Why the Kremlin still fears the legacy of Soviet eco-warriors
- Written by Katie Marie Davies
- Illustration by Anna Ryczkowska
- Edited by Ruby Russell
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Key strategy: Environmental justice
Advocates for environmental justice organize around the right to a clean and healthy environment, free from pollution and construction that harms humans, animals and plants. They often emphasize the rights of communities forced to live, work, or go to school alongside hazardous environmental conditions.
Key tactic: Direct action
Direct action refers to political activity that publically leverages economic or physical power to block or disrupt the status quo. Strikes, protests, blockades, and sit-ins are all examples of direct action.
Vladimir Slivyak was just 16 when he took to the streets of Kaliningrad demanding something be done about pollution in the Pregolya River. Each summer, as temperatures rose, so too did a foul stench from the waters that snaked through the heart of the Soviet city. Dead fish floated among waves. The toxic chemicals dumped in the river were an open secret.
Rallying in public protest, Slivyak and his friends were doing something that would have been almost unthinkable a few years earlier. It was 1989, and while the Soviet authorities still disapproved of demonstrations, a new sense of freedom was in the air.
“A lot of people had started to talk about politics,” Slivyak recalls. “But we hadn’t seen anyone talking about the environment. Water quality, air quality, soil pollution: you could find these big environmental problems everywhere you looked. We wanted to do something good, so we decided to go and do something about it. It was a revolutionary time.”
Slivyak was not alone in his optimism. Ideas of perestroika and glasnost – the new policies of “restructuring” and “openness” ushered in by President Mikhail Gorbachev from 1985 – had breathed new life to Soviet civil society away from the suffocating confines of the state.
Across the Soviet Union, people embraced this pocket of relative freedom to campaign for the world around them. Environmental activism exposed the greed and incompetence of a party apparatus willing to turn a blind eye to pollution and cover up the failures of the Chornobyl disaster. But it also allowed people to take ownership of their lives and communities, striking blow after blow against the authoritarian state.
“I think the environmental movement contributed much more than other groups to dismantling that system,” says Slivyak “We were promoting democracy with direct action. We didn’t ask the government for permission: we went into the street and did what we needed to do.”
A history of radical thinking
The environmental movement that swept across the crumbling Soviet Union had deep roots. Since the 1910s, Soviet scientists had advocated for the creation of large, strictly controlled nature reserves called zapovedniki. The early Soviet government was happy to set land aside, and to greenlight the creation of the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Nature in 1924.
Stalin’s rise to power, however, saw environmental concerns steamrollered by the drive for rapid industrialization. Tens of factories and power plants were hastily built, with little thought given to their ecological impact. It wasn’t until the 1960s, as Soviet oppression gradually loosened, that voices advocating for the natural world began to rise again – many of them from academia, says Laura Henry, a professor of government studies at Bowdoin College in the United States who has written extensively on environmentalism in Russia and the Soviet Union.
“A lot of people who got their education as scientists – natural scientists, biologists, physicists – had a little bit more independence in the system than those who were social scientists. They tended to be relatively independent thinkers,” Henry says.
With the exception of a few fields like genetics and early cybernetics, science and technology – which were seen as broadly apolitical – suffered less from the official the scrutiny and censorship that constricted arts and humanities. Environmentally minded students started to organize themselves into groups called druzhini that could carry out fieldwork and surveys, and even confront poachers or enforce environmental protection laws.
“There were conflicts with officials on various levels – for example, when those officials were caught poaching,” says Eugene Simonov, an environmental activist, journalist and researcher who worked with and supported eco-activism groups in the Soviet Union. “At the same time, the movement was not anti-government… It was a pain in the ass for the system, but not as much as dissident movies, for example.”
Common ground
“The environment was a unifying theme for very fragmented political opposition. It brought together people with absolutely different views on the future. There would be no other topic on which we would be able to have a common language, other than the environment.”
As the 1970s and 1980s rolled by, the wider public was also becoming increasingly aware of environmental issues. Soviet city planners had envisioned a world where citizens could quickly and easily travel between their homes and workplaces, which would also act as a hub for a plethora of state-approved Communist activities. In practice, this meant that ordinary people had a front-row seat when industrial pollution began to impact the same neighborhoods where families lived. Smaller protests on local environmental issues proliferated.
