The postwar “Great acceleration”: an industrial development of Siberia and perception of the problem of water pollution in the 1950-1970s

The article examines the origin and perception of environmental water policy in the USSR to protect rivers and lakes in the context of industrial development of Siberia. The author reveals the importance of the global context of environmental pollution in the Anthropocene epoch in the 1950-1970s. In the 1950s, the countries across the world entered a period of long economic growth. The Soviet Union was no exception. To become a leading power and surpass the size of the United States’ national economy, the Soviet Union launched to develop resources in Siberia and Kazakhstan, including the exploitation of rivers and large lakes. The Soviet state began to pay great attention to the construction of huge hydro-electric power stations, hoping to exploit the vast water resources of the large Siberian rivers - Ob’, Tom’, Irtysh, Angara, Yenisei, Lena. Like any capitalist state, the USSR in the 1950s began to suffer from the massive pollution of rivers and lakes. The largest rivers in the European part of the Soviet Union had already heavily polluted, when the industrial development of Siberia began. Therefore, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Soviet state took the first measures to protect water resources. The main task of state environmental water policy was to improve the technology of water purification and the process of extraction of valuable substances from discharged water. However, sewage treatment facilities were built slowly in the Soviet Union. In many cities of the Soviet Union there were no treatment plants at all in the beginning of the 1960s. The factories and plants were not interested much in the construction of treatment facilities for two reasons: firstly, according to state-planned economy, it was necessary to achieve the target figures. The Soviet enterprises as a rule did not have enough resources to build a wastewater treatment plant. Secondly, the bosses of the Soviet factories did not face criminal or administrative indictment after harming the water environment. The article shows that since the 1950s the problem of river pollution had become relevant for Siberia as well. For example, the Ob’-Irtysh basin rivers suffered from significant industrial pollution in the 1960s because of the extraction of mineral resources in Western Siberia and activity of Siberian hydroelectric power plants. In the end of the article, it is explained that the evolution of attitudes towards water resources in the Soviet Union had changed due to the movement for the protection of Lake Baikal in the 1960-1970s. After a heated dispute on the ways of Baikal protection in the second half of the 1960s, the basics of the Soviet water legislation were adopted in 1970-1972.

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