the environmental crisis in eastern europe: the price for progress

The Environmental Crisis in Eastern Europe: The Price for ProgressAuthor(s): John M. KramerSource: Slavic Review, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Summer, 1983), pp. 204-220Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2497513 .

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JOHN M. KRAMER

The Environmental Crisis in Eastern Europe: The Price for Progress

Environmental pollution is the price that has to be paid for industrial development and the development of civilization. Arresting and eliminat- ing these processes is extremely costly and we do not always have the means at our disposal for the necessary action. (Kurier Szczecinski [Szczecin], June 9, 1981)

Judging by most indexes of modernization, Joseph Stalin's long cherished dream of the socialist East overtaking the capitalist West remains unfulfilled. Ironically, however, the states of Eastern Europe may be close to preeminence in one unwelcome area: environmental pollution.1 Atmospheric emissions of sulfur dioxide in Czechoslovakia and Poland reportedly approximate similar emissions in France and the Federal Republic of Germany. Many waterways in Yugoslavia are said to be "polluted beyond all domestic, European, and world standards," and in East Germany and Romania less than 20 percent of the main watercourses are sufficiently pure to provide potable water. The Slovak capital of Bratislava allegedly possesses the "worst environment among our own and other European cities," while Western experts consider air pollution levels in Sara- jevo, Yugoslavia to be among the highest in the world.2

Environmental pollution has even become an issue of public controversy in several East European countries. The debate was especially lively in Poland during the period of liberalization that preceded the imposition of martial law on December 13, 1981. As part of the overall pluralization of Polish politics that occurred in that period, the recently established Polish Ecology Club emerged as an important force to protect the environment. With over twenty thousand members in fourteen regional branches and with the public support of the Solidarity trade union movement, the club, in an open letter to the Polish parliament, the Sejm, asserted that environmental pollution threatened the "cultural and biological life of the nation," and called upon the Sejm to declare Krakow (where the sulfur dioxide content of the atmosphere is higher than that

1. Eastern Europe here refers to Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic ("the G.D.R." or "East Germany"), Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Few accounts of environmental pollution in Eastern Europe have been published in English. The following Radio Free Europe ("R.F.E.") Situation Reports do provide overviews of environmental pollution in Eastern Europe as of 1972: no. 5 (Bulgaria), May 18, 1972; no. 15 (Czechoslovakia), May 17, 1972; no. 10 (Hungary), May 23, 1972; no. 18 (Poland), May 26, 1972; no. 8 (Romania), May 18, 1972. See also "Pollution in Eastern Europe," East Europe (July, 1971), pp. 20-23; Ivan Volgyes, ed., Environmental Deterioration in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (New York: Praeger, 1974).

2. Technicky tydenik (Prague), September 23, 1975, cited in R.F.E. Situation Report no. 40 (Czechoslovakia), October 8, 1975; Borba (Belgrade), August 6, 1977; Einheit (East Berlin), July 1979, translated in Joint Publications Research Service ("J.P.R.S."), no. 74081, August 27, 1979, p. 27; Lupta de Clasd (Bucharest), April 1979, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 73989, May 11, 1979, p. 99; Nove slovo (Bratislava), November 4, 1976, cited in R.FE. Background Report, no. 237 (Czechoslovakia), November 19, 1976; The New York Times, September 14, 1975.



Environmental Crisis in Eastern Europe 205

of London, England, a city six times larger in size) an area "threatened by an ecological catastrophe" that should be granted a "privileged status" in the fight against pollution. The club also successfully lobbied with the government to close several heavily polluting industrial enterprises, including the nation's largest producer of aluminum, the Skawina works located on the outskirts of Krakow. Yugoslavia has also experienced public protests against pollution. Citizens have vocally opposed construction of an oil pipeline terminal and several nuclear power plant projects, partly because these might harm the environment. Yugoslav fishermen carrying placards with the slogan "Fish Today, Man Tomorrow" have protested against water pollution and the massive destruction of fish that accompanies it, while, according to one account, a "public furor" that "bordered on hysteria" broke out among the residents of Celje over the proposed location of a sulfuric acid plant in this already heavily polluted city. Even in politically conservative Czechoslovakia, citizens have publicly expressed concern about environmental pollution. A public opinion survey found that over 80 percent of the sample thought that in Czechoslovakia pollution control was either "grossly inefficient" or that "too little was being done" to protect the environment.3

Several factors prevent a precise determination of the dimensions and costs of environmental pollution in Eastern Europe. The difficulty arises in part from the nature of pollution itself, since pollution levels continually fluctuate as other variables (the weather for instance) change, and the costs of pollution may not become apparent for many years or are not easily distinguishable from other conditions contributing to a particular problem. Furthermore, no East European country now possesses a national network that systematically monitors pollution sources and provides comprehensive data on environmental conditions, and only Poland is undertaking substantive initiatives to create such a network. Finally, communist regimes have at times been reluctant to publish material on environmental pollution that could prove politically embarrassing or that might serve to refute the ideological claim that social problems, including pollution, only exist in capitalist societies.4

Consequently, we can make only tentative judgments regarding the com- parative severity of environmental pollution among East European states. Given the geographic and socioeconomic diversity that characterizes these states, it

3. For material on the activities of the Polish Ecology Club, see, R.F.E. Situation Report no. 2 (Poland), January 30, 1981; Wall Street Journal, July 24, 1981. For expressions of public concern over environmental pollution in Yugoslavia, see, for example, Delo (Ljubljana), May 5, 1978, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 71373, June 28, 1978; Vecer (Maribor), February 18, 1977, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 68941, April 15, 1977. Data on Czech public opinion are found in Zivotni prostredi (Prague), no. 1, 1973, cited in R.F.E. Situation Report no. 32 (Czechoslovakia), September 13, 1973.

4. A Czech emigre journal has alleged, for example, that in Czechoslovakia the "first ecological rule is concealing information" about the state of the environment, while in Poland activists in the Polish Ecology Club asserted that Communist party officials accused those who expressed alarm at the state of the environment of "trying to stop the building of socialism." Listy (Rome), April 1980, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 76077, July 21, 1980; Wall Street Journal, July 24, 1981. Instructions to censors in Poland have included a prohibition against publishing any materials regarding pollution of Polish rivers from sources in the USSR. For materials on Polish censorship practices, including those related to pollution, see the New York Review of Books, August 17, 1978, pp. 16-18.



