Russia & Post Soviet States

Russia & Post-Soviet States Themes

• Soviet environmental legacies, both global and local impacts

• Move to market economy, with new alignments of people and trade

• The slow emergence of democracy

• Changing identities with new republics, shrinking populations, and changing gender roles.

NOTE: The former Soviet Republics got independence, but Russia has 30 internal republics (e.g. Chechnya, Tartarstan, Ossetia) which are 10% of territory, 15% of population

• Reflects diversity of people conquered by Russia/Soviets

Physical Patterns

• Landforms

– North European plain is most densely populated

• Urals are Europe/Asia line

– The Siberian Plain contains permafrost which keeps water on surface, make marshes

– Southern border is group of mountain ranges, above which are steppes (grasslands)

• Mountains act as barrier to moist Indian Ocean air

Climate

• Region dominated by continental climate

– Little moderating water effects, land heats and cools to extremes

– Siberia has many resources (including its taiga forest), but its size and temperature makes them hard to remove (although people are trying, especially at forestry)

• Little good agricultural land, short growing season

– Caucuses, with a California-like climate, grew fruits and vegetables

– Ukraine is “bread basket”

– Central Asia some irrigated ag for cotton and a few other crops, mostly herding

Environmental Issues

• Under Soviets, nature was viewed as the servant of industrial and agricultural progress.

– Large industrial projects were signs of progress

• Like with other parts of the world

– Development now taking precedence over environmental controls

– Pollution issues are difficult because they cross boundaries, and there are many weak governments

Pollution

• Urban and Industrial Pollution

– Very few places have sewer systems, sewage just dumped into subsoil

• Birth defects, infant mortality high

– Many residential areas built next to major industrial complexes

• Air pollution causes much bronchitis, asthma

• In industrial cities like Dzerzhinsk (chemicals) and Norlisk (metal smelting), life exptency 50 and under

• In rural areas, air pollution and fertilizer runoff also cause health problems

• In general, there are so many sources of pollution here that much of it is “non-point” – not identifiable to a single source

– Infant mortality and birth defects are quite high in some areas

Resource Extraction and Environmental Degradation

– Oil, gas, iron, gold, timber, platinum are all in abundance, especially in Urals and Siberia

• Largest inland oil spills occur here

• Because of large size, little regulation, clear cutting of forests occurs in Siberia

– Likely to get worse as economy picks up

– Hydroelectric power commonly used

• Causes flooding which destroys habit

• Also get thermal pollution where turbine heated water causes temperature shift, kills small animals, plant

Big Time Pollution

• Nuclear pollution is the worst in the world.

– Reactor at Chernobyl in the Ukraine exploded in 1986, sent radioactive cloud into Western Europe

– Closed city of Seversk has 20 times the pollution of Chernobyl in its soil

– Kazakhstan nuclear tests effected nomads both with cancers and birth defects

– Nuclear waste, reactors, sunk in Artic Ocean

Hot Spot: Aral Sea

• The most prolonged, intentional ecological disaster

• Soviet Planning tried to develop cotton industry in very dry central Asia

Aral Sea (cont)

• 25% of water which once flowed into Aral Sea now reaches it; sometimes none

• Has split into two parts, lost 90% of volume

– Kazakhstan building a massive dam to save northern part

• Destroyed caviar industry, led to increased TB, lung disease

Human Patterns Over Time

• Much of region once dominated by Central Asian nomads who herded from Black Sea to Lake Baikal

– Settled people lived in fortress towns

– Mongols last powerful nomadic group

• Slavs emerged in Poland/Ukraine/Belarus around 600, Rus (maybe from Scandinavia) between 800-1000

– Established trade between Scandinavia and Baghdad/Constantinople

• Christianity spread from Constantinople

• Greek missionaries spread art, Cyrillic alphabet

The Rise of the Russian Empire

– Moscow, once Mongol tax collectors, began to rise as military force around 1300

– Began colonial type relationship with conquered lands outside of European Russia

• Cotton, crops, timber taken, little reinvested

• Movement of ethnic Russians into Irkutsk region

– Was incredibly inequitable: czar and small aristocracy owned land and serfs who were bound to them

Communist Revolution

• Czar Nicolas II overthrown during WWI by broad coalition of groups

– Bolsheviks, a small group of strict communists, gain control

– Wanted everyone, not just a few, to own and profit from means of production

• Goal to establish a purely egalitarian, eventually stateless society

– Goal did not happen

– “Transitional” Communist Party, dominated by Russians, put in to rule

Revolution (cont.)

• Under Stalin a command economy instituted

– State owned factories, farms

• Rural areas electrified, covered with radio

• The collectivization of agriculture was brutal

– Led to rise of secret police and gulag archipelago (Siberian prison system)

– Bureaucrats in Moscow decided levels, types, and locations of production for state companies and farms

• New industrial cities like Magnitogorsk, begin to emerge on landscape

• Many of the large farms are inefficient, transport to market poor

– After a big collapse with end of USSR, private farms are starting to be more productive

– Most investment in military and heavy equipment, little for consumers

• In rest of the world, consumer goods dominate the economy

Cold War

• Soviet Union, like U.S. spent heavily during Cold War in order to prop up allies

– Cuba especially hard hit when Soviets fall

– 1979 War in Afghanistan becomes Soviet equivalent of Vietnam

• Long, un-winnable war

• Drugs become major problem

• Gorbachev institutes Glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic restructuring) in 1980’s to try to reform system

– Did not work, USSR dissolved in 1991

– Russia dominates after dissolution, despite many new states

• After period of openness, Putin is centralized control, cracking down on media, bullying neighbors again