fo r

greater care in utilizing natural resources .

Taking measures to accelerate scientific-technical progress ,we must do everything so that it is combined with a pruden tattitude toward natural resources and does not serve as asource of dangerous air and water pollution and the exhaus-tion of the land . The Party is becoming more demanding o fplanning, economic and design organizations and all cadre sinvolved in designing and building new enterprises and

Research Institute for Soviet Law .

9 3

improving existing enterprises as regards the protection o fnature .

Kosygin's economic report to the Congress contained a simila r

exhortation for more rational natural resource management, markin g

his first public statement on the subject . Further evidence o f

leadership attention was provided in May 1971 and again th e

following July, when the Conservation Committees of both chamber s

of the USSR Supreme Soviet held special sessions to review th e

environmental performance of various national ministries . 47 Both

reviews concluded with resolutions recommending improvements i n

environmental planning, additional treatment works, and stepped-u p

research on waste purification technologies .

While confirming the issue's rising prominence, the abov e

developments provide no indication that environmental problems had

been elevated to the national decision agenda . During th e

following 18 months, in fact, no such indication appeared in an y

of the publications used as a guide to the leadership's agenda .

This silence ended when the Supreme Soviet devoted a major segmen t

of its September 1972 session to a review of ecological problems .

The session concluded with the adoption of a sweeping resolutio n

ordering intensified measures to safeguard the environment . Thi s

was followed by the passage of an all-encompassing environmenta l

resolution by the Central Committee and USSR Council of Minister s

46XXIV S"ezd (Stenograficheskii otchet), vol . 1, p . 82 ,emphasis added . Brezhnev further noted that, as part of his Peac eProgram, the USSR was ready to participate in collective interna-tional measures for the protection of nature . This proposal wasreiterated in the foreign policy portion of the report . Ibid ., p .54 .

47 The standing conservation committees were formed in Jun e1970 . See A. Agranovskii, Izvestiia, July 30, 1970, pp . l, 3 ;trans . in CDSP, XVII, no . 30, p . 19 . The May 1971 sessio nreviewed the activities of the chemical, pulp and paper and non -ferrous metallurgy industries . See, Vedomosti VerkhovnogoSoveta$SSR, 1971, no . 20, pp . 274-5 ; and Sovety deputatovtrudiash-chikhsia, no. 7 (1971), p. 58. The July 1972 review focused onthe use of minerals by the ministries of ferrous and non-ferrou smetallurgy . Ibid ., 1972, no . 28, p . 419 .

9 4

in December 1972 . The environmental issue had finally reached th e

highest political agenda in the USSR .

CONCLUSION$

Officials of scientific and governmental institutions wer e

influential in placing the water quality issue on the agenda i n

all three case studies examined in this chapter . The mos t

prominent policy activists were representatives of researc h

institutes and policy councils subordinated to the Academy of

Sciences and the State Committee for Science and Technology .

Through skilled use of formal and informal channels, thes e

officials raised the awareness of Soviet policy makers and

persuaded them to undertake major policy initiatives to comba t

water pollution and other environmental abuses . In the process ,

they exerted substantial influence on the leadership's agenda and

the substance of the resulting policies . In sum, the chapte r

provides further support for the hypothesis that entrepreneuria l

Soviet officials were a major source of agenda items in the early

1970s .

Continuing the pattern identified in Chapter IV, ministeria l

officials were not an important influence on the agenda durin g

this period . Gosvodkhoz officials participated in the earl y

stages of the discussion in 1961-62 . Gosplan's department o f

water resources was also reported to have formulated a draft wate r

law at that time . These activities confirmed our expectation tha t

bureaus tend to be vigorous proponents of policy initiatives i n

their first years in operation . Gosvodkhoz participation ,

however, declined sharply in the mid-1960s while Gosplan' s

proposal was apparently shelved . Moreover, aside from an appea l

to accelerate preparation of the new water law at a 1968 con-

ference, the USSR Ministry of Reclamation and Water Managemen t

was not directly involved in this legislative initiative . Thi s

ministry, created in 1965, was also a bystander in both the Baika l

issue and the 1972 environmental decisions, despite the oppor-

9 5

tunities provided therein for expanding its pollution contro l

functions . 4 8

The case materials thus reinforce the conclusion that th e

governmental ministries were not an important source of agend a

items in the water quality arena . Once again, there are severa l

possible explanations, including a lack of entrepreneurial agenc y

directors committed to water quality, and the preoccupation o f

Minvodkhoz and other regulatory agencies with program implementa -

tion . As suggested by the health ministry's aloof stance in th e

1960 water management decision, the fear of exposing agenc y

weakness may also have deterred Minvodkhoz from lobbying fo r

additional environmental functions .

All three case studies, on the other hand, underscore th e

close involvement of the Academy of Science in agenda setting .

The analysis also revealed the rise of the State Committee fo r

Science and Technology as a major policy force . These agencies '

most active policy entrepreneurs include Kolbasov, Galazii an d

Innokentii Gerasimov . Each was engaged in continuous behind-the-

scenes lobbying for stronger pollution controls . They also showed

exceptional skills at defining and framing issues to conform wit h

the political climate of the time . Contacts with high-leve l

gatekeepers were another resource used to advance their respectiv e

issues .

In addition, the influence of these actors extended acros s

specific water quality decisions . Kolbasov, for example, wa s

influential in both the 1970 water law and the 1972 environmenta l

statutes, while Inokentii Gerasimov was a pivotal force in th e

Baikal controversy and the 1970 environmental resolutions . In

sum, agenda influence does not appear to have been as narrowl y

channeled as Gustafson has argued .

48In fact, P . N . Shternov, the agency's chief anti-pollutio nofficial, explicitly argued against Volkov's proposal to broade nthe ministry's regulatory responsibilities at Baikal and el-sewhere . P . Shternov, "They have sufficient powers," Literatur -naia gazeta, November 15, 1967 ; trans . in CDSP, XIX, No . 48, p . 8 .

9 6

The analysis also revealed significant involvement by senio r

RSFSR officials in the 1972 environmental decrees . However, sinc e

such involvement was limited to one case study, it is unclea r

whether this was an isolated instance or an indication of a

broader involvement in agenda setting .

The data suggest two further observations . First, both wate r

law codification and the Baikal issue were facilitated by the

Soviet leadership change in October 1964 . In each instance, medi a

coverage increased and officials became more willing to question

past decisions . Given Khrushchev's low tolerance for environ-

mental debate, a more open atmosphere would probably have emerged

under almost any successor administration . However, the upsurg e

of environmental concern was more than just a response to th e

change in personalities, but appears to have reflected a willing-

ness to experiment with new approaches to a problem that wa s

clearly not being properly addressed by existing policy . In thi s

sense, the succession was itself a contributing factor to th e

government's increased receptivity to environmental issues in th e

early Brezhnev years . Thus, even in the absence of a formalized

campaign, the increased Glasnost' accompanying political succes-

sions would appear to provide an additional impulse to th e

movement of long-neglected issues onto the agenda .

Finally, there is scattered evidence that the growin g

international concern over the environment in the late 1960s an d

early 1970s may also have spurred agenda change in the USSR .

Gerasimov's frequent participation in foreign ecological con-

ferences, for instance, appears to have been positively correlate d

with his criticism of environmental damage in the Soviet Union and

his lobbying on behalf of legal and institutional changes . Upon

returning from the September 1968 UNESCO conference in Paris ,

Gerasimov reported that the gathering had shown that "divers e

changes of a predominately negative character are taking place in

the environment and are acquiring ever more threatening dimen -

sions ." He also noted approvingly that Sweden had formed a

9 7

special national committee of scholars to prepare for the con -

ference .

This committee carried its work to the point of adopting aspecial law of the government on protecting the environmen tand the rational exploitation of its resources on th eterritory of Sweden . "

The imprint of these experiences was clearly evident in Gerasi-

mov's subsequent writings and activities on behalf of the 197 2

environmental resolutions . E . K . Fedorov, Chairman of Gidromets-

luzhba, was another official with close involvement in interna-

tional events . While speculative, Fedorov's contacts wit h

international environmental experts may have played a role in hi s

agency's assumption of important new monitoring functions in th e

1972 environmental resolutions .

