Activities of the regional branches of the All-Russian Society for the Conservation of Nature in Western Siberia (1960 - first half of the 1980s)

The article considers the activities of the oldest and largest public environmental organization in the USSR - the All-Russian Society for Nature Conservation (VOOP), which played a determining role in solving environmental problems in the second half of the 20th century. The aim of this work is to analyze the forms and methods of work of the environmental community as one of the actors of environmental policy. On the basis of the analysis of publications in the periodical press and a significant array of documents from the regional archives of Western Siberia, the main forms and methods of work of the VOOP regional councils in Altai Krai, Omsk, Tomsk, Kemerovo, Novosibirsk, Tyumen regions in the period following the adoption of the Law on Nature Protection and before perestroika are considered. The author analyzes publications in the periodical press and documents from archives, the most important of which are resolutions and decisions of superior bodies, plans and reports, estimates, orders, section materials, etc. They reflect the actual environmental problems of the regions, the dynamics of the number of primary organizations, the number of members, the amount of funds received and spent, information on the planned and conducted events, the awards of the most active members of the organization, and so on. The extensive factual material of Western Siberia allows a conclusion to be drawn that the scale of the activities of the regional branches of the society differed, and the degree of success of this activity at the local level, as a rule, depended on the personal factor. The local organizations of the society relied on the executive committees of the city and district Soviets of People's Deputies of the working people. The presidiums of the city and district councils of VOOP were headed by deputy chairmen of the executive committees, which allowed the public organization to influence nature users and involve them in their activities. In the beginning of the 1960s, the activities of the regional VOOP became more evident than in the previous period. It happened due to the adoption in 1960 of the Law on Nature Protection and the worsening of the ecological systems in Western Siberia. At that time VOOP focused on such problems as ecological well-being of small rivers, lands, forests, atmospheric air. Comparison of VOOP with Western environmental organizations, as well as with Russian eco-NPOs of the 1990s, seems incorrect - their methods in the Soviet reality were not applicable. The effectiveness of VOOP nature conservation activities could be more significant: it left much to be desired. Up to the end of the 1980s, the public was not aware of its role in the implementation of environmental policy at the state and regional levels, but the experience of public environmental activities of the previous decades had a significant impact on the development of the environmental movement in Russia after the perestroika period.

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