AHChallenge: Make Soviet Union More Environmentally-friendly

Yes, we all know how Russia (and other areas) ecologically wrecked by the inefficient industrial policies of USSR. How the Reds poisoned rivers, drained entire Aral Sea, cut down Siberian forests all in the name of Communism.

But what if they didn't? What if the USSR was more enviromentally-aware state where the government care about the ecological impact of development? How can we achieve this?

Thanks in advance!
 
I find this very improbable. Serious environmental movements like you are proposing just are not going to happen in a state that is doing everything it possibly can to play catch up to a much more developed state.
Just look at modern China.

Unless you can end the Cold War or more preferrably never start it and still somehow have a Soviet Union with no competition, i think it's ASB. Communist world revolution is the only way that comes to mind and we all know how plausible that is.
 
Why would a militaristic police state care less about the environment? It's whole legitimacy was based on the idea that Communism provides quicker development of the economy and more equal distribution of goods. Environmentalism goes against the first basis of their legitimacy.
 
Why would a militaristic police state care less about the environment? It's whole legitimacy was based on the idea that Communism provides quicker development of the economy and more equal distribution of goods. Environmentalism goes against the first basis of their legitimacy.

Well, there was another militaristic police state which environmentally-friendly.
It's called Nazi Germany.
But the roots of environmentalist movement was from aristocracy, and improbable in USSR.
Is there a way?
 
I think it's too early for that. 1917 does not really have a concept of environmental health.

One possibility I could see mitigating this is a more technocratic government. Under Stalin, the "bourgeois engineers" who had helped build the early USSR were liquidated and the famers who had recently acquired noble landholdings dekulakised. These are two groups that understood, or could come to understand, sustainability. There is nothing magical or hypermodern about the idea, anyone who manages forests or herds understands it, and it translates well into other fields. In theory, a society based on the principle of loing-term planning should be receptive to it. in practice, of course, telling Stalin something couldn't be done was a one-way ticket to Siberia, so these things got sidetracked. If a less dictatorial and paranoid government were to emerge (and the Bolsheviks perhaps get off their cult of the worker and his clear understanding of all things through class consciousness), managing the resources of the Soviet peoples responsibly could quickly become a government priority. You'd start with importing Western forestry practices and product quality controls. A genuinely functioning Gosplan would be able to track the impact relatively quickly, and by the 1940s would be in a position to rebuild Soviet society "for the future", as a sustainable and efficient economy. It is still going to be an idea of sustainability from the early 20th century, but once it is on the radar of the authorities, it will improve.

Incidentally, the story that Nazi Germany was environmentally friendly is largely a myth. The Nazis introduced some public health and animal cruelty legislation and maintained an old German tradition of sutainable forest management and Romantic concern for landscape. As a dictastorship, they could be a tad more effective about that. What they were not is in any meaningful way "green". They never addressed things like industrial pollution, toxic ingredients in a variety of products, or even private household pollution (which they could have done easily without alienating any supporters that mattered). It is right, though, that the social dynamics that supported Nazi Germany's environmental policies, such as they were, were absent in the USSR.
 
I think it's too early for that. 1917 does not really have a concept of environmental health.

One possibility I could see mitigating this is a more technocratic government. Under Stalin, the "bourgeois engineers" who had helped build the early USSR were liquidated and the famers who had recently acquired noble landholdings dekulakised. These are two groups that understood, or could come to understand, sustainability. There is nothing magical or hypermodern about the idea, anyone who manages forests or herds understands it, and it translates well into other fields. In theory, a society based on the principle of loing-term planning should be receptive to it. in practice, of course, telling Stalin something couldn't be done was a one-way ticket to Siberia, so these things got sidetracked. If a less dictatorial and paranoid government were to emerge (and the Bolsheviks perhaps get off their cult of the worker and his clear understanding of all things through class consciousness), managing the resources of the Soviet peoples responsibly could quickly become a government priority. You'd start with importing Western forestry practices and product quality controls. A genuinely functioning Gosplan would be able to track the impact relatively quickly, and by the 1940s would be in a position to rebuild Soviet society "for the future", as a sustainable and efficient economy. It is still going to be an idea of sustainability from the early 20th century, but once it is on the radar of the authorities, it will improve.