206 Slavic Review

seems clear that differences in severity do exist. For example, while in 1977 coal (which is highly polluting) accounted for 57 percent of the primary energy consumed in the region, it accounted for 32 percent in Bulgaria, 34 percent in Hungary, and 18 percent in Romania. Both Czechoslovakia and Poland rely heavily on coal for their primary energy; Czechoslovakia possesses largely soft coal that pollutes far more than the hard coal found in Poland.5

This article analyzes the issues of air and water pollution in the East European states of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia by examining the scope of the problem and the responses to it.

Czechoslovakia, which annually generates about eight tons of air pollutants per capita, is among the countries of the world most intensively affected by air pollution. In major urban centers, the average annual fallout of solid particles reaches 500 tons per square kilometer, far above the level established as the maximum allowable norm in Czechoslovakia. Pollution levels in parts of Prague have risen to the annual equivalent of 2,100 tons of pollutants per square kilometer (approximately 14 times the permissible level), a figure comparable to the highest pollution levels found in the Upper Silesian coal region of Poland. Success in combating solid particle emissions has been reported particularly in the heavily populated Northern Moravian region, although the total volume of emissions continues to increase. On the other hand, the purification of gaseous wastes is almost nonexistent, and emissions of these wastes increased by almost 60 percent between 1965 and 1978.6

Industrial emissions account for much of this pollution; in 1978, industry emitted over six million tons of waste into the atmosphere. Czechoslovakia's overwhelming reliance on brown coal and lignite of low calorific and high sulfur content as a source of power for industrial and residential units is the cause of considerable pollution. In Prague alone, more than 400,000 residential heating units pollute the city's atmosphere by burning these fuels.7

Motor vehicles are also significant air polluters. Czechoslovakia, with over 2.3 million cars and trucks, has one of the largest stocks of motor vehicles in Eastern Europe. Few vehicles carry antipollution devices, many of them are old and poorly maintained, and narrow winding streets in urban districts increase

5. Data on energy consumption from Central Intelligence Agency, Energy Supplies in Eastern Europe: A Statistical Compilation (ER 79-10624, December 1979), p. 8. The distribution of passenger cars in the region provides another example of this diversity. The passenger car, with all of its adverse consequences for environmental quality, has begun to make its appearance in Eastern Europe, but stocks range from over two million in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, and Yugoslavia to fewer than one million in Hungary, to several hundred thousand in Bulgaria and Romania. Data on passenger cars derived from Statisticheskii ezhegodnik stran-chlenov soveta ekonomicheskoi vzaimopomoshchi (Moscow: Statistika, 1980), pp. 7, 59.

6. For recent discussions of air pollution in Czechoslovakia, see Nove slovo (Bratislava), June 7, 1979, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 74081, August 27, 1979; Tribuna (Prague), January 10, 1979, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 72993, March 14, 1979.

7. Nove slovo, June 7, 1979; Zivotni prostredi (Prague), no. 4, 1973, cited in R.F.E. Situation Report no. 6 (Czechoslovakia), August 29, 1974. According to Pravda (Plzen), June 20, 1979, the quality of coal utilized in Czechoslovakia has deteriorated greatly in recent years. The calorific value of the coal now being used is between 3,000 and 3,500 kilocalories, while that of the coal formerly available was 4,500 kilocalories. The average content of cinders has risen from about 6 to 15 percent, and the ratio of sulfur and dust particles has increased markedly.




pollution by requiring frequent stops and starts. Consequently, automobiles now account for approximately one-fourth of Bratislava's air pollution, and the traffic arteries of Prague have become "inhospitable corridors full of noise and exhaust fumes."8

Air pollution has inflicted numerous costs on Czechoslovak society. They include the obvious costs of the many valuable materials 'lost in emissions, increased corrosion of buildings and other structures, and the damage to agricultural and forest lands. By 1980 industrial emissions had damaged over 500,000 hectares of arable land (approximately 12 percent of all arable land in the country) and had "heavily damaged" or completely destroyed more than 400,000 hectares of timber stands (1 hectare = 2.47 acres). Czechoslovak officials also report with "great certainty" that intolerably high levels of air pollution in Northern Bohemia are primarily responsible for a substantial migration of the population from heavily polluted regions, although various measures have been designed to prevent it. Reportedly, air pollution also contributes to worker absenteeism by aggravating illnesses of the upper respira- tory tract. Finally, law enforcement personnel suspect that intense air pollution may even lead to an increase in crime by fostering a "lowering of both general and working morality."9

Approximately one-third of the population in the Czech lands is perma- nently exposed to air contamination levels that constitute a threat to human health; in Prague over three-fourths of the population is affected. Life expec- tancy in the Most-Chomutov coal field region, the most polluted area of Czechoslovakia, is three to four years below the national average. Each year thousands of children from intensely polluted regions are sent for several weeks to "schools in nature" and summer camps "to moderate the effects of emissions" on their health.10

Official data indicate that approximately 70 percent of Czechoslovakia's waterways are "highly polluted," more than one-third of them no longer supply potable water, and five percent of the arteries are altogether devoid of living organisms. As of 1979, approximately one-third of the main watercourses were so polluted as to be unusable even for industrial purposes. Consequently, acording to one government report, inadequate reserves of pure water have become "a serious limiting factor to the long-range development of the Czech economy.""1 Less than 50 percent of all industrial waste water is purified in Czechoslovakia, and in 1974 the purification that did occur removed only 12 percent of the pollutants.12 Pesticides and chemical fertilizers utilized in agricul-

8. Tribuna (Prague), January 17, 1979, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 72993, March 14, 1979, p. 24; Rude prdvo (Prague), July 10, 1975.

9. For an extensive discussion of the various costs of air pollution, see Planovane hospodarstvi (Prague), July 7, 1981, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 79122, October 2, 1981. For discussions of the damage that air pollution has inflicted on agricultural and forest lands, see, respectively, Tribuna (Prague), November 4, 1981, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 79837, January 11, 1982, p. 12; Tvorba (Prague), March 17, 1982, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 80869, May 20, 1982, p. 34.