,

9 9

CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION S

This study has examined three fundamental questions about th e

formation of the policy agenda in the USSR . First, who par-

ticipates in identifying emerging policy issues in the Sovie t

Union? Second, to what extent are officials of ministries, stat e

committees and other bureaucratic organizations influential i n

persuading the leadership to address new issues? And third, wha t

role do crises, leadership priorities and other factors play i n

making an issue ripe for decision making ?

To examine these questions, three hypotheses were formulate d

pertaining to the agenda setting process . These hypotheses wer e

then examined through detailed analyses of seven major wate r

quality initiatives undertaken in the USSR from 1917 through 1972 .

The findings of the research and their implications for the stud y

of Soviet policy making are summarized below .

RESEARCH FINDING S

Participation in Agenda Settin g

The analysis revealed that a broad range of individuals an d

institutions participated in bringing water quality problems to

the attention of the Soviet leadership in 1917-72 . The mos t

important participants can be categorized in three broad groups .

The first consisted of the directors of government agencie s

responsible for water management, public health and scienc e

policy . This group included two Commissars of Public Health ; th e

Commissar of Municipal Services ; two Presidents of the USS R

Academy of Sciences ; and the Chairman of the State Committee o f

Science and Technology . In the seven case studies, these in-

dividuals were not simply executing decisions previously adopte d

by higher level bodies . Rather, they were actively engaged in

identifying problems for consideration by the leadership, for-

1 0 0

mulating proposals to resolve them and lobbying higher official s

on their behalf .

The second group of participants were the directors an d

senior officials of administrative and research agencies engaged

in water management . These officials spanned a broad range o f

disciplines . They included, for example, technical experts suc h

as A . N . Sysin of the Health Commissariat's sanitation administra-

tion ; V . P . Lebedevaia of the All-Union State Sanitary Inspec-

torate (VGSI) ; N . S . Stroganov of the Academy of Municipal

Services ; and G . A . Galazii of the Academy of Science's Limnolo-

gical Institute at Lake Baikal . The group also included O . S .

Kolbasov and G . A . Aksenenok, both prominent jurists affiliate d

with the Academy's Institute of State and Law (IGPAN) .

In addition, important roles were played by the heads o f

several top water resource policy councils, including : V. V .

Zvonkov of the Academy of Science's Council on Water Managemen t

Problems ; N. V. Mel'nikov of the Academy's Commission for th e

Study of Productive Forces and Natural Resources ; and I . P .

Gerasimov of the GKNT's Academic Council on the Study of th e

Complex Use and Renewal of Natural Resources . As with the firs t

group, the activities of this cluster of participants spanned al l

stages of agenda setting, including preparing studies and policy

proposals, circulating these within the policy community and amon g

senior officials and drafting legislation for adoption by th e

leadership .

The third group of agenda participants consisted of indivi-

dual writers, scholars and environmental activists . These actor s

were generally affiliated with academic and other organization s

not defined as specialized bureaucratic institutions according to

the criteria used in this study . Representatives included th e

prominent Moscow University legal scholar, N . D . Kazantsev ; th e

outspoken writers, Oleg Volkov and Vladimir Chivilikhin ; and

numerous others .

The large number of individuals engaged in identifying wate r

quality issues and the diversity of their activities suggest that

1 0 1

agenda setting is not a monopoly of the top leadership . Rather ,

it is a process in which a broad range of actors may engage i n

active and meaningful participation . This finding, supported b y

all seven case studies, is the first key conclusion of th e

research .

The Influence of Bureau officialson Agenda Settin g

As indicated above, the most prominent participants in agend a

setting were senior and-mid level officials of bureaucrati c

organizations responsible for various aspects of water management .

The study's second principal finding is that these officials wer e

not only actively engaged in identifying water quality problems ,

but were a major force in the leadership's decision to devot e

serious attention to these difficulties . This is indicated by th e

strong support for Hypothesis l, which postulated that official s

of specialized bureaucratic institutions were highly influentia l

in placing the water quality issue on the agenda from 1917 t o

1972 . This hypothesis was supported by six of the seven initia-

tives examined in the study . 4 9

Analysis of the 1922 public sanitation decree, for example ,

concluded that this measure was directly inspired by Healt h

Commissar Semashko and his chief advisor, Sysin . The need fo r

formal controls over water quality was first conceived an d

undertaken by Semashko through the kollegiia, or policy making

board, of the RSFSR Health Commissariat (NKZdrav) . The controls

were then advocated in a special report to the All-Union Centra l

Executive Committee (VTsIK) ; placed on the leadership's agenda by

the VTsIK ; elaborated into a draft decree by Sysin ; and finally

adopted into law by the Sovnarkom with the backing of Lenin-- a

49The exception was the unsuccessful attempt by Strogano vand other officials to promote a major overhaul of water manage-ment in 1937-38 . Coming on the heels of the 1937 pollutio ncontrols, this initiative appeared to have a significant chance o fsuccess . In the event, however, the proposals failed to exert an yinfluence on the leadership's agenda .

1 0 2

close personal friend of Semashko . From inception to agend a

entry, the 1922 law is thus viewed as the product of an initiativ e

put forth almost exclusively by the health bureaucracy .

The 1937 Sovnarkom resolution was a second illustration o f

successful bureau influence on the agenda . This action, taken a t

the height of Stalin's industrialization drive, was found to hav e

been inspired by senior and mid-level sanitary officials led b y

NKZdrav director Vladimirskii and N . S . Stroganov of the Academy

of Municipal Services . The call for further steps to ste m

pollution was first accepted by the All-Russian Congress o f

Soviets in 1935, which authorized the preparation of a nationa l

survey to assess the depth of the problem . The findings of th e

survey, together with a draft resolution compiled by NKZdrav, th e

VGSI and Sysin's Institute of Communal Sanitation, were apparentl y

forwarded to higher decision makers by a major conference o f

NKZdrav officials . Twelve months later, the Sovnarkom adopted a

law embodying point-for-point the recommendations of this ga-

thering, suggesting that the proposals drafted by the bureau

officials were highly influential in the Sovnarkom's decision t o

address the problem .

The April 1960 resolution on multipurpose water managemen t

was a third illustration of the influence of agency officials . In

this instance, representatives of the USSR Academy of Science s

were the most vigorous proponents of the water management reforms .

The initiative was conceived by Academician Zvonkov, director o f

an Academy policy council on water resources . Capitalizing on an

upsurge of interest in the environment spawned by the Academ y

leadership at the republic level, Zvonkov formulated a comprehen-

sive plan for regulating the discharge of harmful wastes in th e

late 1950s . This plan gained the support of a broad range o f

water resources officials and experts, and was formally advocate d

by Zvonkov in a book published in early 1960 . As occurred in

1937, this action was followed by the adoption of a Council o f

Ministers resolution embodying nearly all of the major action s

advocated by the Zvonkov report .

1 0 3

The three critical water quality decisions adopted by th e

Brezhnev administration were also revealed to have been spurred b y

mid-level Soviet officials . In the codification of water law i n

1970, the primary initiator was Oleg Kolbasov, senior associate a t

Institute of State and Law . Drawing on his recognized expertis e

in environmental law and contacts with senior officials, Kolbaso v

was apparently instrumental in inclusion of water law reform o n

the agenda of the Supreme Soviet in mid-1964 . As director of th e

legislative drafting committee formed to prepare a new water law ,

Kolbasov was well-positioned to guide the initiative to conclusio n

in 1970 . Thus, while direct evidence is lacking on how the issu e

actually reached the Politburo agenda in 1966, there is substan-

tial indirect evidence suggesting that Kolbasov and other agenc y

officials played an important part in bringing the issue to th e

fore .

The adoption of safeguards against the pollution of Lak e

Baikal in the late 1960s--the seminal environmental controversy i n

the USSR thus far--was also determined to have been influenced b y

officials of specialized research and governmental agencies .