“During the 1980s, there were political movements demanding democracy, but never that many,” Slivyak says. “They were very closely watched, especially in Moscow and St. Petersburg where they were more concentrated. Environmental protests and environmental groups existed all over the country, everywhere. Far more people were involved: everyone is concerned about the environment.”
Yet when eco-activists took to the streets, the Soviet authorities didn’t view them as a serious threat. In some cases, they would try to respond to their concerns.
“Officials needed to allow social movements to advance their ideas of reform,” Simonov says. “There were a lot of incentives to try and cooperate with those parts of civil society that were more oriented towards constructive – or, at least, not acrimonious – goals. The environment was truly such a goal. It would have been difficult for officials to predict what would happen next.”
In a country where living under the watchful eye of the security services made people guarded or apathetic, ecological causes became a unifying common ground.
“Sometimes I’m very, very surprised with whom I was cooperating in the late eighties because they had absolutely opposite political views to mine,” Simonov says. “The environment was a unifying theme for very fragmented political opposition. It brought together people with absolutely different views on the future. There would be no other topic on which we would be able to have a common language, other than the environment.”
Resisting Soviet extractivism
In some places, this unity would take on a more nationalist slant: ordinary people from across the Baltic States, the South Caucuses, Eastern Europe and Central Asia saw firsthand how their natural resources were plundered and redirected elsewhere – usually Moscow.
“They found common cause in saying: ‘This is our forest, this is our lake, our ocean. It’s the source of our river, but it’s also the source of our folklore, our national mythology, our language and our culture’,” says Henry.
In Kazakhstan, new discussion on radiation poisoning in the country’s northwestern Semipalatinsk region – the legacy of decades of Soviet nuclear testing – sparked national outcry and the Nevada-Semipalatinsk anti-nuclear movement.
In Lithuania, activists formed a “living ring” around the Ignalina nuclear power plant – famously modelled after the Chornobyl nuclear power station – to prevent Moscow from adding to the site. “It would not be far-fetched to say the movement for the independence of Lithuania began 70 miles from [the capital of Vilnius], at the largest nuclear construction site in the world,” the Los Angeles Times wrote in a 1991 dispatch.
In Estonia, environmental protests against the building of phosphorite mines galvanized the country to the point where the Soviet authorities buckled to demonstrators’ demands. Students gate-crashed the country’s May Day parades in bright yellow shirts emblazoned with the words: “Phosphorus – no thanks.”
Estonians rallied not only against the damage that the mines would cause to their country’s ecosystems, but also that their national resources would be plundered and transported elsewhere for the benefit of Moscow and the Soviet Union – a state that Estonia had viewed as occupiers since it annexed the country in 1940. However, there was no answering state crackdown from the Soviet security services. Ultimately, the Fosforiidisõda, or “Phosphate Wars” became a catalyst for Estonia to regain its independence.
“The Soviet past shows us that environmental activism can persist and even grow, even when a highly repressive regime is governing the country.”
Too big to contain
By the late 1980s, state security services were struggling for resources and prioritized openly political dissidents. “[The environmental movement] was growing so big: often, the government and the secret police didn’t have enough resources to contain us,” says Slivyak.
Environmental groups, meanwhile, were arming their members with vital skills: organizing large groups of people, campaigning, rallying to a cause. And when officials did cancel unpopular environmental projects in an attempt to win public favor, these groups were often invigorated by a sense of their own civic power.
In February 1989, activists declared a nationwide day of protest against the construction of the Volga-Chogray Canal, a mega-project that threatened to disrupt ecosystems in the Caspian Sea and Volga delta by diverting the flow of local rivers, and environmental groups rallied to the cause. Demonstrations took place in more than 100 towns and cities.
But while protesters were united, the response of the police varied: some tried to disperse the crowds, others were happy to stand back. In some regions, officials felt the best course of action was to try and ingratiate themselves with the demonstrators. Daunted by public disapproval and mounting financial struggles, the Soviet authorities ultimately scrapped the canal.
A new wave of repression
“...Putin had already started to prepare for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He wanted to kill civil society entirely. The government feared that civil society would organize and fight back to preserve democracy."
That same year, Slivyak and his comrades didn’t achieve the same success with their campaign to clean up the Pregolya River. But they did form an organization, Ecodefense, that would long outlive the Soviet regime. Taking up environmental causes across Russia and Lithuania, they also went on fighting one of the river’s major polluters, the Tsepruss paper mill, until the plant finally closed in 2007.