10. Ibid. 11. See ibid.; Lidova demokracie (Prague), April 2, 1979, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 73745,

June 22, 1979; Radio Prague, October 29, 1979; Tribuna, March 14, 1979. 12. On the purification of industrial wastes, see Rude pravo (Prague), March 2, 1974, and

Lidova demokracie, April 2, 1979. Pollution from the highly developed chemical industry is especially intensive; the Dimitrov Chemical Works in Bratislava, for example, annually pollutes the



208 Slavic Review

ture are often washed or blown into nearby streams and have now contaminated almost all surface and underground water in Czechoslovakia. Among the many adverse consequences of this pollution, according to a 1975 study, were "surpris- ing and serious" concentrations of insecticides in mothers' milk, far above the daily margin of safety established by the World Health Organization. In the Zelivka River basin, which supplies Prague with much of its potable water, pollution has produced an "emergency situation" as the level of nitrates in the water exceeds the official norms "many times." Finally, the municipal economy is a source of water pollution. Many settlements, especially in rural areas, lack sewage treatment plants, and even major urban centers, Bratislava for example, discharge their wastes completely unpurified into nearby waterways.13

Air pollution levels in Poland are among the highest in Eastern Europe, and, as noted, approximate those found in several much more industrialized and consumer-oriented Western countries. Poland's 2.7 million motor vehicles (after East Germany's 2..8 million vehicles the largest such stock in Eastern Europe) are a major source of this pollution. For example, motor vehicles discharge over 70 percent of all toxic gases found in Warsaw's atmosphere, and in 1975 25 percent of the city's surface area held carbon monoxide levels above permissible standards (a figure that may increase to over 90 percent by 1990). Industrial emissions are also considerable. Between 1975 and 1978, industrial emissions of gaseous and particulate matter increased by, respectively, 11.5 and 9.5 percent, and in 1978 total emissions of these wastes exceeded 7 million tons. Like Czechoslovakia, Poland reports some success in controlling solid particle emissions, but the purification of gaseous wastes is negligible.14

The impact and cost of this pollution is greatly exacerbated by the fact that plants accounting for over two-thirds of total industrial emissions are located in nineteen urban centers covering about 18 percent of Poland's land area but containing almost one-half of its population. In the Upper Silesian Industrial District, which occupies only 1.4 percent of Poland's territory but where approximately one-fourth of all industrial emissions occur, air pollution has now become "critical," and it is "practically impossible" to expand heavy industry further without first reducing current pollution levels. Air pollution also acceler- ates the corrosion of metals and the crumbling of buildings at an estimated cost of $1 billion annually. Numerous press accounts have portrayed the health hazards posed by air pollution. Authorities point to air pollution as the primary reason why 20 percent of all foodstuffs - and 40 percent of all milk - in the

Danube River with a volume of wastes equivalent to that produced in a city with 360,000 residents. Nove slovo, November 6, 1976, cited in R.F.E. Background Report no. 237 (Czechoslovakia), November 16, 1976.

13. For two of the relatively few accounts of pollution from pesticides and chemical fertilizers, see Smena (Bratislava), May 25, 1981, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 78493, June 14, 1981, and Tribuna, November 4, 1981. Planovane hospodarstvi (Prague), January 1979, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 73050, March 21, 1979, and Pravda (Bratislava), June 6, 1978, provide data on, and problems encountered in, the purification of urban sewage.

14. Data on pollution by motor vehicles from Przeglqd techniczny inowacje (Warsaw), June 10, 1979, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 74142, September 7, 1979. For materials on industrial emissions, see Gospodarka planowa (Warsaw), no. 3, 1980, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 76022, July 10, 1980, especially pp. 31-35; Nowe drogi (Warsaw), July 1978, translated in J.P. R.S., no. 72225, Novem- ber 14, 1978.




country are contaminated and unsuitable for human consumption. On several occasions the authorities were compelled to issue urgent warnings to parents not to serve milk to their children because of its contamination. Most pclluting plants are located in densely populated areas, and although the law stipulates the creation of protective zones to separate factories from adjacent residential districts, few enterprises have complied. The recently closed Skawina Aluminum Works represented one of the most serious threats to public health. In its last years of operation, the combine, which had no purification devices whatsoever, was annually emitting over 2,000 tons of highly toxic flourine gases. Conse- quently, work-related illnesses in the region were 250 times the national average, and most of the plant's 2,400 workers had to be pensioned off because they were too sick to work elsewhere. The former head of the environmental controls section at Skawina has asserted that "things are so bad that I have suggested building an outpatients' department just for people affected by the pollution. "n 15

Approximately one-third of Poland's main watercourses ale so polluted as to be unusable for any purpose; in Katowice Voivodship, the most polluted region in the country, the figure is two-thirds. "In practice," according to one report, this entails "the transformation of these river sections into sewers." By 1977, only 13 percent of the main watercourses were sufficiently pure to provide potable water.'6 Table 1 provides data on changes in water quality in Poland between 1967 and 1977. According to available data (which do not include pollution from the agricultural sector), industrial and residential units each generate about one-half of the emissions requiring purification. In 1978, only 57 percent of these emissions underwent purification, and this represented a decrease from the comparable figure for 1977. Many of the existing purification facilities are technologically obsolete: over one-fifth of all industrial treatment facilities operating in 1976 were built before 1945 and could only remove impurities not soluble in water. The treatment of urban sewage is especially inadequate. As of 1978, twenty cities with over fifty thousand inhabitants, including Warsaw, had no sewage treatment facilities. Warsaw is one of only two nati.onal capitals in Europe without such facilities.17

The Vistula River basin (which includes Krakow, Gdanisk, and Warsaw) illustrates the magnitude of Poland's water pollution problems and the resources needed to combat them. There are approximately seven hundred sewage treatment plants in the entire basin to serve more than six thousand cities, towns, and working places located there. The result is that, in 1978, only 13 percent of the basin's water could be used for drinking, and 33 percent of the water was too

15. See the citations in n. 14 as well as Polityka (Warsaw), January 17, 1981, and the Wall Street Journal, July 24, 1981, for discussions of the costs that air pollution has inflicted on Polish society. Data on damages to metals, buildings, and foodstuffs based on reports from members of the "Green Movement," a Polish environmental group, as reported in Dagens Nyheter (Stockholm), Decem- ber 4, 1981, p. 24, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 79972, January 28, 1982, p. 20. Przemysl Chemiczny (Warsaw), February 1977, provides a detailed account of the deleterious impact of air pollution on the Upper Silesian Industrial District.