Though aided by a wide-ranging press debate on the problem, th e

leadership's decision to address the problem appears to have bee n

inspired by a broad-ranging basin-management plan put forth by I .

P . Gerasimov, of the Academy's Institute of Geography, and Nikola i

Trofimuk, Vice President of the Academy's Siberian Department .

Finally, the comprehensive environmental resolutions adopted

by the USSR in June and December 1972 were found to have reached

the top agenda largely in response to proposals by Kolbasov an d

other officials affiliated with the Academy of Sciences, the Stat e

Committee for Science and Technology, and the RSFSR government .

In the majority of the cases, the analysis confirmed at leas t

two of the four indicators used to measure bureau influence on th e

agenda : i .e ., the timing of proposal and leadership response ;

similarity of content between proposal and decision ; interaction

between advocate and agenda officials ; and participation of th e

initiating officials in decision making . The ability to confirm

1 0 4

multiple indicators of agenda influence increases our confidenc e

in the conclusions reached and provides a reasonable assuranc e

that the findings of this study will be supported by further

research .

Determinants of SuccessfulInitiatives

Although the hypothesis on bureau influence was firml y

supported, the research was less definitive on the factors tha t

facilitated the success of the six initiatives that reached th e

agenda in 1917-72 . Analysis of this topic was guided by Hypo-

theses 2 and 3 . The former postulated that agenda access in -

creased when policy advocates successfully linked their issue s

with major leadership priorities and urgent, pollution-relate d

crises . The latter hypothesized that agenda access was facili-

tated when bureau officials developed viable, broadly supported

policy proposals .

The relationship between agenda influence and linkages wit h

policy priorities was supported by three of the six case studies .

These were : the 1922 sanitation law, the promotion of which wa s

linked to the leadership's concern with health policy ; the 193 7

industrial emissions statute, which was linked to concern wit h

urban services ; and the codification of water legislation, wher e

linkages with agricultural reform appear to have been important .

The remaining initiatives, in contrast, were either not linke d

with overarching policy priorities, or the linkages did not appea r

to significantly affect agenda access .

Similarly, the hypothesis that linkages with on-going crise s

aided agenda access was supported by only three case studies : the

1922 sanitation law, the 1960 water management resolution and th e

protection of Lake Baikal . In the remaining cases, the issue s

responded to a gradually worsening problem rather than an urgen t

crisis or disaster .

The case materials provide firmer support for Hypothesis 3 .

In five of the six successful initiatives, the proponents deve-

loped broad inter-agency backing for their proposed pollution

1 0 5

controls . This suggests that the measures were technically

feasible and consistent with current political and budgetar y

realities . The viability of the proposals and the support show n

for them appeared influential in their eventual adoption by senio r

policy makers .

In sum, judging from study, the chances of an issue reachin g

the agenda are enhanced when officials develop broad support fo r

balanced policy proposals . In some cases, agenda access is als o

enhanced when the issue is placed in the context of importan t

leadership concerns and serious crises . The correlates o f

successful agenda setting, however, clearly include a variety o f

other factors as well . Identifying these factors, and determinin g

the conditions in which they are influential, is a fruitful avenu e

for further research .

FURTHER INSIGHTS ONAGENDASETTING

In addition to furnishing preliminary answers to the ques-

tions posed in the study, the case materials provide severa l

additional insights on the formation of the Soviet policy agenda .

Ministry Officials and AgendaSetting

Drawing on the theory of bureaucracy developed by Downs, we

hypothesized that officials of bureaucratic organizations were a

major source of initiatives to combat water pollution in the USSR .

The motivation to generate new issues was considered to b e

especially strong among national and republic ministries charge d

with administering Soviet policy on natural resources, health ,

fishing and similar activities . This was based on Downs' argumen t

that certain ministry officials--especially the "climbers" an d

"advocates" that tend to populate newly established bureaucrati c

institutions--are motivated to push for new programs as a means o f

increasing their agencies' power, prestige and resources .

As hypothesized, our research did reveal that bureau offi-

cials were influential in shaping the agenda in the area of wate r

pollution control . Contrary to expectations, however, the most

1 0 6

prominent agenda setters were not affiliated with governmen t

ministries . Ministry officials, in fact, were found to have bee n

instrumental in only two case studies : the 1922 and 1937 sanita-

tion decrees . In the remainder, ministry officials failed to pla y

a visible role in policy initiation . The USSR Ministry of Healt h

ceased promoting the control of water quality in the mid-1950s ,

while the republic agencies created by the 1960 water managemen t

decision failed to sustain an active role in policy initiatio n

beyond the early 1960s . More striking, the USSR Ministry o f

Reclamation and Water Resources (Minvodkhoz)--the chief pollutio n

control agency since its formation in 1965--was a bystander in al l

three Brezhnev-era decisions investigated . It thus passed u p

numerous opportunities to press for a greater role in wate r

pollution control .

Three explanations for the low involvement of Soviet minis -

tries were suggested . First, agency directors and other top

officials were either not deeply committed to the problem of wate r

pollution or were personally disinclined to lobby aggressively fo r

new policies . Second, agency attention was committed to higher -

priority tasks . In the case of the health ministry, the protec-

tion of public water resources--and thereby the prevention of

diseases spread by water-borne bacteria--clearly took second plac e

to the treatment of these and other diseases . For their part, th e

republic and national water management institutions placed highes t

priority on irrigation and reclamation activities . This deprived

internal officials responsible for water quality of the resource s

and attention needed for their initiatives to succeed . And third ,

the incentive to lobby for additional responsibilities for wate r

pollution control was negated by a countervailing desire not t o

call attention to the poor performance of their agencies i n

carrying out water quality activities previously entrusted t o

them . In a word, lack of participation in agenda setting wa s

dictated by self-preservation .

For the above reasons, ministry officials were not vigorou s

proponents of agenda change in the sphere of water pollution

1 0 7

control . Given its importance for understanding ministry behavio r

and the policy process more broadly, this finding deserves furthe r

investigation by students of Soviet politics .

The Academy ofSciencesand Agenda Setting

In contrast to the passive role of ministry officials ,

officials of the USSR Academy of Sciences were extremely active i n

promoting agenda initiatives to control water pollution . Academy

officials were, in fact, the primary initiators of all four of th e

post-Stalin decisions examined . Two prominent initiators--Zvonkov

and Gerasimov--were directors of Academy research councils .

Trofimuk was a Vice President of the Siberian Department of th e

Academy . Galazii directed the Baikal Limnological Institute ,

while Kolbasov and Aksenenok worked at the Academy's principa l

legal institute . Gerasimov's role in the Baikal case was als o

enhanced by his affiliation with the State Committee of Scienc e

and Technology, which worked closely with the Academy on thi s

problem .

The close involvement of Academy officials in agenda settin g

suggests that Academy recruitment policies, resources and institu -

tional structures are conducive to attracting and sustainin g

policy entrepreneurs . Thus, while the study has not explicitl y

examined the Academy's role in agenda setting, a further importan t

finding of our research is that Academy institutes and polic y

councils are a key institutional base for elevating polic y

proposals onto the national policy agenda . This finding als o

deserves further investigation .

Access Channel sand AgendaSettIng

A third insight is that policy entrepreneurs have a variety

of channels for placing proposals on the decision agenda in th e

USSR . In the 1922 decision, the initiative apparently reached th e

leadership through both NKZdrav's formal reporting channels to th e

Sovnarkom and Semashko's personal relationship with Lenin . In the

1 0 8

1937 decision, NKZdrav's formal reporting channels with th e

Secretariat were probably decisive . In the 1960 water managemen t

resolution and the 1969 decision on Lake Baikal, proposal s

apparently reached the leadership through the Academy's communica-

tion channels with the Central Committee Secretariat, Gosplan an d

the Council of Ministers . The initiatives for the 1970 wate r

legislation and the September 1972 environmental resolution wer e

apparently channeled through the Supreme Soviet Presidium . Thus ,

while information no doubt reached the leaders though othe r

channels as well, the evidence suggests that formal, institutiona l

channels--particularly between the Academy and other researc h

institutions and the leadership--were an important conduit fo r

bringing policy proposals to the attention of top decision makers .

