UDC

94(47)084.9

DOI

10.37482/2227-6564-V014

Authors

Kristina A. Sidorenkova
Cherepovets State University; prosp. Lunacharskogo 5, Cherepovets, 162600, Russian Federation;
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9441-6044 e-mail: miss-chrisie@rambler.ru

Abstract

A long list of scientific publications is devoted to the environmental history of industrial regions of the Soviet Union. However, the Arkhangelsk and Vologda Regions have not been studied sufficiently in this respect. At the same time, by the 1970s, such cities of the European North of Russia as Cherepovets, Sokol, Arkhangelsk, Novodvinsk, Kotlas and Koryazhma were faced with an extremely difficult environmental situation. Attempts of state and municipal regulation of the environment failed to make any significant improvements. Day after day feeling the effects of industrial emissions on their health and realizing the local authoritiesʼ lacking both powers and financial resources to change the environmental situation, the population decided to take this issue into their own hands. Starting from the second half of the 1980s, an informal environmental movement had been developed in the cities of the European North of Russia. Thе article studies the history of this movement as well as the forms and methods of the struggle carried on by its members in order to improve the environmental situation. The resources used in the research include previously unpublished documents kept in the archives of Cherepovets, Novodvinsk, Vologda and Arkhangelsk, as well as local newspapers. The results demonstrate that the informal environmental movement was a significant socio-political force in the region. Its activists made the authorities abandon their plans of increasing the cities’ industrial capacity and start developing comprehensive programmes aimed to improve the environmental situation.

Keywords

environmental problems in the USSR, industrial cities of the European North of Russia, informal environmental movement of the 1980s