Today, Russian environmental groups once again face an authoritarian state – but if Soviet environmental causes could maintain an air of political neutrality, things are very different today. In 2014, Ecodefense became the first Russian environmental group to be labelled a “foreign agent” – a status loaded with Soviet-style connotations of treachery. A barrage of government fines quickly followed, culminating in a criminal case being opened against the group’s managing director, Alexandra Koroleva.
“The cases against Koroleva are meant to punish her and her environmental group at a time when environmental activism and protests in Russia are on the rise,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement at the time.
“It was impossible to win a legal battle against the Russian government because their focus was clearly to suppress civil movements. I believe there was a clear policy behind these repressions: between 2014 and 2022, every year, there would be at least two or three court cases by the Ministry of Justice against us for supposed violation of different laws,” says Slivyak.
According to Russian human rights monitoring group OVD-Info, 35 environmental groups are now listed as foreign agents by the Kremlin. They range from international NGOs to small, regional charities that clean up trash, monitor protected natural areas or organize festivals for eco-minded youth. Another six organizations, including Greenpeace International, have effectively been forced to cease working in the country after being named “undesirable organizations.” And these figures do not include the many groups that have been closed competely due to such designations.
Most Ecodefense members have now left the country. Koroleva sought asylum in Germany in 2019, where Slivyak also lives. Eugene Simonov, now expert coordinator of the Ukraine War Environmental Consequences Work Group, was personally designated foreign agent in 2021, despite having lived abroad for many years.
Slivyak believes it is no coincidence that civil groups have faced growing repression since 2014 – the year that Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea. “By then, Putin had already started to prepare for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He wanted to kill civil society entirely. The government feared that civil society would organize and fight back to preserve democracy,” he says.
Lessons learned
Far from overlooked, environmental groups have become, in many ways, particularly vulnerable to Putin’s crackdown on dissent. With little in the way of a domestic fundraising base, most Russian environmental organizations receive money from abroad, says Simonov, making them an easy target. And then there is the Russian economy’s extreme reliance on extracting and selling natural resources such as oil and gas – a sensitive subject on which the Kremlin will tolerate no dissent.
“Many environmental groups are ostracized for anti-corruption-related activities: getting in the way of whatever government clique is doing while appropriating natural resources,” Seminov says. “You are just a natural target for being labelled as foreign agents.”
In the 1980s, the Soviet Union was crumbling. Today, repressions are only picking up speed since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. And yet, largest public protests since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine echo perestroika-era defiance against Moscow’s plunder of local resources.
In January 2024, demonstrators braved freezing temperatures to protest the arrest of environmental and indigenous rights activist Fail Alsynov, who was jailed for four years in connection with a speech he made in 2023, during a protest against gold mining projects in the Republic of Bashkortostan.
State prosecutors say Alsynov incited hatred against migrant workers; his supporters say his speech, made in the Bashkir language, was mistranslated. They view the jail term as revenge for his role in halting a mining project on Kushtau Hill, a biodiverse geological formation that also has cultural significance as a regional symbol and sacred burial ground. As well as Alsynov himself, at least 69 others were sent to pre-trial detention after attending protests in his support, according to OVD-Info. Two of his supporters have died under unclear circumstances since being detained.
Alsynov’s case suggests that environmental issues still have resonance across Russia’s vast expanses. For now, they remain local – and so easily crushed. Yet history proves that, armed with a just cause and the right skills, resistance can come from unexpected places.
“Activists are remarkably creative, innovative, stubborn, committed, and idealistic. They often can find a way to generate positive change in even the seemingly most unfavorable circumstances,” says Henry. “The Soviet past shows us that environmental activism can persist and even grow, even when a highly repressive regime is governing the country.”
Activists may also find more direct forms of inspiration from their Soviet counterparts, whether that is backing and providing resources to smaller, locally focused eco-protests or banding together in formal or semi-formal groups. “Older activists are trying to help new generations of environmental leaders and experts to understand how it was in the Soviet Union. There is discussion on models used and what possibilities there could be for new models in the present,” says Simonov.
About the Author
Katie Marie Davies is a journalist, writer and editor. She previously worked in Moscow and now lives in Manchester.