The access channels utilized, moreover, varied considerabl y

between decisions . In two instances, legislative channels wer e

influential ; on other occasions, the Central Committee Secretaria t

was probably the key receptor . In the remaining cases, governmen-

tal channels were the primary vehicle for funnelling initiative s

to the leadership .

Our research thus casts doubt on Kelley's view that formal ,

bureaucratic channels are ineffectual as a means of raisin g

environmental issues in the USSR . This argument reflects a belie f

that formal reporting channels between the bureaucracy and th e

policy makers are dominated by industrial interests and thus ar e

effectively closed to initiatives to protect the environment . I t

follows, in Kelley's view, that the only way to focus attention o n

environmental problems is to mobilize opposition through the pres s

or other informal channels .

Our research suggests that Kelley is correct in playing dow n

the importance of ministerial communication channels, since th e

ministries charged with day-to-day administration of pollutio n

control did, in fact, play only a minor role in agenda settin g

after the 1930s . However, Kelley appears to have overlooked a

wide range of other, non-ministerial, channels through whic h

environmental officials can transmit information and proposals to

ERRATUM

At the bottom of page 108, one line of text wa sinadvertently omitted . The missing text is as follows :

. . .senior leaders . In so doing he has overemphasizedthe importance . . .

1 0 9

of the press as a vehicle for introducing substantive polic y

measures into the decision making process . Finally, his researc h

appears to have overemphasized the role of grass-roots protes t

movements as a force for agenda change in the USSR . While suc h

movements may be important at times--Baikal is an obvious example -

-in many other instances, key decisions appear to be not so muc h

the result of intense public controversy, as the product o f

ongoing, behind-the-scenes jockeying between agenda gatekeeper s

and officials seeking to elevate issues of special concern ont o

the top agenda .

Constraints onAgendaInfluenc e

Our research also sheds light on the limitations facin g

bureau officials seeking to influence the agenda . Scholars have

expressed widely-differing views on this issue . Brzezinski argue s

that political culture, censorship and the dominant role of th e

Party apparatus leave little scope for agenda influence by actor s

outside the leadership . 50 This view is shared by Gustafson, who

characterizes specialist influence on the agenda as "fragile ,

contingent, and necessarily opportunistic ." 51 At the opposite

end of the spectrum is Stewart, who contends that experts an d

groups have wide latitude for influencing the agenda . 5 2

Although research on a single policy area cannot resolve thi s

controversy, our findings are closer to the position taken b y

Stewart . In each of the case studies--including the two initia-

tives undertaken during the period of "high Stalinism"--agend a

setting is depicted as a fluid and dynamic process in whic h

50 Zbigniew K . Brzezinski and Samuel P . Huntington, PoliticPower : USA/USSR (New York : Viking Press, 1963), pp . 202 ff .

51Thane Gustafson, Reform in Soviet Politics : Lessons o fRecent Policies on Land and Water (Cambridge : Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1981), p . 51 .

52Philip D . Stewart, "Soviet Interest Groups and the Polic yProcess : The Repeal of Production Education," World Politics 2 2(October 1969), pp . 46-47 .

1 1 0

officials try in a variety of direct and indirect ways to gai n

leadership acceptance for their ideas . These efforts are by n o

means always fruitful, as illustrated by the unsuccessful wate r

management reform proposals of 1937-38 and the long gestatio n

period required to bring about the six successful initiatives .

However, during the gestation period, the policy entrepreneur s

identified in this study were not passively waiting for the soi l

to become fertile, as Gustafson implies . Rather, they wer e

actively planting ideas in the minds of senior officials, "fer-

tilizing" those ideas with new information and research, and using

a variety of tools to bring their "seedlings" to maturity .

As with any endeavor, successful agenda setting requires a

combination of ingredients--including a serious problem, a

workable policy proposal, support from knowledgeable experts, a

receptive elite audience, and a compelling motivation for th e

leadership to address the problem rather than any of a number o f

competing concerns . In this sense, success is "contingent" on th e

above ingredients . However, overemphasizing the contingencies- -

and underemphasizing the skills that can greatly increase th e

chances of an initiative's success--can lead to a distorted an d

incomplete picture of the agenda process .

1 1 1

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Nikolaevsky, Boris . Power and the Soviet Elite . Editedby Janet D . Zagoria . New York : Praeger, 1965 .

Odom, William E. "A Dissenting View on the Grou pApproach to Soviet Politics ." World Politics 28 (July

1976) :

542-67 .

Ostrom, Vincent . "The Water Economy and it sOrganization ." Natural Resources Journal, 2 (Apri l

1962) :

55-73 .

. "Water Resource Development : Some Problems inEconomic and Political Analysis of Public Policy ." I nPolitical Science and Public Policy, pp . 123-50 . Editedby Austin Ranney . Chicago : Markham, 1968 .

, and Ostrom, Elinor . "A Theory fo rInstitutional Analysis of Common Pool Problems ." InManaging the Commons, pp . 152-72 . Edited by Garret tHardin and John Baden . San Francisco : W .H . Freeman andCo ., 1977 .

Polsby, Nelson . "Policy Initiation in the America nPolitical System ." In The Use and Abuse of SocialScience, pp . 296-308 . Edited by Irving Louis Horowitz .New Brunswick, N .J . : Transaction Books, 1971 .

Powell, David E . "The Social Costs of Modernization :Ecological Problems in the USSR ." World Politics 2 3(July 1971) : 618-34 .

"Politics and the Urban Environment : TheCity of Moscow ." Comparative Political Studies 1 0(October 1977) : 433-54 .

Pryde, Philip . "Victors are not Judged ." Environmen t12 (November 1970) : 30-39 .

Rigby, T . H . "Traditional, Market, and Organizationa lSocieties ." World Politics 16 (July 1964) : 539-57 .

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Schwartz, Joel J ., and Keech, William R . "Grou pInfluence and the Policy Process in the Soviet Union . "American Political Science Review 62 (September 1968) :840-51 .

Skilling, H . Gordon . "Interest Groups and Communis tPolitics ." World Politics 18 (April 1966) : 435-51 .

"Interest Groups and Communist Politic sRevisited ." World Politics 36 (October 1983) : l-27 .

Solesbury, William . "Issues and Innovations i nEnvironmental Policy in Britain, West Germany, andCalifornia ." Policy Analysis 2 (Winter 1976) : l-38 .

Stewart, Philip D . "Soviet Interest Groups and th ePolicy Process : The Repeal of Production Education . "World Politics 22 (October 1969) : 29-50 .

Vendrov, S . L ., et al . "The problem of transformatio nand utilization of the water resources of the Volg aRiver and the Caspian Sea ." Soviet Geography : Reviewand Translation 7 (September 1964) : 23-34 .

and Kalinin, G . P . "Surface water resource sof the USSR, their utilization and study ." Sovie tGeography: Review and Translation 1 (June 1960) : 35 -49 .

Walker, Jack L . "Setting the Agenda in th eU .S . Senate : A Theory of Problem Selection ." BritishJournal of Political Science, 7 (October 1977) : 423-45 .

Weber, Max . "Bureaucracy ." In Essays in Sociolo g y, pp .196-244 . Translated, edited and with an introduction b yH . H . Gerth and C . Wright Mills . New York : OxfordUniversity Press, Galaxy Books, 1958 .

Wildavsky, Aaron . "The Analysis of Issue Context in th eStudy of Decision Making ." Journal of Politics 2 4(1962) : 717-32 .

Zile, Zigurds . "Soviet Struggle for Environmenta lQuality : The Limits of Law under Central Planning ." InContemporary Soviet Law : Essays in Honor of JohnN.Hazard, pp . 124-57 . Edited by D . D . Barry . Hague :Martinus Nyhoff, 1974 .

ZumBrunnen, Craig,

" Institutional Reasons for Sovie tWater Resource Problems ."

Proceedings of the AmericanAssociation of Geo g raphers 6

(1974) : 105-108 .

