The Price of Capitalism

In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union decided to end its economic isolation and integrate itself into the world economy. This radical change may have long-term negative consequences-- political, social, psychological and ecological--for the Soviet people. Just the environmental impacts of this transition could be enormous. If the Soviet Union approaches "development" cavalierly it, like many developing nations, may become an "ecological colony" for the world's multinational corporations.

Presently, the U.S.S.R faces grave economic difficulties. Some Western companies hope that these problems will prompt the Soviet Union to be compliant and to make economic, social and ecological concessions in the hopes of achieving an economic recovery.

The waste trade

Public outrage followed the 1988 exposure of the longstanding practice of Western companies shipping toxic and radioactive wastes to Africa and other developing countries. Exporting wastes to other countries has become a very big and profitable business for Western companies. Now the international "wastes mafia" is directing its attention toward the Soviet Union, believing that vast territories of the country could accommodate hundreds of millions of tons of hazardous waste.

All contacts between Soviet ministries and potential exporters of such wastes have been kept secret. However, the media and environmental activists, both in Western countries and in the Soviet Union, have gained access to some information about these contacts and have made it public.

In 1985, the West German media reported that the Soviet Union had agreed to accept and bury spent fuel from a nuclear power plant in Zwentendorf, Austria. The deal would have been completed had the newly constructed power station not been blocked by Austrian ecologists.

In the summer of 1988, a West German delegation to Moscow proposed paying the Soviet Union to accept nuclear waste from Germany. This visit was not reported to the Soviet public. Later, in August 1988, N.N. Ponomarev-Stepnoy, a full member of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences and deputy director of the Institute of Atomic Power, admitted at a news conference that a number of countries approached the Soviet Union about accepting "nuclear power industry wastes for burial." At the same time, Ponomarev-Stepnoy denied that specific agreements had already been signed. His claims, however, were misleading.

For many years, the Soviet Union has accepted spent nuclear fuel from Eastern Europe and Finland. In early 1990, Leningrad TV reported that more than 100 barrels from West Germany, labelled as containing one non-toxic chemical, were in fact filled with low-level radioactive materials. The final destination of this cargo was Tomsk, a Siberian town, where a nuclear processing plant is located. The Soviet people, however, know nothing about the amount of radioactive materials delivered to the U.S.S.R., the conditions of their transport, storage and neutralization and, most importantly, the final destinations of the lethal cargos. Today, with the Soviet Union in chaos, no one can be sure what is entering the country.

Decentralization trends in the U.S.S.R may further exacerbate the problem. Autonomous republics and municipalities are establishing direct economic ties with Western companies. With the central government's control over imports and exports declining, it is quite possible that republican and municipal governments will agree to accept hazardous wastes from Western companies in order to obtain hard currency. Some republican and municipal authorities are even planning to set up their own custom houses, a trend which is likely to benefit the international waste companies which often flock to take advantage of cash-poor governments.

Hazardous product imports

As it is integrated into the world economy, the Soviet Union also risks becoming a market for obsolete and ecologically dangerous Western products. For example, in 1990, Pepsico signed a highly publicized $3 billion agreement with the Soviet Union to build a dozen plants for the production of Pepsi-Cola. Instead of promoting and developing the U.S.S.R.'s many traditional soft drinks (for example, kvas), Soviet authorities prefer to invite Pepsico with its dubious product. The money spent in this deal and others like it could have been invested in production of more useful and necessary goods (food, medicine, etc.), but many Soviet bureaucrats spend the country's limited hard currency on the Western technologies and consumer goods with which they are infatuated.

The benefit of spending vast sums importing pesticides is also questionable. In 1960, the U.S.S.R bought 19,900 tons of pesticides from Western chemical companies. By 1980, the amount had grown to 96,500 tons and, by 1987, it was 118,000 tons. In the second half of the 1980s, the U.S.S.R. spent 500 million rubles in hard currency annually to buy pesticides which have had devastating environmental impacts on the country.

Multinational chemical companies have already begun exporting to the Soviet Union, including BASF, Bayer and DuPont. Unfortunately, Soviets often are able to learn about the nation's import of ecologically dangerous chemicals only from Western sources. In the summer of 1980,600 liters of toxic chemicals leaked from a Dutch freighter in the Elbe estuary, provoking a public outcry in West Germany. The freighter carried 850 tons of epichlorohydrin, which is very dangerous even in low concentrations and is a potential carcinogen. The chemical was produced by the U.S. company Monsanto, and was bound for the Soviet Union.

At approximately the same time, a leak of noxious liquid from a freight car was discovered at the Seelze railway station, not far from Hanover, Germany. Twenty-three tons of highly toxic insecticides were found inside the car. (They had been shipped to the U.S.S.R via Rotterdam, West and East Germany.) The ensuing scandal brought public attention to the problem of safe transportation of chemicals and to the larger issue of Soviet imports of chemicals which are not deemed safe enough for use in the West.

Many products banned in West Germany can be found in the Soviet Union. For instance, West German-made "Tipp Ex" typewriter correction fluid was banned in West Germany because it contains highly volatile substances which impair eyesight. Additionally, its vapors contribute to the destruction of the ozone layer. Yet Tipp Ex is marketed in the U.S.S.R.

Even seemingly harmless Soviet imports can pose a hazard to the environment and human health. For example, freighters regularly delivered Syrian and Moroccan phosphates, a chemical fertilizer, to the port of Yuzny near Odessa. Shiploads of phosphates also frequently contained high concentrations of beryllium, lead, cadmium, nickel and other heavy metals. Often, these shipments were radioactive. Port workers refused to unload one freighter and it was ordered to lay out. The scandal which followed resulted in an investigation, carried out by the State Committee on Nature Protection of Russia. The Committee concluded that agreements on the delivery of Syrian and Moroccan phosphates had been signed without prior ecological evaluation. It also discovered that many previous shipments of the phosphates had contaminated vast areas of European Russia. It took almost one year for the State Committee on Nature Protection of Russia to cancel the agreements on deliveries of phosphates. The deputy chairman of the Committee, Liya Shelest, says that some Soviet govemment officials defended this agreement so energetically that he began to suspect they had been bribed by foreign companies.

Bribery may also explain the shipment of Turkish tea to the Soviet Union. Today it may be the only product available in abundance in the Soviet shops. But most people know that this tea was grown on plantations in Turkey which were contaminated by the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Fortunately, few people risk buying radioactive Turkish tea. The Foreign Trade Ministry wasted a significant amount of money on this contaminated tea, but so far no one from the government has been brought to court or been otherwise held accountable for this outrage. Thus, there is no guarantee that bureaucrats will not sign contracts in the future which bring dangerous products into the country and waste scarce Soviet hard currency.

Even when citizens are able to stop dangerous deals, it is often too late to prevent unneeded expenditures. For example, the West German company Lurgi sold the Soviet Union equipment for manufacturing an obsolete, toxic pesticide called Basudin. Despite strong citizen opposition, the construction of a Basudin plant began in the city of Volvograd. Eventually, the citizens' campaign succeeded, and the plant was not put in operation. However, 70 million rubles in hard currency had already been wasted on the deal.

The secrecy surrounding Soviet economic relations with foreign multinational companies and the chaos in the nation's political situation limit citizens' ability to prevent the import of products which are inefficient and dangerous to human health and the environment. Unfortunately, many Soviets only see the "promise" of capitalism; the pitfalls of becoming a raw material and ecological colony for multinational corporations are too easily overlooked.

Dr.Valentin Katasonov is a representative of the Russian government and a specialist on environmental and economic affairs.