16. Recent accounts of water pollution include Aura (Warsaw), October 1979, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 75153, February 15, 1980; Wiadomosci statystyczne (Warsaw), November 1979, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 75153, February 15, 1980; ibid., May 1980, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 76022, July 10, 1980.

17. Aura (Warsaw), November 1978, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 72619, January 15, 1979, provides a detailed account of the state of waste purification.



210 Slavic Review

Table 1. Water Purity in Poland - 1967, 1977

Percent of Total Class Appropriate Utilization 1967 1977 I Communal Economy 33.0 13.4 II Recreation 28.7 30.4 III Industry and Agriculture 15.5 27.1 Unclassified Unusable 22.8 29.1

100.0 100.0

Source: Wiadomoci statystyczne, no. 11, November 1979, pp. 11-15, in Joint Publications Re- search Service, no. 75153 (February 15, 1980), p. 24.

polluted for any purpose. The Polish government recently announced a comprehensive program of pollution control in the basin that envisions the expenditure by 1995 of 225 billion zloty (almost $70 billion) to build new sewage treatment facilities and modernize existing ones. However, the program has already encountered serious delays and the construction targets for both 1978 and 1979 were not fully met. 18

Inhabitants of the most populated regions of Yugoslavia often inhale "critically polluted air" that is "reaching the highest world concentrations." According to one Western source, the air of Belgrade, which is polluted by over 200,000 residential heating units, more than 250,000 motor vehicles, and numerous industrial enterprises, is "all but unbreathable in winter." A Yugoslav account adds that the capital's residents "often breathe in less oxygen than other things" and that, seen from afar, "Belgrade looks like a city from which the fog never lifts." Ljubljana is not only the official capital of Slovenia but is also known among many Yugoslavs as the "sulfur dioxide capital" of Yugoslavia. In winter, it is said, the city "suffocates in smog." Air pollution levels were so high in Sarajevo that desperate officials even contemplated installing a giant fan on one of the hills overlooking the city to try to dissipate its atmospheric wastes. Fortunately, increased utilization of relatively "clean" liquid fuels by both industrial and household consumers during the 1970s has led to a substantial diminution of air pollution in several major Yugoslav cities, especially Sarajevo and Zagreb.19

The automobile is responsible for much of Yugoslavia's air pollution. Yugoslavia's stock of automobiles has been increasing by about 200,000 vehicles annually. About 70 percent of these vehicles are concentrated in the republics of Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia, in an area equal to about two percent of the country's territory. Every year, the number of vehicles is increased by thousands of cars and trucks from abroad carrying tourists and other travelers to Yugo-

18. See Kurjer polski (Warsaw), April 23, 1979, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 73745, June 22, 1979, for a discussion of water pollution in the Vistula River basin, efforts to ameliorate the problem, and problems encountered.

19. For surveys of air pollution in Yugoslavia, see Jedinstvo (Pristina), November 7, 10, 12, 13, 1979, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 74881, January 7, 1980; Privredni pregled (Belgrade), Novem- ber 22, 1978, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 72490, December 21, 1980. See also The New York Times, September 14, 1975, and August 31, 1976, for material on this subject. Komuna (Belgrade), November 1981, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 79879, January 18, 1982 provides data demonstrating the positive impact that increased utilization of liquid fuels has had on atmospheric quality.




slavia and to neighboring countries. The Yugoslav press has focused particularly on the threat to public health posed by air pollution. Physicians in Ljubljana estimate that in a ten-year period, the deaths of over five hundred newborn infants in the region were in part caused by their exposure to "poisoned air." Air pollution in Belgrade has stimulated a "dramatic increase" in the incidence of chronic bronchitis, the same affliction that contributed to many deaths in London in the late 1940s. Officials in the Mezica region refer to the area as the "death basin," while one report, perhaps hyperbolically, claims that, for their own protection, the residents of Celje "will soon have to walk on the streets equipped with gas masks."^20

A 1974 survey of the overall state of water pollution in Yugoslavia concluded that "in six to eight years, we will have rivers as polluted as those we now find in Western Europe, Japan, and some parts of the United States." It is said that a "majority of our rivers receive 20, 30, and even 50 times more waste water than they can purify" and there is a "long list of rivers" which have been "transformed by industrial wastes into dark, greasy, stinking, lethal collectors." In the highly industrialized republic of Slovenia, where as late as 1980 more than 60 percent of all industrial emissions were completely unpurified, only 5 percent of the waterways are relatively free of pollution. Pollution is also found in the less developed regions of the country. In the republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina, for example, water pollution is "affecting key industries like a boomerang. Dozens of large enterprises are already in danger of having to reduce production or to abandon the expansion of capacities."'21

Like air pollution, water pollution poses a threat to public health. In Slovenia, where about 78 percent of the population receives water from installations that are hygienical'ly unsafe and 40 percent of all households drink water polluted by bacteria, intestinal diseases caused by polluted water account for one-half of all registered cases of infectious diseases. Each year, thirty thousand Slovenes suffer from dysentery and hepatitis. In several extreme cases, bathers in Yugoslav rivers were "directly transported to the hospital with various degrees of skin damage and their appearances were barely saved."22

Water pollution threatens aquatic life as well. One source characterizes the consequences of water pollution for aquatic life as "real genocide, a monstrous crime." The overall condition of living organisms in Yugoslav waterways is "incredibly bleak"; in some rivers "there are neither fish nor bacteria." In Slovenia alone, 30 species of fish became extinct in 1976. If the

20. On the impact of air pollution on public health, see ITD (Ljubljana), November 12, 1976, translated in J. P.R.S., no. 68490, January 17, 1977; Privredni pregled (Belgrade), January 21, 1976, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 67107, April 7, 1976; 7D (Maribor), February 17, 1977, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 68941, April 15, 1977.

21. Delo (Ljubljana), May 9, 1978, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 71373, June 28, 1978; Komuna (Belgrade), January 1978, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 70868, March 31, 1978; Nedeljne informativne novine (Belgrade), January 4, 1976, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 66794, February 13, 1976; Privredni pregled (Belgrade), March 29, 1979, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 73317, April 26, 1979.

22. On the situation in Slovenia, see Radio Belgrade, August 25, 1979. Technika (Belgrade), no. 5, 1974, also provides a detailed account of the adverse consequences of water pollution for public health.