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"The Lake Baikal Controversy : A Seriou sWater Pollution Threat or a Turning Point in Sovie tEnvironmental Consciousness ." In EnvironmentalDeterioration in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe ,pp . 80-122 . Edited by Ivan Volgyes . New York :Praeger, 1974 .

"Water Pollution Problems within the Blac kand Azov Sea Basins ." Discussion Paper No .46 ,Department of Geography, The Ohio State University ,1975 .

B .

Books and Monograph s

Armstrong, John A . The Soviet Bureaucratic Elite . NewYork : Praeger, 1974 .

Breslauer, George W . Khrushchev and BrezhnevasLeaders : Building Authority in Soviet Politics .London : George Allyn and Unwin, 1982 .

Brown, Archie, and Kaser, Michael, eds . Soviet Polic yfor the1980s. Bloomington : Indiana University Press ,1982 .

Bruce, James B . The Politics of Soviet Polic yFormation : Khrushchev's Innovative Policies inEducation and Agriculture . Monograph Series in WorldAffairs, vol . 13 . Colorado Seminary, Colo . : Universityof Denver, 1976 .

Brzezinksi, Zbigniew K ., and Huntington, Samuel P .Political Power : USA/USSR . New York : Viking, 1964 .

Brzezinski, Zbigniew K . Ideology and Power in SovietPolitics . Revised edition . New York : Praeger, 1967 .

ed . Dilemmas of Change in Soviet Politics .New York : Columbia University Press, 1969 .

Bunce, Valery . Do New Leaders Make a Difference? ,Executive Succession and Public Policy Under Capitalis m

and Socialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press,1981 .

Caldwell, Lynton K . In Defense of Earth : InternationalProtection of the Biosphere . Bloomington, Ind . :Indiana University Press, 1972 .

Chotiner, Barbara Ann . Khrushchev's Party Reform :Coalition Building and Institutional Innovation .Westport, Conn . : Greenwood Press, 1983 .

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Cobb, Roger W ., and Elder, Charles D . ParticipationinAmerican Politics : The Dynamics ofAgenda-BuildingBoston : Allyn and Bacon, 1972 .

Colton, Timothy J . The Dilemma of Reform in the Sovie tUnion . New York : Council on Foreign Relations, 1984 .

Conquest, Robert . Power and Policy in the U .S .S .R . :.The Struggle for Stalin's Succession . 1945-196D . NewYork : Harper and Row, Harper Torchbooks, 1967 .

Crenson, Matthew A . The Un-Politics of Air Pollution :A Study of Non-Decisionmaking in the Cities .Baltimore : Johns Hopkins Press, 1971 .

Crozier, Michel . The Bureaucratic Phenomenon . Chicago :University of Chicago Press : 1964 .

Cyert, Richard M . and March, James G . A BehavioralTheory of the Firm . Englewood Cliffs, N .J . : Prentice -Hall, 1963 .

Dahl, Robert A . Modern Political Analysis . EnglewoodCliffs, N .J . : Prentice-Hall, 1963 .

Dallin, Alexander, and Larson, Thomas B ., eds . Sovie tPolitics Since Khrushchev . Englewood Cliffs, N .J . :Prentice-Hall, 1968 .

Downs, Anthony . Inside Bureaucracy . Boston : Little ,Brown and Company, 1967 .

Easton, David . A Systems Analysis of Political Life .New York : John Wiley, 1965 .

The Political System . 2d ed . NewYork : Knopf, 1971 .

Enloe, Cynthia H . The Politics of Pollution inComparative Perspective ; Ecology and Power inFourNations . New York : David McKay, 1975 .

Fainsod, Merle . Smolensk Under Soviet Rule .Cambridge, Mass . : Harvard University Press, 1958 .

Field, Mark G . Soviet Socialized Medicine : AnIntroduction . New York : Free Press, 1967 .

Frieden, Nancy Mandelen . Russian Physicians in an Er aof Reform and Revolution, 1865-1905 . Princeton :Princeton University Press, 1981 .

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Friedrich, Carl J ., and Brzezinski, Zbigniew K .Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy . 2ded . Cambridge, Mass . : Harvard University Press, 1965 .

Goldman, Marshall I . The Spoils of Progress :Environmental Pollution in the Soviet Union .Cambridge, Mass . : M .I .T . Press, 1972 .

Gruliow, Leo, ed . Current Soviet Policies III : TheDocumentary Record of the Extraordinary 21st Congress ofthe Communist Party of the Soviet Union . New York :Columbia University Press, 1960 .

_, ed . Current Soviet Policies V : TheDocumentary Record of the 23rd Congress oftheCommunist Party of the Soviet Union . Columbus, Ohio :American Society for the Advancement of Slavic Studies ,1973 .

Gustafson, Thane . Reform in Soviet Politics : Lesson sof Recent Policies on Land and Water . Cambridge :Cambridge University Press, 1981 .

Hammer, Darrell P . USSR : The Politics of Ol i g archy .2d ed . Boulder, Colo . : Westview Press, 1986 .

Hardin, Garrett, and Baden, John, eds .Managing theCommons . San Francisco : W . H . Freeman, 1977 .

Hirschleifer, Jack, De Haven, James C . and Milliman ,Jerome W . Water Supply : Economics . Technology, andPolicy . 4th printing . Chicago : University of Chicag oPress, 1969 .

Hough, Jerry . The Soviet Prefects : The Local Part yOrgans in Industrial Decision Making . Cambridge ,Mass . : Harvard University Press, 1969 .

_, and Fainsod, Merle . How the Soviet Union i sGoverned . Revised and enlarged . Cambridge, Mass . :Harvard University Press, 1979 .

Hough, Jerry . The Soviet Union and Social Scienc eTheory . Cambridge, Mass . : Harvard University Press ,1977 .

. Soviet Leadershi p in Transition .Washington, D .C . : Brookings Institution, 1980 .

Integrated River Basin Development: Report by a Panelof Experts . New York : United Nations Department o fEconomic and Social Affairs, 1958 .

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Jackson, W . A . D ., ed . Soviet Resource Mana g ement andthe Environment . Columbus, Ohio : American Associatio nfor the Advancement of Slavic Studies, 1978 .

Jones, Charles O . Clean Air : The Policies andPolitics of Pollution . Pittsburgh : University o fPittsburgh Press, 1975 .

Jones, Charles O . An Introduction to the StudyofPublic Policy . 3d ed . Monterrey, Calif . : Brooks ,Cole, 1984 .

Juviler, Peter H . and Morton, Henry . Soviet Polic yMaking : Studies of Communism in Transition . New York :Praeger, 1967 .

Kelley, Donald R ., ed . Soviet Politics in theBrezhnevEra . New York : Praeger, 1980 .

Kelley, Donald R ., Stunkel, Kenneth R . and Wescott ,Richard R . The Economic Superpowers and theEnvironment : The United States . the Soviet Union . andJapan . San Francisco : W. H . Freeman, 1976 .

Kingdon, John W . Ag endas . Alternatives . and Publi cPolicies . Boston : Little, Brown, 1984 .

Nature protection in the Soviet Union . Moscow :Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, 1974 .

Kneese, Allen V., and Schultze, Charles L . Pollution ,Prices and Public Policy . Washington, D .C . : Brooking sInstitution, 1975 .

Komarov, Boris The Destruction of Nature in the SovietUnion . Translated by Michael Vale and Joe Hollander ,with a foreword by Marshall I . Goldman . White Plains ,New York : M . E . Sharpe, 1980 .

Lindblom, Charles E . The Policy Making Process .Englewood Cliffs, N .J . : Prentice Hall, 1968 .

Linden, Carl A . Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadershi p .1957-1964 . Baltimore : Johns Hopkins Press, 1966 .

Lowenhardt, John . The Soviet Politburo . Translated byDymphna Clark . New York : St . Martin's Press, 1978 .

Decision Making in Soviet Politics . Ne wYork : St . Martin's Press, 1981 .

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I

Meyer, Alfred G . The Soviet Political System . NewYork : Random House, 1965 .