Incidentally, the story that Nazi Germany was environmentally friendly is largely a myth. The Nazis introduced some public health and animal cruelty legislation and maintained an old German tradition of sutainable forest management and Romantic concern for landscape. As a dictastorship, they could be a tad more effective about that. What they were not is in any meaningful way "green". They never addressed things like industrial pollution, toxic ingredients in a variety of products, or even private household pollution (which they could have done easily without alienating any supporters that mattered). It is right, though, that the social dynamics that supported Nazi Germany's environmental policies, such as they were, were absent in the USSR.


Problems
1) Long term planning is damn near impossible, at least on the scale of an entire large economy. If nothing else technology changes way too fast. For example, if your new fertilizer uses more sodium and less zinc for some reason it throws all your planning for sodium and zinc out the window and it ripples through the economy as you have to shift workers and machinery from zinc to sodium. Multiply it by the millions of products a modern economy produces and you can see the problem. This is one big reason Communism doesn't work.

2) Sustainability is a lot more complex in an entire economy than in just one farm or logging establishment. A farmer has to worry only about his direct inputs and outputs. He only has to worry about what fertilizer to use (for example) and not how the fertilizer was made and what the inputs for fertilizers are.

3) Communism only "works" when it is a dictatorship. Because of the "tragedy of the commons" people tend to work hard only if forced or they are getting paid more. To a certain extent you can pay people more under Communism but if they get paid too much better you undermine your legitimacy. After all a big draw for Communism is a more equal distribution of goods.

4) There are too many problems with Communism for Gosplan to really work. Every time new technology becomes available or a natural disaster takes down your "One big plant" your plan has to be thrown out the window.
 

Cook

Banned
I think it's too early for that. 1917 does not really have a concept of environmental health.

The World’s first National Park was Yellowstone, founded by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872, fully 45 years before the October Revolution.
 
there were some ecologists in the early soviet union but stalin stamped them out. prevent stalin form taking power and perhaps industrialization could've been greener...

even the concept of anthropogenic climate change was around by 1917. some swedish guy in the 1880s or 1890s; can't remember his name. could be utilized by a radical government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
hmm, turns out he was also a eugenecist. might not be the first guy soviet ecologists go looking to for inspiration...

also the term sustainability comes from western eco-socialists in the 1970s for use in devoping countries. it was transformed by greens in the 80s and 90s into the "triple bottom line" formula (people, profits, and the environment), and by the 00s was mutated into a meaningless corporate slogan. "sustainability" is a joke. hard left environmentalism has many forms, but sustainabilty is a misnomer. sorry. that shit bugs me
 
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The World’s first National Park was Yellowstone, founded by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872, fully 45 years before the October Revolution.

Yes, but that's basically collecting Romantic landscape paintings on a grand scale. Ecological theory is in its infancy in the early twentieth century, and without that, you don't have environmentalism, just conservation.
 
Problems
1) Long term planning is damn near impossible, at least on the scale of an entire large economy. If nothing else technology changes way too fast. For example, if your new fertilizer uses more sodium and less zinc for some reason it throws all your planning for sodium and zinc out the window and it ripples through the economy as you have to shift workers and machinery from zinc to sodium. Multiply it by the millions of products a modern economy produces and you can see the problem. This is one big reason Communism doesn't work.

2) Sustainability is a lot more complex in an entire economy than in just one farm or logging establishment. A farmer has to worry only about his direct inputs and outputs. He only has to worry about what fertilizer to use (for example) and not how the fertilizer was made and what the inputs for fertilizers are.

3) Communism only "works" when it is a dictatorship. Because of the "tragedy of the commons" people tend to work hard only if forced or they are getting paid more. To a certain extent you can pay people more under Communism but if they get paid too much better you undermine your legitimacy. After all a big draw for Communism is a more equal distribution of goods.

4) There are too many problems with Communism for Gosplan to really work. Every time new technology becomes available or a natural disaster takes down your "One big plant" your plan has to be thrown out the window.

I can see where you are coming from, but how does any of that argue against what I wrote? I'm not saying that central planning would actually be terribly effective. I am saying that, given the way it is set up in theory, it is well placed to develop a concept of ecological sustainability precisely because it must react to the unexpected. That, of course, would require leaving experts in charge rather than developing a pervasive culture of fudging numbers and focusing on narrow targets, but this is the idea.

Let's not go into the critique of Communism as such, what's the point?
 
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