Communist Environmental Damage
Jeffrey Leonard of the World Wildlife Fund concluded that "pollution was part and parcel of the system that molested the people in their daily lives."
When the Berlin Wall came down and the Iron Curtain was finally lifted to expose the inner workings of communism to Western eyes, one of the more shocking discoveries was the nightmarish scale of environmental destruction. 
Last year a Russian scientist from Murmansk disclosed that contrary to official denials, the Soviet navy had been dumping nuclear waste in the Barents Sea for nearly 30 years. The dumping site, he claimed, was several hundred miles from the Norwegian coast in a known fishing area.
Sten Nilsson, a Swedish forest ecologist who was kicked out of East Germany in 1986 for his efforts at collecting data on the health of its forests, said in April 1990 that many forests were “dead, completely” and described the country as “on the verge of total ecological collapse.”
Environmentalist, Government, Oops, Communism
On the Kazakh-Uzbek border, surrounded by miles of toxic desert, lies an island. Or at least, something that used to be an island.
Vozrozhdeniya was once home to a vibrant fishing village fringed by turquoise lagoons, back when the Aral Sea was the fourth-largest in the world and abundant with fish.
But after years of abuse by the Soviets, the waters have receded and the sea has turned to dust; the rivers that fed it were diverted to irrigate cotton fields. Today, a layer of salty sand, riddled with carcinogenic pesticides, is all that remains of the ancient oasis...
The project was a total secret, not even marked on Soviet maps, but those in the know called it Aralsk-7. Over the years the site flourished into a living nightmare, where anthrax, smallpox and the plague hung in great clouds over the land, and exotic diseases such as tularemia, brucellosis, and typhus rained down and seeped into the sandy soil.
Environmentalist, Narrative, Oops, Communism
Dr Osekeeva’s 38 years practising family medicine in this idyllic-looking valley in southern Kyrgyzstan make her a cataloguer of death. Cancer rates are rising, she says, and she thinks she knows the culprit. Buried along the river in and around Mailuu-Suu, a town of some 20,000 people, lurks the poisonous legacy of the Soviet Union’s first atom bombs: 2m cubic metres of radioactive waste leaching into the water supply.
Environmentalist, Editorial, Narrative, Communism
In 1989, when the Iron Curtain began to lift over Eastern Europe, Westerners were shocked to find the level to which the water, air and soil in the former East bloc countries had deteriorated. Jeffrey Leonard of the World Wildlife Fund concluded that "pollution was part and parcel of the system that molested the people in their daily lives." He added that "decades of industrial development with little or no environmental control" had spawned an "environmental nightmare."
Environmentalist, Narrative, Oops, Waste, Communism
A Russian government report acknowledged in March 1993, that “during the period of 1965 to 1988 the Northern Fleet had dumped four reactor compartments with eight reactors (three containing damaged fuel) in the Abrosimov Gulf in 20 to 40 meters of water.” Six other compartments, containing nine reactors in all, had also been dumped into the water in the 1960s and 1970s.
Communism and the Environment
Yes, even though communism led to corrupt governments responsible for the suffering of millions, communists and communist thinking have nonetheless produced some worthy green ideas.
Yes, even though communism led to corrupt governments responsible for the suffering of millions, communists and communist thinking have nonetheless produced some worthy green ideas. -Treehugger.com
Environmentalist, Narrative, Oops, Waste, Communism
Of possibly greater concern is the radioactive waste dumped at sea. Russian authorities told Dr. Hollister that 11,000 to 17,000 waste containers, holding 61,407 curies of radioactivity, were dumped off Novaya Zemlya from 1964 to 1990. In addition, 165,000 cubic meters of liquid waste were dumped in the Barents Sea west of Novaya Zemlaya from 1961 to 1990. For comparison, the Chernobyl accident released about 86,000,000 curies of radioactivity. Dr. Hollister reckons the amount of nuclear material within some of the Soviet sunken submarines at seven times that in the ill-fated Chernobyl reactor.
Environmentalist, Narrative, Oops, Waste, Communism
In one of history's most brazen displays of disregard for nature, Stalin dammed the Volga, draining millions of gallons for reservoirs and huge electrical plants. This has altered the flow of water into the Caspian and added tens of thousands of tons of heavy metals, chemicals, raw waste and other pollutants to it each year.
Environmentalist, Government, Un, Corruption, Communism
CDM projects are concentrated in Asia due to the disastrous environmental effects of communism and the bureaucratic savvy of China, experts say. “Communism created the most intensely wasteful society the world has ever seen,” said Horner, explaining why former Soviet states in Central Asia such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan receive substantial support from the CDM. The Chinese government, an aggressive host for CDM projects, has manipulated the system, going so far as to re-open defunct factories in order to get Europeans to pay them to close them again.
Liberal, Brilliance, AntiAmerican, Communism, Hollywood
“I would think that if you understood what Communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees, that we would someday become communists.” -Jane Fonda