Moore, Barrington . Terror and Progress . USSR .Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1954 .

Morton, Henry W ., and Tokes, Rudolph L ., eds . Sovie tPolitics and Society in the 1970s . New York : FreePress, 1974 .

Moses, Joel C . Regional Party Leadershi p and Polic yMaking . New York : Praeger, 1974 .

Nolting, Louvand E . The Structure and Functions of th eU .S .S .R . State Committee for Science and Technolo gy .U .S . Bureau of the Census, Foreign Economic Report No .16 . Washington, D .C ., 1979 .

Nove, Alec . An Economic History of the USSR .Harmondsworth, England : Penguin Press, 1969 ; PelicanBooks, 1972 .

Ostrom, Vincent . The Choice of InstitutionalArrangements for Water Resource Development--Wit hSpecial Reference to the California Water Industry .Studies in Political Theory and Policy Analysis .Department of Political Science, Indiana University ,1971 .

Ploss, Sidney I . Conflict and Decision Making i nSoviet Russia : A Case Study of Agricultural Policy ,1953-1963 . Princeton : Princeton University Press ,1965 .

Polsby, Nelson W . Political Innovation in Americ aThe Politics of Policy Initiation . New Haven, Conn . :Yale University Press, 1984 .

Pressman, Jeffrey L ., and Wildavsky, Aaron .Implementation . Berkeley : University of Californi aPress, 1973 .

Pryde, Philip R . Conservation in the Soviet Union .Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1972 .

Ranney, Austin, ed . Political Science and Publi cPolicy . Chicago : Markham, 1968 .

Rigby, T . H ., and Churchward, L . G . Policy-making i nthe USSR, 1953-1961 : Two Views . Melbourne : Lansdown ePress, 1962 .

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Rourke, Francis E . Bureaucracy . Politics . and Publi cPolicy . 3d ed . Boston : Little Brown, 1984 .

Schapiro, Leonard . The Communist Party of the Sovie tUnion . 2d ed ., revised and enlarged . New York :Vintage Books, 1971 .

Schattschneider, E . E . The Semi-Sovereign Peop le . NewYork : Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961 .

Simon, Herbert . Administrative Behavior, . 3d ed . NewYork : Free Press, 1976 .

Singleton, Fred, ed . Environmental Misuse in theSoviet Union . New York : Praeger, 1976 .

Skilling, H . Gordon, and Griffiths, Franklyn, eds .Interest Groups in Soviet Politics . Princeton :Princeton University Press, 1971 .

Smith, Gordon . Public Policy and Administration in th eSoviet Union . New York : Praeger, 1980 .

Soll, Richard S ., Zuehlke, Arthur A . Jr . and Foster ,Richard . "The Roll of Social Science Researc hInstitutes in the Formulation and Execution of Sovie tForeign Policy ." Technical Note . Stanford Researc hInstitute Project No . 2625 . March 1976 .

Solomon, Peter H . Soviet Criminologists and Crimina lPolicy : Specialists in Policy-Making . New York :Columbia University Press, 1978 .

Solomon, Susan Gross, ed . Pluralism in the SovietUnion : Essays in Honor of H . Gordon Skilling . NewYork : St . Martin's Press, 1983 .

Sosnovy, Timothy . The Housing Problem in the sovietUnion . Edited by David I . Goldstein . New York :Research Program on the USSR, 1954 .

Stewart, Philip D . Political Power in the Sovie tUnion : A Study of Decision Making in Stalingrad .Indianapolis : Bobbs-Merrill, 1968 .

Tarschys, Daniel . The Soviet Political Agenda :Problems and Priorities, 1950-197Q . White Plains, Ne wYork : M .E . Sharpe, 1979 .

Tatu, Michel . Power in the Kremlin : From Khrushchev toKosygin. Translated by Helen Katel . New York : TheViking Press, 1970 .

I

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Taubman, William . Governing SovietCities:Bureaucratic Politics and Urban Development in theUSSR . New York : Praeger, 1973 .

Thomas, John R ., and Kruse-Vaucienne, Ursula, M .Soviet Science and Technolo gy : Domestic and ForeignPerspectives . Washington, D .C . : George Washingto nUniversity, 1977 .

Thompson, Victor . Modern Organization . New York :Alfred A . Knopf, 1961 .

Tullock, Gordon . The Politics of Bureaucracy .Washington, D .C . : Public Affairs Press, 1965 .

Vanneman, Peter . The Supreme Soviet and th eLegislative Process in the Soviet Political S stem .Durham, N .C . : Duke University Press, 1977 .

Volgyes, Ivan, ed . Environmental Deterioration in theSoviet Union and Eastern Europe . New York : Praeger ,1974 .

Weber, Max . The Theory of Economic and SocialOrganization . Translated by A . M . Henderson and T .Parsons . New York : Free Press, 1947 .

II . Works in Russia n

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Article s

"Aleksandr Nikolaevich Nesmeianov ." Priroda, no . 5(1980), pp . 110-11 .

Aleksandrovskii, Iu . V . "O sostavlenii general'no iskhemy kompleksnogo ispol'zovaniia i okhrany vodnyk hresursov na otdelennuiu perspektivu . "

Gidrotekhnicheskoe stroitel'stvo, no. 8 (1971), pp. 5-9.

Alekseevskii, E . E . "Vodnye resursy SSSR : Problemy ik hefektivnogo ispol'zovaniia i okhrany ." Vodnye resursy ,no . 2 (1972), pp . 7-24 .

"A . N . Sysin (K 70-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia isorokoletiiu vrachebno-sanitarnoi deiatel'nosti . "

Gigiena i sanitariia, no. 11 (1949), p. 5.

Armand, D . L . "Ratsional'noe ispol'zovanie prirodnyk hresursov is problemy Sovetskoi geografii ." Izvestiia ANSSSR, Seriia geografii, no . 1 (1961), pp . 48-56 .

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Baisalov, S . "K voprosu o kodifikatsii vodnog ozakonodatel'stva Kazakhskoi SSR ." In VoProsykodifikatsii vodnogo zakonodatel'stva SSSR, pp . 147-79 .Edited by G . A . Aksenenok and S . Baisalov . Moscow :Gosiurizdat, 1963 .

Bashmakov, G . S . "Nauchnye osnovy kodifikatsii vodnog ozakonodatel'stva ."

Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo ,no . 9 (1961), pp . 108-14 .

Basov, T . "O pravovom regulirovanii i okhrane vodnyk hresursov v Belorusskoi SSR ." In Voprosy kodifikatsi iyodnogo zakonodatel'stva SSSR, pp . 135-46 . Edited by G .A . Aksenenok and S . Baisalov . Moscow : Gosiurizdat ,1963 .

Bazanov, Viktor . F . F . Erisman . 1842-1915 . Leningrad :Meditsina, 1966 .

Belichenko, Iu . P . "V . I . Lenin i okhrana vodnyk hresursov ." Qidrotekhnika i melioratsiia, no . 3 (1970) ,pp . 12-13 .

, and Egorov, Iu . G . "O rabote organov vodnog onadzora ." Minvodkhoz SSSR, Ekspress informatsiia ,vol . 2, series 4 (1975), pp . 24-26 .

Belov, S . V . "Okhraniaite lesa ." Priroda, no . 7 (1958) ,pp . 55-58 .

Bergkhol'tsas, I . I . "Pravovye i organizatsionnyevoprosy deiatel'nosti mestnykh sovetov deputato vtrudiashchikhsia v oblasti okhrany prirody . "Candidate's dissertation . Moscow State University ,1974 .

Bergkhol'tsas, I . I . "Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i okhran aprirody ." Vestnik MGU, no . 1 (1975), pp . 81-85 .

Borodavchenko, I . I . "O merakh po vypolneniiupostanovleniia TsK i SM SSSR 'Ob uluchshenii okhran yprirody i ratsional'nogo ispol'zovanii prirodnyk hresursov .'" Minvodkhoz SSSR, Obzornaia informatsiia ,no . 12 (1973), pp . 8-9 .