212 Slavic Review

pace of pollution continues unabated, one report predicts that by 1990 fish will be seen in Yugoslavia "only in aquariums."23

The same processes of modernization and industrialization that disrupt the environment in all industrialized countries help to account for the pollution to be found in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia. It seems that modern societies, whether they be capitalist or socialist, inevitably befoul the air, pollute the water, and assault the ear with cacophonous sounds. Yet the countries under discussion exhibit special configurations of political, economic, technological, and geographic factors that contribute to their pollution problems.

First, the governments of these countries, like those of many of their capitalist and socialist counterparts, have been preoccupied with rapid industrialization and modernization and have been largely indifferent to or ignorant of the ecological damage attendant upon such transformations. One can apply with equal validity to Czechoslovakia and Poland the recent comment of a Yugoslav source, who, in explaining why Yugoslavia has so far achieved only "relatively modest" results in the fight against pollution, asserted that "until now there have been only singular, partial, and local efforts" to protect the environment. We have noted, for example, that purification technologies are not widely applied in these countries and that, at least in Poland, the amount of waste water undergoing purification has actually declined in recent years.24 Fiscal constraints are a second factor that explains why relatively little has been done to protect the environment. Environmental protection can be an enormously expensive undertaking - in Poland, for example, approximately 200 billion zloty (over $60 billion) would have to be spent in the current decade to meet the announced goals for air and water purity - and resources of that magnitude simply are not available.25

Fiscal constraints will probably severely inhibit efforts to protect the environment during the 1980s. The Czech, Polish, and Yugoslav economies are suffering from the same energy problems, inflation, and mismanagement that have induced economic stagnation, if not actual decline, in many countries, both East and West. Confronted by innumerable and pressing claims on increasingly limited resources, governments may be especially reluctant to allocate the funds necessary to control pollution. Because of inadequate domestic production capacities, these countries would have to expend scarce (in the case of Poland, nonexistent) reserves of hard currency to purchase sophisticated pollution control equipment from Western states, a factor that further compounds the problem.26 Funds to protect the environment have already "alarmingly de-

23. Nedeljne informativne niovine, January 4, 1976; Privredni pregled, March 29, 1979. 24. Privrednipregled (Belgrade), February 16, 1977, translated in J. P.R.S., no. 68871, April 4,

1977, p. 17. For accounts in the Czech and Polish press that make the same point, see, respectively, Planovane hospodarstvi, January 1979; Tribuna ludu (Warsaw), June 5, 1981. See R.F.E. Situation Reports cited in n. 1 for details of the limited efforts before 1970 to protect the environment in these countries.

25. Nowe drogi (Warsaw), July 1980, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 76690, October 24, 1980, p. 15.

26. For an excellent discussion of Eastern Europe's growing economic problems, see Alfred Zauberman, "The East European Economies," Problems of Communism (March-April 1978), pp. 55-69. On the limited facilities for the production of purification equipment, see Przeglqd techniczny inowacje (Warsaw), November 30, 1975, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 66948, March 11,




creased" in Poland as its government grapples with its well-known economic and political problems, and one source predicts that in the "lean years" of the 1980s funds available for this purpose will be "almost nil."27

The renewed emphasis on the use of coal for energy in all East European national economic plans for 1981 to 1985 - a development that can have only the most deleterious consequences for environmental quality - graphically illustrates the tension between fiscal considerations and pollution control. The share of coal in the energy balance of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and, to a slightly lesser extent, Poland has steadily declined since the 1960s, as all three countries have relied increasingly on more energy efficient and less intensively polluting liquid fuels. Indeed, in Yugoslavia increased utilization of liquid fuels in the 1970s was the primary reason for the decline in air pollution experienced by Sarajevo and other cities. Now, however, the dramatic increase in world market prices has compelled these countries to curtail their utilization of liquid fuels, almost all of which Czechoslovakia and Poland, and a substantial amount of which Yugoslavia must import from the USSR and noncommunist countries. The dilemma, a Polish publication succinctly explained, is a simple, albeit agonizing one: it is a "choice between higher costs . . . and protection of the environment. "'28

The indifference, if not overt hostility, of industrialists is a third circumstance hampering efforts to control pollution. Many industrialists, it is said, engage in "antisocial activities" that pollute the environment. Numerous press accounts detailing these activities in all three countries suggest that it matters little if the industrialist in question operates within the Yugoslav system of worker self-management or in Czechoslovakia's and Poland's hierarchically structured, tightly controlled economies patterned after the Soviet model. In each country, industrialists assign a low priority to pollution control because resources devoted to it, while benefiting society in the form of a cleaner environment, contribute nothing to the production of goods that leads to promotions, bonuses, and other perquisites for production personnel. Hence, industrialists consider pollution control "a fifth wheel on the cart" that "compli- cates production, raises costs, absorbs personnel, and does not produce any direct economic benefits."29

Industrialists especially manifest their hostility to pollution control in the installation and operation of purification equipment. For example, in Yugoslavia

1976; Rude prdvo, June 9, 1975. Ironically, both Czechoslovakia and Poland export pollution control equipment to other socialist countries while shortages of this equipment persist on their domestic markets.

27. Thus, expenditures on air pollution control in Poland dropped by approximately 50 percent between 1977 and 1979. As one account commented, "after inflationary trends in construction are taken into account, the dangerous drop in outlays will appear even more drastic." Problemy (Warsaw), no. 10, 1981, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 79719, December 23, 1981, pp. 18, 21.

28. Zycie gospodarcze (Warsaw), May 21, 1978. For a general discussion of Eastern Europe's energy problems, including the renewed emphasis on coal and the impact that this will have on the environment, see John M. Kramer, "Between Scylla and Charybdis: The Politics of Eastern Europe's Energy Problem," Orbis (Winter 1979), pp. 929-50.

29. Among the numerous descriptions of such behavior, the following are representative: Borba (Belgrade), November 19, 1980; Nowe drogi (Warsaw), July 1978; Tvorba (Prague), March 17, 1982.