References

1. Brain S. The Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature. Environ. Hist., 2010, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 670–700.
2. Bruno A. The Nature of Soviet Power: An Arctic Environmental History. Cambridge, 2016. 305 p.
3. Peterson D.J. Troubled Lands: The Legacy of Soviet Environmental Destruction. Boulder, 1993. 276 p.
4. Weiner D.R. Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachёv. Berkeley, 1999. 570 p.
5. Kalimullin A.M. Ekologicheskaya istoriya promyshlennogo goroda vo vtoroy polovine XX veka [The Environmental History of an Industrial City in the Second Half of the 20th Century]. Kazan, 2011. 364 p.
6. Plyusnina V.V. Razvitie prirodookhrannoy deyatel’nosti obshchestvennykh organizatsiy Buryatii (poslednyaya tret’ XIX – nachalo XXI vv.) [The Development of Environmental Activities of Public Organizations in Buryatia (Last Third of the 19th – Early 21st Centuries): Diss.]. Ulan-Ude, 2005. 150 p.
7. Khaliy I.A. Ekologicheskoe dvizhenie v usloviyakh krupnogo industrial’nogo tsentra Rossii [Environmental Movement in Russia’s Large Industrial Centre: Diss.]. Moscow, 1994. 213 p.
8. Tsepilova O.D. Vozniknovenie i razvitie obshchestvennykh dvizheniy v rayone povyshennoy ekologicheskoy opasnosti (na primere g. Kirishi Leningradskoy oblasti) [The Emergence and Development of Social Movements in the Areas of Increased Environmental Hazard: (Exemplified by the City of Kirishi in the Leningrad Region): Diss.]. St. Petersburg, 2000. 197 p.
9. Korotaev V.I. Na poroge demograficheskoy katastrofy: prinuditel’naya kolonizatsiya i demograficheskiy krizis v Severnom krae v 30-e gody XX veka [On the Brink of a Demographic Disaster: Forced Colonization and the Demographic Crisis in the North in the 1930s]. Arkhangelsk, 2004. 136 p.
10. Korotaev V.I. Russkiy Sever v kontse XIX – pervoy treti XX veka. Problemy modernizatsii i sotsial’noy ekologii [The Russian North in the Late 19th – First Third of the 20th Century. Problems of Modernization and Social Ecology]. Arkhangelsk, 1998. 192 p.
11. Kolokol’chikova R.S. Fenomen industrial’nogo goroda v istorii Evropeyskogo Severa Rossii (vtoraya polovina 1960-kh – pervaya polovina 1980-kh gg.) [The Industrial City Phenomenon in the History of the European North of Russia (Second Half of the 1960s – First Half of the 1980s): Diss.]. Cherepovets, 2015. 634 p.
12. Kolokol’chikova R.S. Ekologicheskoe dvizhenie kak sledstvie urbanizatsionnogo perekhoda [Environmental Movement as a Consequence of the Urbanization Transition]. Beznin M.A. (ed.). Evropeyskiy Sever Rossii: traditsiya i modernizatsionnye protsessy [The European North of Russia: Traditions and Modernization Processes]. Vologda, 2006. Pt. 2, pp. 66–73.
13. Galeeva A.M., Kurok M.L. (comps.). Ob okhrane okruzhayushchey sredy: Sbornik dokumentov partii i
pravitel’stva, 1917–1978 gg. [On Environmental Protection: Collected Documents of the Party and Government, 1917–1978]. Moscow, 1979. 352 p.
14. Archives Department of the Administration of the Novodvinsk City Municipality. Coll. 2. Inv. 1. Fol. 1. F. 8 (in Russ.).
15. Cherepovets Document Storage Centre (CDSC). Coll. 7. Inv. (11)1. Fol. 103. F. 42 (in Russ.).
16. CDSC. Coll. 7. Inv. (11)1. Fol. 1042 (in Russ.).
17. CDSC. Coll. 7. Inv. (11)1. Fol. 1141 (in Russ.).
18. Archives Department of the Administration of the Novodvinsk City Municipality. Coll. 2. Inv. 1. Fol. 348. F. 30 (in Russ.).
19. CDSC. Coll. 7. Inv. (11)1. Fol. 1433. F. 51 (in Russ.).
20. Archives Department of the Administration of the Novodvinsk City Municipality. Coll. 2. Inv. 1. Fol. 375. F. 103 (in Russ.).
21. Sidorenkova K.A. Prirodookhrannaya rabota Cherepovetskogo Soveta deputatov trudyashchikhsya (narodnykh deputatov) v 1970–1980-e gody [Conservational Work of the Cherepovets Council of Workers’ Deputies (People’s Deputies) in the 1970–1980s]. Pavlova N.P. (ed.). Cherepovetskie nauchnye chteniya – 2012. Ch. 1. Literaturovedenie, lingvistika, SMI, istoriya, filosofiya, sotsiologiya, politologiya [Cherepovets Scientific Readings – 2012. Pt. 1. Literary Criticism, Linguistics, Mass Media, History, Philosophy, Sociology, and Political Science]. Cherepovets, 2013, pp. 163–165.
22. Novodvinskiy rabochiy, 10 June 1989.
23. Kommunist, 21 September 1988.
24. Novodvinskiy rabochiy, 12 September 1989.
25. Trudovaya Koryazhma, 8 April 1989.
26. Kommunist, 11 July 1989.
27. State Archives of the Russian Federation (SARF). Coll. A-404. Inv. 1. Fol. 1814. F. 8 (in Russ.).
28. SARF. Coll. A-404. Inv. 1. Fol. 1820. F. 23 (in Russ.).
29. Novodvinskiy rabochiy, 20 June 1989.
30. State Archives of the Vologda Region, Coll. 40. Inv. 1. Fol. 336. F. 21 (in Russ.).
31. Kommunist, 25 June 1988.
32. Kommunist, 15 March 1989.
33. Kommunist, 11 April 1989.
34. Kommunist, 29 April 1989.
35. Kommunist, 30 August 1989.
36. Novodvinskiy rabochiy, 18 July 1989.
37. On Urgent Measures to Improve the Environmental Situation in the RSFSR in 1990–1995 and the Key Areas of Conservation in the 13th Five-Year Plan and for the Period up to 2005: Decree of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR of March 16, 1990, no. 93. Library of Regulatory Legal Acts of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Available at: http://www.libussr.ru/doc_ussr/usr_16313.htm (accessed: 25 September 2019) (in Russ.).
38. Kolokol’chikova R.S. Cherepovets kak fenomen industrial’nogo goroda (ser. 1960 – ser. 1980-kh gg.) [Cherepovets as an Industrial City Phenomenon (Mid-1960 – Mid-1980s):]. Cherepovets, 2009. 275 p.
39. State Report “On the State of the Environment and Environmental Protection in the Russian Federation in 2018”. Moscow, 2019. 844 p. (in Russ.).
40. Britskaya T. Sever. Dalee vezde [The North. And Then Everywhere]. Novaya gazeta, 25 September 2019. Available at: https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2019/09/23/82081-sever-dalee-vezde (accessed: 1 October 2019).
41. Vologodskaya pravda, 3 February 2019.
42. Rally Against the Pulp Mill in Cherepovets Attended by 380 People. Gorodche.ru, 1 December 2019. Available at: https://www.gorodche.ru/news/society/129606/ (accessed: 3 December 2019) (in Russ.).
43. Cherepovets Residents Did Not Support the Protest Against a Hypothetical Pulp Mill. 35MEDIA, 2 December 2019. Available at: https://35media.ru/news/2019/12/02/cherepovchane-ne-podderzhali-protestprotiv-gipoteticheskogo-celly... (accessed: 3 December 2019) (in Russ.).