Cherkinskii, S . N . "Voprosy gigieny vody ,vodosnabzheniia i sanitarnoi okhrany vodoemov na XII Is"ezd gigienistov, mikrobiologov, i infekstionologov . "Gigiena i sanitariia no . 10 (1956), pp . 3-10 .

Cherkinskii, S . N . "Okhrana vod of zagriazneniia ka kgigienicheskaia problema : Ee razvitie v SSSR . In

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P

Rukovodstvopo kommunal'noi gigiene, vol . 2, pp . 430-37 .Gen . ed . F . G . Krotkov . 6 vols . Moscow :Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo Meditsinskoi Literatury ,1962 .

Cherkinskii, S . N . "Promyshlennye stochnye vody vprobleme sanitarnoi okhrany vodoemov ." In Sanitarnai aokhrana vodoemov of zagriazneniia promyshlennym istochnymi vodami, vol . 2, Pp . 22-25 . Edited by S . N .Cherkinskii . 7 vols . Moscow : Medgiz, 1949-65 .

Chistakov, I ., and Kuznetsov, E . "Snova o Baikale :Neobkhodimye utochneniia ." Literaturnaia gazeta, April10, 1965, p . 2 .

Drachev, S . M . "Sovermennye voprosy sanitarnoi okhran yvodoemov ." Vestnik Akademii Meditsinskoi Nauk SSSR, no .8 (1958), pp . 39-46 .

Dzens-Litovskii, A . I . "Okhrana prirodnykh vodoemov . "Priroda, no . 11 (1956), pp . 19-24 .

Eliseev, N . and Kondratenko, A . "Nashe krovnoe delo . "Kommunist, no . 5 (1968), pp . 112-17 .

Galazii, G . I . "Stoit li riskovat' ." Komsomol'skai apravda, September 19, 1968, p . 2 .

Gerasimov, I . P . "Mezhdunarodnye nauchnye sviazy :Ratsional'noe ispol'zovanie i sokhranenie resurso vbiosfery (K itogam konferentsii IuNESKO v Parizhe) . "Vestnik AN SSSR, no . 3 (1969), p . 89 .

. "Nuzhen general'nyi plan preobrazovanii aprirody ." Kommunist, no . 2 (1969), pp . 68-79 .

Gorfin, D . V . "N . A . Semashko o sviaz yprofilakticheskoi i lechebnoi meditsiny ." Gigiena i,sanitariia, no . 7 (1958), pp . 3-9 .

Gorin, G . S ., "Moskovskii vodoprovod i kanalizatsiia, "Vodosnabzhenie i kanalizatsiia, no . 11 (1957), pp . 29-35 .

Ignat'ev, E ., Konstantinov, P . and Sokolovskii, V ."Sel'sko-khoziaistvennoe proizvodstvo i okhran apriroda ." Ekonomika sel'skogo khoziaistva, no . 3(1976), pp . 48-51 .

Kabanov, N . E . and Shaposhnikov, L . K . "Okhrana prirod yi zapovedniki ." Priroda, No . 12 (1955), pp . 30-36 .

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Karmanov, V . "Ispol'zovat' vodnye resursy razumno . "Izvestiia, April 14, 1959, p . 2 .

Kaverin, A . M . " Pravovaia okhrana vod of zagriaznenii ai regulirovanie sbrosa stochnykh vod ." Candidate' sDissertation . Institute of State and Law, Moscow, 1974 .

Kazantsev, N . D . "O pravovom regulirovanii okhran yprirody ." vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta, no . 1(1960), pp . 5-17 .

. "Prirodno-resursnoe pravo i ego predely ka kintegrirovanoi otrasli prava ." vestnik Moskovskog oUniversiteta, no . 6 (1967) .

"Khoroshee nachalo--zakon ob okhrane prirody priniato vEstonskoi respubliki ." Izvestiia, June 16, 1957, p . 3

"Khronika : Konferentsiia po ochistke stochnykh vod . "Sanitarnaia tekhnika, no . 5 (1934), p . 41 .

"Khronika : Soveshchanie po voprosam vodosnabzheniia ikanalizatsii . Vodosnabzhenie i sanitarnaia tekhnika ,no . 6 (1936), pp . 75-77 .

"Khronika : Vsesoiuznaia konferentsiia komitetov p ookhrane prirody ." vestnik AN SSSR, no . 9 (1958) ,p . 121 .

"Khronika : Nauchnaia organizatsiia vodnog okhoziaistva ." Vestnik AN SSSR, no . 3 (1959), p . 130 .

"Khronika : K itogam pervogo nauchnogo soveschanii ageografov Sibiri i Dal'nego Vostoka ." Izvestiia ANSSSR :$eriia geograficheskaia, no . l, 1960, p . 193 .

"Khronika : Vsesoiuznoe soveshchanie po ispol'zovaniiu iokhrane vodnykh resursov ." Gidrotekhnika imelioratsiia, no . 9 (1968) .

Kolbasov, O . S . "Leninskie ideii ob okhrane prirody . "Priroda, no . 4 (1958), pp . 4, 41-44 .

"Osnovnye tendentsii razvitii Sovetskog ovodnogo zakonodatel'stva ." UchennyezapiskiVNIISZ ,vol . 3 (1964) .

"Nuzhen zakon okraniaiushchii vody . "Izvestiia, February 28, 1964, p . 3 .

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"Spornye voprosy, voznikaiushchie v sviazi sprimeneniem zakonodatel'stva ob okhrane zemel'nykh ivodnykh bogatsv ." Sovetskaiaiustitsii, no . 22 (1966) ,

pp . 8-9 .

"Problemy sovershenstvovaniia Sovetskog ovodnogo zakonodatel'stva ." Ph .D . dissertation, Moscow ,1966 .

"Pravovaia okhrana prirody v SSSR . "$ovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, no . 9 (1967), pp . 46-49 .

"Okhrana prirody ." $ovetskoe gosudarstvoipravo, no . 2 (1972), pp . 12-20 .

"Okhranaiite prirodu ." Izvestiia, Januar y16, 1980, p . 2 .

Kostrin, K . "Trevozhnyi vzglad na vodu . "Komsomol'skaia pravda, May 25, 1967, p . 2 .

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Kuznetsov, I . A . "Razvitie issledovaniia v oblast ivodnogo khoziaistva ." vestnik ANSSSR, no . 3 (1957) ,pp . 125-27 .

and L'vovich, M . I . "Problemy kompleksnog oispol'zovaniia i okhrany vodnykh resursov ." I nPrirodnye resursy Sovetskogo Soiuza, ikh ispol'zovanii ai vosproizvodstva, pp . 11-32 . Edited by I . P .Gerasimov, D . L . Armand and K . M . Efron . Moscow : ANSSSR, 1963 .

Laskorin, B . N . "Kachestvo i okhrana vody v bassein ereki Volgi ." Vodnye resursy, no . 4 (1975), pp . 23-45 .

"Liubite i okhraniaite prirody ." Izvestiia, April 28 ,1956, p . 2 .

L'vovich, M . I . "Kompleksnoe ispol'zovanie i okhran avodnykh resursov ." Izvestiia AN SSSR, Seriia geografii ,no . 3 (1961), pp . 37-45 .

Merkulov, A . "Trevoga o Baikale ." Pravda, February 28 ,1965, p . 4 .

Minkovich, L . "Vazhnyi istochnik uvelicheniia rybnyk hresursov ." Priroda, no . 6 (1959), pp . 81-85 .

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Mirimanian, Kh . P . "Zakon ob okhrane prirody vdeistvii ." Priroda, no . 8 (1959), pp . 62-64 .

Mironov, N . "Kamen' na Kame ." Pravda ., June 26, 1967 ,p . 3 .

Nagibina, T . E . "Zadachi sanitarnoi okhrany vodoemov . "Okhrana prirody i zapovednoe delo v SSSR, no . 1 (1956) ,pp . 36-46 .

and Soleveva, T . A . "Organizatsiia raboty p osanitarnoi okhrane vodoemov organami gosudarstvennog osanitarnogo nadzora ." Gigiena i sanitariia, no . 1 2(1958), pp . 39-43 .