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orders from industrialists for this equipment are "few and far between," although "numerous smokestacks are emitting poisonous gases into the atmosphere." It is said that "even after they have throroughly polluted a river and killed everything in it" Yugoslav industrialists refuse to install purification equipment "on the grounds that what is dead cannot be made even more dead."30 Industrialists often illegally divert funds intended for pollution control equipment to production activities. As a Polish source commented, these funds typically "get lost somewhere along the winding path actually leading to their assimilation.""31 Consequently, the deadlines for construction of purification installations are not met. In Czechoslovakia, for example, fewer than 25 percent of such projects were completed on schedule, while in Poland many enterprises take five years and some have taken almost two decades to construct their purification facilities.32

The equipment that is installed experiences frequent breakdowns and inefficient operation because of the indifference or ineptitude of plant personnel. One problem is the difficulty of attracting and retaining qualified personnel for pollution control work, because salaries and opportunities for advancement are significantly lower than those for other specialties. Confronted by high production quotas and a shortage of personnel to fulfill them, enterprise man- agers usually assign pollution control activities as ancillary tasks to workers without specialized training in this field. At the huge Lenin Steelworks at Nowa Huta, Poland, the head of the environmental protection unit was a member of the local communist party committee for production. Although perhaps a caricature, the story of the Czechoslovak worker who was honored for initiatives to reduce power consumption that included turning off his plant's purification installations at night illustrates the low priority industrialists assign to pollution control. Whenever industrialists in Poland must shut off power, they do so "first to the protection equipment."3

Press accounts in all three countries decry such behavior. They charge that industrialists are concerned only with their own economic welfare and do not consider the broader interest of socialist society in a clean environment. A recent Czech source complained that industrialists exhibit a "level of irresponsi- bility" toward the environment "which is difficult to comprehend. "4 Yet the behavior of industrialists is not at all difficult to comprehend: so long as they derive greater economic benefits from continuing rather than abating their pollution, their attitude is perfectly rational.

The legal system has proved largely ineffective in deterring polluters from continuing their activities. Substantive defects characterize much of the existing environmental legislation; most of it is merely hortatory, containing statements of general principle but lacking concrete provisions for their realization. Fur- thermore, legislation often contains provisions (for instance, for a zero-pollution discharge) that are unenforceable because the technology or the fiscal resources

30. Delo (Ljubljana), May 11, 1977. 31. Aura (Warsaw), November 1978. 32. Planovane hospodarstvi, January 1979. 33. Aura (Warsaw), April 1978, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 72346, December 1, 1978; Wall

Street Journal, July 24, 1981; Tvorba (Prague), March 7, 1982; Problemy (Warsaw), no. 10, 1981. 34. Tvorba (Prague), March 7, 1982.




to achieve them are unavailable. Fines for violating environmental legislation are usually so low that polluters find it cheaper to pay the fines and continue polluting. Before 1981, industrialists in Yugoslavia faced a situation that their counterparts in countries with more stringent environmental regulations could only envy: they were subject to no fines whatsoever for failure to install water purification equipment. Even in the rare instances when substantial fines are levied, they generally fail to deter, since polluters simply pay them from the enterprise's budget. As a Czech source explained, "these fines are not missed by anybody; they are transferred from the community to the community." Finally, the dictates of environmental legislation - to cease pollution - often conflict with the dictates of other legally binding, and more powerful, regulations - to fulfill the production plan - so that industrialists seeking to observe rules about pollution would probably violate those concerning production. "Alas," one commentary notes, the polluting plant is usually "helpless, because it is subject to other important regulations . . . the whole system of environmental protection has not as yet been perfected to the point where we could talk of perfect interlinkage from which, simply put, there would be no escape."35

The agencies charged with overseeing the implementation of environmental legislation also exhibit serious deficiencies. Control over the environment is often dispersed among many institutions, few of which possess adequate resources to perform their duties. Yugoslavia, where the constituent republics are responsible for environmental protection, probably displays the greatest administrative fragmentation. In contrast, a study of environmental administration in several capitalist and socialist countries found that administrative control over the environment was most centralized and coordinated in Poland.36

Environmental protection agencies typically lack the power and the incentive to fulfill their obligations. In Yugoslavia the threats of sanitary inspectors to close polluting plants "are more or less beans thrown against a wall" because industrialists ignore these injunctions, while decisions of similar agencies in Czechoslovakia "are often deliberately ignored or bypassed."37 Part of the problem is that inspection agencies are usually understaffed (in Poland, the number of individuals engaged in such work is said to be "microscopically small") and lack equipment essential to monitor and determine the sources of pollution. In confrontations with industrial polluters, environmental protection agencies almost invariably lose because they lack sufficient status and political power to challenge their adversaries successfully.38 Perhaps most important, socialist ownership of the means of production leads in these countries, as Keith Bush has also observed of the Soviet Union, to the "poacher being appointed gamekeeper"; that is, a collusive relationship often develops between the

35. Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo (Moscow), no. 11, 1973, provides a general discussion of these issues. See, also, Borba (Belgrade), November 19, 1980; Tribuna (Prague), November 4, 1981; Problemy (Warsaw), no. 10, 1981.

36. United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, Conference on Problems Relating to Environment (New York, 1971), E 71.11.e.6, p. 220.

37. Delo (Ljubljana), May 11, 1977; Pravda (Bratislava), June 6, 1978. Czechoslovak statistics indicate that in 1976 industrialists actually paid less than one-half of the fines that were levied against them. The New York Times, February 6, 1977.

38. Wiadomosci statystyczne (Warsaw), July 1975, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 66011, Octo- ber 28, 1975.



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protectors and polluters of the environment since both are government agencies. The problem is especially acute in Czechoslovakia and Poland where many inspection agencies are subordinated to the very ministries whose production activities are among the greatest sources of pollution. That the non- democratic political systems of Czechoslovakia and Poland provide relatively few avenues for environmentalists to pressure these agencies to perform their duties more vigorously only exacerbates the problem.39

Finally, a factor that intensifies pollution problems in these countries and that is largely beyond the control of individual governments is that of "transnational pollution," pollution emanating from sources beyond a state's bound- aries. The magnitude of this pollution is impossible to determine since local press accounts only rarely discuss the issue and never mention pollution from the USSR. However, instructions to Polish censors prohibiting discussion of pollution originating in the Soviet Union implicitly confirm that such pollution does exist. A Czechoslovak account has reported that in the Polish city of Wroclaw water had to be rationed because industries in Czechoslovakia had heavily polluted the Oder River, the city's primary source of potable water. Czechoslovakia has also had to indemnify the German Democratic Republic several times for polluting the Elbe River, which flows through both countries. The Danube River is the region's most well-known example of transnational water pollution. Already heavily polluted by sources in West Germany and Austria, the Danube receives additional (and massive) contamination from polluters in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Romania before it empties into the Black Sea. Presumably, transnational air pollution is also a problem, since the prevailing winds in Europe blow from west to east. Indeed, power plants in the G.D.R. are reportedly the primary source of air pollution in the Turzow region of Poland, while emissions from power plants in both the G.D.R. and Poland have caused extensive damage to forests in Czechoslovakia.40

