Anthropogenic impact of the men on the nature and its protection in the north of Western Siberia in the 1960-1980^th

The purpose of this work is to show the process of industrial development of the North of Western Siberia in the 1960-1980th through interaction of the human and the nature as a phenomenon of environmental history. The source base of a research is guided by the analysis of the nature protection legislation, office work documentation of regional executive committees of Councils of deputies of workers, the constant commissions on conservation, documents of the CPSU, the scientific and popular scientific literature devoted to questions of development of the North and protection of its nature. The region in unprecedentedly short time became the center of oil and gas industry, there passed the way from focal development of the territory where it was only necessary to control volumes of production of certain resources, before continuous industrial development of huge spaces with need of complex ensuring environmental protection. It led to the serious environmental impacts connected with environmental pollution. Activity of the enterprises of the oil and gas industry led to pollution of water and loss of fishery value of the rivers and lakes, destruction of the wood and degradation of a soil cover. The state declared careful attitude to the nature and its resources, the Constitution of the USSR and RSFSR obliged citizens to protect the nature (Article 18). However, it influenced daily realities of industrial development of the North of Western Siberia a little. Heads of various levels, as well as their subordinates, loved the nature indirectly, kind of in general, on a global scale. That nature which they faced was for them, first of all, a resource. The resource should be got and mastered. And it was necessary to do it, implementing and exceeding production plans. It was the main priority. The author concluded that oil and gas production, the nature protection legislation and measures of rational use of resources were not observed. Their application was slowed down by lack of really operating mechanisms of impact on violators of nature protection norms. First of all, there were no financial mechanisms. Achievements of science in the sphere of nature protection and rational environmental management, as a rule, were ignored, remained only developments. They were used only when they helped to execute or exceed production plans. Scientists, first of all, geographers and economists wanted that “the nature was not only the storeroom and a source of industrial and agricultural resources of the human, but also the accomplice of industrial and agricultural production”. But the nature very quickly became a victim of industrial development of the region.

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