Nemchinov, V. "Perspektivy razvitiia proizvodstvennyk hsil' Vostochnoi Sibiri ." Planovoe khoziaistvo, no . 1 1(1958) .

Neporozhnyi, P . S ., and Razin, N . "Razumno ispol'zovat 'vodnye resursy ." Partiinaia zhizn', no . 15 (1965) .

Nesmeianov, A . N . "Preobrazovanie prirody ." Priroda ,no . 1 (1952), pp . 3-4 .

. "Ob osnovnyhkh napravleniiakh v raboteAkademii Nauk SSSR ." Vestnik AN SSSR, no . 2 (1957) ,pp . 3-42 .

"Okhrana prirody--delo gosudarstvenno ivazhnosti ." Pravda, July 13, 1957, p . 3 .

. "Sokhranim prirodnye bogatstva nashe iRodiny ." Izvestiia, January 25, 1959, p . 3 .

"Obshchaia rezolutsiia III s"ezda Geograficheskog oObshchestva Soiuza SSR ." Izvestiia vsesoiuznog oaeograficheskogo obshchestva, no . 3 (1960), pp . 218-20 .

"Obshchee sobranie Akademii Nauk SSSR ." VestnikAN$SSR, no . 7 (1967) .

"Okhrana prirody v Estonskoi SSR ." Priroda, no . 6(1959), p . 51-55 .

"O reorganizatsii Komissii po Zapovednikam v Komissii upo Okhrane Prirody ." Qkhrana prirody i zapovednoe deloy SSSR, no . 1 (1956), pp . 129-33 .

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"Ob oshibkakh v rabote po sanitarnoi okhran evodoemov ." Gigiena i sanitariia,, no . 3 (1957), pp . 60 -68 .Ostrovskii, G . M ., Tiutkov, O . V . and Cherniaev ."Vodnye resursy Urala, i osnonvye problemy ik hkompleksnogo ispol'zovaniia ." Vodnye resursv, no . 2(1973), pp . 118-24 .

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"Kompleksnoe ispol'zovanie, okhrana vodnyk yresursov i zadachi vodnogo zakonodatel'stva ." In Qnauchnykh osnovakh kodifikatsii vodnogo zakonodatel'stv aSoiuza SSR i soiuznykh res publik (Tezisy dokladov), pp .32-35 . Edited by G . A . Aksenenok and G . S . Bashmakov .Moscow : AN SSSR Institut Gosudarstva i Prava, 1961 .

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Petrov, M . "Stop Cloudy Streams ." Izvestiia, July 15 ,1959, p . 6 .

"Pravovye aspekty okhrany prirody (Nauchnai akonferentsiia v Moskve ." Vestnik AN SSSR, no . 1 0(1969), pp . 109-112 .

"Predsedatel'iu Sovnarkoma SSSR tov . V. M Molotovu . "Vodosnabzhenie i sanitarnaia tekhanika, no . 9 (1937) ,pp . l-3 .

"Prof . F . F . Erisman (K 30-letiiu so dnia smerti) . "Gigiena i sanitariia, no . 12 (1945), pp . 1-5 .

Purin, V . R . "Okhrana prirody v Latviiskoi SSR . "Priroda, no . 2 (1958), pp . 53-55 .

Razin, N . and Gangardt, G . G . "Ispol'zovanie i okhranavodnykh resursov SSSR ." gidrotekhnicheskoestroitel'stvo, no . 6 (1967), pp . l-8 .

"Rekam byt' chistymi ." Izvestiia, November 14, 1968, p .l .

"Rezoliutsiia XVI Vserossiiskogo S"ezda Sovetov p odokladu Narkom Zdravookhraneniia RSFSR 'O rabote izadachi v oblasti narodnogo zdravookhraneniia v RSFSR .' "Na fronte zdravookhraneniia, no . 2 (1935), pp . 6-17 .

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Riabyshev, M . G . "Okhrana vodnykh resursov Moskvy, "Vodnye resursy, no . 5 (1975), pp . 15-32 .Savelev, M . "O praktike nalozheniia shtrafov . "S ovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, no . 10 (1959) ,pp . 118-22 .

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Strashun, I . D . "K 35-letiiu dekreta 'O sanitarnyk horganakh respubliki .'" Gigiena i sanitariia, no . 1 0(1957), pp . 84-88 .

Strumilin, S . "O tsene 'darovykh blag' prirody . "Voprosy ekonomiki, no . 8 (1967), pp . 60-72 .

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"S"ezdy po gigiene, epidemiologiiibakteriologii v SSSR za 30 let (Istoricheskii obzor) . "Gigiena i sanitariia, no . 1 (1948), pp. 28-34 .

"Tol'ko dokumenty--esche raz o Baikale ." Komso mol 'skaiapravda, June 9, 1966, p . 4 .

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Trofimuk, A . A ., and Gerasimov, I . P . "Sokhranit 'chistotu ozera Baikala ." Priroda, no . 11 (1965), PP -50-60 .

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"Tuman ne rasseialsia ." Literaturnaiagazeta, April 13, 1965, p . 2 .

"A dni-to idut ." Literaturnaia gazeta, Jun e2, 1966, pp . 2-3 .

"Uroki Baikala . " Literaturnaia gazeta ,October 11, 1967, p . 12 .

"Voprosy vodosnabzheniia postavit' v tsentr vnimaniia . "Vodosnabzhenie i sanitarnaia tekhnika, no . 11 (1937) ,pp . 4-7 .

"V zashchitu prirody ." Priroda, no . 1 (1957), p . 18 ."Zadachi izucheniia proizvoditel'nykh sil i prirodnyk hresursov strany ." vestnik AN SSSR, no . 9 (1967), p .117 .

"Zasedanie Komissii po okhrane prirody Soveta Soiuza iSoveta Natsional'nostei ." Priroda, no . 8 (1971), pp .98-99 .

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"O sozdanii spetsialnogo gosudarstvennog oorgana po okhrane prirody ." UchenyezapiskiVsesoiuznogo Nauchnogo Institut aSovetskogoZakonodatel'stva, no . 23 (1971), pp . 187-95 .Zemskov, P . I . "Analiz raboty kommunal'nyk hvodoprovodov i kanalizatsii ." $anitarnaia tekhnika, no .10 (1934), pp . 37-39 .

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B .

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Belov, P . S . Tsentral'nyi komitet po okhranevodoemov o t

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, ed . Sanitarnaia okhrana vodoemov of zagriaznenii apromyshlennymi stochnymi vodami. 7 vols . Moscow : Medgiz ,1949-65 .

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Guliashvili, V . G ., ed . Trudy vsesoiuznykh soveshchaniip0okhraneprirody . Tbilisi, AN Gruziinskoi SSR, 1959 .

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Vasilii Vasil'evich Zvonkov . Moscow : AN SSSR, 1957 .

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O

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dela v SSSR . Moscow : Meditsina, 1968 .

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Zvonkov, V . V ., ed .

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XXIV S"ezd Kommunicheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soiuza .Stenograficheskii otchet . 2 vols . Moscow : Politizdat ,1972 .

XXV S"ezd Kommunicheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soiuza ,Stenograficheskii otchet . 3 vols . Moscow : Politizdat ,1976 .

C .

Interview s

Alyshev, M . A . USSR Ministry of Land Reclamation and Wate rManagement, Moscow, April 1976 .

Kolbasov, O . S . Institute of State and Law, USSR Academy o fSciences, Moscow, November 1975 .

. Washington, D .C ., January 1987 .

Kolotinskaia, E . N . Faculty of Land and Kolkhoz Law, Mosco wState University, December 1975 .

Ozeranskii, S . L . USSR Ministry of Land Reclamation andWater Management, Moscow, April 1976 .

Petrov, V . V. Faculty of Land and Kolkhoz Law, Moscow Stat eUniversity, November 1975 .

Shemshchuchenko, Iu . S . Institute of State and Law, Academ yof Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, Kiev, December 1976 .

Shternov, P . N . USSR Ministry of Land Reclamation and Wate rManagement, Moscow, April 1976 .