As noted, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia have taken relatively few measures to protect the environment. Indeed, as late as 1981, the official newspaper of the Polish United Workers Party characterized the Polish government's attitude toward the environment as still one of "unconcerned and destitute fancy," a characterization that can fairly be applied to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia as well.41 Among the limited initiatives that these states have pursued, legal and organizational measures predominate: all of them have enacted legislation to protect atmospheric and water quality, all of them have established councils for the overall supervision and coordination of environ-

39. For instance, in Czechoslovakia environmental protection agencies are component parts of the ministry responsible for the exploitation of timber reserves. For a discussion of the deleterious consequences of this circumstance for the environment in the USSR, see Keith Bush, "Environmen- tal Problems in the U.S.S.R.," Problems of Communism (July-August 1972), p. 28.

40. See R.F.E. Situation Report no. 15 (Czechoslovakia), May 17, 1972, for details of Czech pollution of German and Polish rivers. Nove slovo (Bratislava), November 6, 1976, provides a particularly detailed account of pollution in the Danube River; on this subject see also The New York Times, February 6, 1977. See Przeglqd techniczny inowacje (Warsaw), August 18, 1974. translated in J.P.R.S., no. 63526, November 25, 1974, p. 5 and Planovane hospodarstvi, November 7, 1981, for references to transnational air pollution in the region.

41. Trybuna ludu (Warsaw), June 5, 1981.




mental protection measures, and Czechoslovakia and Poland have created ministries for environmental protection.42

While we have noted substantive defects in both environmental legislation and organization, the problem today is not primarily one of enacting new legislation and creating ever more complex bureaucratic entities to implement it, but rather one of providing potential polluters with a positive incentive to obey willingly the existing laws. To this end, several East European environmentalists, notably in Poland, now argue (as many Western economists have long done) that this objective requires the introduction of appropriate economic stimuli so that potential polluters will perceive that it is in their economic self-interest to abate rather than continue their pollution.43 Examples of measures already enacted include in Poland the introduction of charges for the utilization of water or the emission of pollutants into the atmosphere, and in Czechoslovakia low-interest or interest-free loans for the construction of purification installations. To date, however, these and similar measures have failed to alter fundamentally the accurate perception among polluters that it is cheaper to pollute than not to pollute.44

These states have also pursued measures to improve the training of specialists in environmental protection, to expand the quality of scientific research on the environment, and to generate data on the sources and levels of pollution. Poland, in particular, has undertaken such initiatives. Twenty-four higher tech- nical schools in Poland now have departments of environmental protection, from which approximately three thousand specialists graduated between 1976 and 1980. Poland is also establishing a nationwide network to monitor air and water pollution levels, and since 1971 it has required its most intensively air polluting plants to submit annual reports on their emissions and on efforts to control them.45

Typical measures to enhance the quality of the environment in urban centers involve the planting of greenery to draw pollutants from the air, moving highly polluting plants from populated areas (usually not without substantial opposition from the industrialists involved), and restricting the use of solid fuels in power-generating plants.46 Initiatives to control pollution from motor vehicles also enhance atmospheric quality, especially in urban centers. Prague is building a subway to reduce traffic congestion and limit motor vehicle pollution, while

42. For details on environmental legislation and organization in Eastern Europe, including the three countries examined here, see the following: R.F.E. Situation Reports cited in n. 1; Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, no. 11, 1973; Voprosy ekonomiki (Moscow), no. 7, 1977.

43. See, especially, pp. 18-19 of Problemy (Warsaw), no. 10, 1981, for a particularly forceful exposition of this view; a Polish jurist writing in Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo (Moscow), no. 11, 1973, makes a similar argument. Representative examples of this position among Western economists include Allen Kneese, Pollution, Prices, and Public Policy (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1975) and J. H. Dales, Pollution, Property, and Prices (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976).

44. For an overview of such measures in all East European countries, see United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, Conference on Problems Relating to Environment. Gospodarka planowa (Warsaw), no. 10, 1982, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 80939, May 28, 1982, p. 19, provides a detailed account of these initiatives in Poland.

45. See Aura (Warsaw), November 1978 and eeskoslovenske zdravotnictvi (Prague), no. 2, 1978, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 71100, May 11, 1978 for accounts of such measures.

46. Przeglqd techniczny inowacje (Warsaw), June 10, 1979; Tvorba (Prague), March 17, 1982.



218 Slavic Review

Warsaw has established a pedestrian district from which motor vehicles are excluded. Yugoslavia has established maximum permissible levels of concentra- tion for lead in gasoline and for carbon monoxide in motor vehicle emissions and now requires that automobiles meet emission standards. Restrictions on the utilization of automobiles in all three countries, although prompted primarily by fiscal considerations (especially the escalating cost of imported oil), also contribute to a cleaner environment.47

Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia have also participated in multilateral efforts - with both socialist and nonsocialist states - to control transnational pollution. Multilateral cooperation among socialist states proceeds primarily under the auspices of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). Yugoslavia, although not a full member of CMEA, concluded an agreement with that organization in 1973 and now participates in most of its environmental activities. CMEA environmental projects began in 1961, but only in the last decade did the organization devote more than cursory attention to them. In 1971, it established a Joint Council for the Protection of the Environ- ment to coordinate its ecological activities, and in 1974 the council elaborated a comprehensive program of environmental cooperation among the member states. Each European member of CMEA, except Romania, has established a special research coordination center to deal with particular aspects of environmental protection. In a development that could lessen East Europe's reliance on imported machinery for pollution control, CMEA has announced plans to create organizations for the design and production of air and water purification equipment. Finally, in an initiative suggesting that transnational pollution among socialist states is becoming more acute, the Joint Council for the Protection of the Environment at its annual meeting in 1982 discussed the responsibilities of member states for "restricting transfrontier air pollution."48

These states have also participated in multilateral environmental projects with capitalist countries, including projects sponsored by the United Nations. They have all received grants from United Nations agencies to implement programs of environmental protection; the most important of these grants permitted Poland to purchase purification equipment from Western countries, to hire foreign experts, and to train Polish specialists abroad for a comprehensive program to control pollution in the Upper Silesian industrial region.

Both Czechoslovakia and Poland have hosted symposia sponsored by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe; the Czechoslovak conference, in which all of the East European as well as many Western states participated, was in preparation for the 1972 United Nations Conference oii the Human Environment. Although the socialist states, except for Romania and Yugoslavia, boycotted the United Nations Conference itself in order to protest the exclusion of the G.D.R. from participation in the proceedings, they have all

47. For material on initiatives to control pollution from motor vehicles in Warsaw, see Przeglqd techniczny inowacje (Warsaw), June 10, 1979. See Privredni pregled (Belgrade), January 21, 1976, for material on the Yugoslav regulations. John M. Kramer, "The Energy Gap in Eastern Europe," Survey (Winter-Spring 1975), pp. 75-76, discusses measures to conserve energy in Eastern Europe, including restrictions on the utilization of motor vehicles.

48. Voprosy ekonomiki (Moscow), no. 4, 1978, pp. 68-76, provides a good summary of environmental cooperation within CMEA. MTI (Budapest), April 25, 1982 carries the report of the CMEA session devoted to transnational air pollution.




endorsed the program agreed upon at the conference, and Romania and the USSR are represented on the executive body assigned to coordinate its activities.49

Finally, one approach to pollution control that elicits almost no support among these countries is to limit consumption - and the attendant need to dispose of its wastes - by limiting economic development. This approach, popularized in the West by the book Limits to Growth, argues that pollution, population, and resource pressures will end further economic growth in the foreseeable future. Both elites and masses in these (and other East European) countries have little sympathy for such arguments, for they are concerned with expanding the benefits of modernization and industrialization by accelerating, not restricting, economic development.50 Ironically, however, what the East Europeans have not done voluntarily is being forced upon them, as an appreci- able slowdown in economic growth, caused by factors similar to those that created recession in the capitalist West, is to be found throughout the region.

Several conclusions of interest to specialists on political life and environmental pollution, both within and without Eastern Europe, emerge from the preceding analysis. First, the analysis serves as a useful reminder (especially to political scientists and economists) that geographic as well as economic and political variables are critical in determining the condition of a country's environment. For example, the knowledge that in Europe the prevailing winds blow from west to east and thereby intensify air pollution in Poland, or that Czechoslovakia relies overwhelmingly on soft coal and lignite of low calorific and high sulfur content for its primary energy, surely is essential to an under- standing of environmental conditions in these countries.

Of course, levels of economic development and patterns of consumption are also important variables determining the state of the environment. In compari- son to the economies of industrialized Western nations, the less developed economies of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia do less harm to environmental quality in one sense because many sources of pollution, from power boats to plastic wrappers and dishwasher detergents, either are not found there or have only begun to make their appearance. However, relative underdevelop- ment also hampers- the fight against pollution by severely constraining the capacity of the Eastern states to allocate the fiscal resources necessary to this end. Furthermore it influences the priority they attach to this fight. For most of their populations, environmental pollution is a necessary, albeit regrettable, price that must be paid for economic development, and resources allocated to control pollution could better be devoted to consumer welfare. This attitude is not unique to these states but is prevalent in many developing countries, and it is evident in developed countries as well.

In some respects, the foregoing analysis must create among Western read- ers a sense of de'ja vu. Thus, Homo economicus, whether he be socialist (and whether he be in the Yugoslav system of workers' self-management or the Czech

49. Voprosy ekonomiki, no. 4, 1978. 50. Thus, the founding assembly of the National Environmental Council in Yugoslavia "deci-

sively rejected" the arguments advanced in Limits to Growth. Gledista (Belgrade), February 1973, translated in J.P.R.S., no. 58909, May 2, 1973, p. 50.



220 Slavic Review

and Polish systems of tight centralization and control) or capitalist, emerges as a profit-maximizing individual concerned peripherally, if at all, with the ecological damage attendant on production activities. In turn, this circumstance reflects a critical similarity between the two systems: in each, producers usually have a greater economic incentive to continue rather than abate their pollution, because resources allocated to control pollution are not available for the pursuit of their primary objective, the production of goods. Like his economic counter- part, Homo politicus exhibits seemingly universal traits, including a greater willingness to make a strong rhetorical commitment to protect the environment than to undertake the difficult and costly initiatives needed to realize this commitment. This circumstance becomes particularly manifest when officials respond to spiraling prices for liquid fuels by advocating greater reliance on cheaper, but heavily polluting, solid fuels. While this attitude is understandable and even predictable, it nevertheless illustrates the conflicts that frequently exist between the imperatives of environmental protection and the exigencies of political life.

And yet the socialist experience does not completely substantiate the theory of convergence, that is, that all modern societies, socialist and capitalist, increasingly exhibit similar, if not identical, economic and political characteristics as they perform similar functions and grapple with common problems. In socialist systems a collusive relationship often develops between the nominal protectors of the environment and the polluters, because both are government agencies. As noted, in Czechoslovakia and Poland environmental protection agencies are even attached to the very ministries whose production activities most pollute the environment. Obviously, such collusion is not unknown in market systems; nevertheless, one suspects that few environmentalists in the United States, for example, would voluntarily emulate this practice and make the major industrial polluters responsible for verifying their own adherence to environmental legislation.

Most of the opportunities afforded to groups to press their demands in democratic systems are unavailable to environmentalists in Czechoslovakia and Poland. It is indeed tautological to assert that protection of the environment is difficult in political systems that do not permit free discussion of the dimensions of pollution, let alone complete identification of its sources. That these observa- tions do not apply equally to Yugoslavia illustrates another important point: not all socialist systems have identical political structures. The Yugoslav system differs from its Czech and Polish counterparts not only in the relative freedom that it provides environmentalists to articulate their views, but also - with results for the environment that are less than beneficial - in the substantial autonomy in policy making and implementation devolving upon, and thereby creating problems of coordination among, its constituent republics.

Finally, the preceding analysis must surely evoke among even the most ardent environmentalists an awareness of the fiscal limitations under which governments labor as they seek to protect the environment. In the countries that we have examined, these limitations are severe and growing more acute as their economic stituations steadily worsen. In these circumstances, the prospects for their environments in the foreseeable future are especially bleak: even if their political elites were unexpectedly to become dedicated environmentalists, relatively few resources would be available to realize their ends.



the environmental crisis in eastern europe: the price for progress

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