survived.
The battle to destroy the living world of Baikal was being won. Fishermen and seal hunters were receiving indirect assistance in their work of destruction from landsmen. In the mountain valleys drained by Baikal’s three hundred and sixty inflowing streams and rivers, the forests where the sables were hardly more than a memory were themselves being razed. Siberian cedars, high towering patriarchs, many of them more than a thousand years old, all but disappeared. Larch, and the lesser species, took their turn. The logs were floated down the once crystal rivers, gradually coating the stream beds with thick layers of bark until many of the lake fishes thatused the rivers as nurseries could no longer find suitable spawning grounds. Tannic acid and other decomposition products from sunken logs and bark began contaminating the waters of the lake itself.
Then, in 1962, the economic planners in Moscow decided to build a gigantic cellulose and wood-chemical combine on the south shore of Lake Baikal. Even by Soviet standards the plans were grandiose. There were to be five plants with their associated towns in the combine. Secure in the conviction that the true Good is to be found in more production, the planners turned their blueprints over to the builders and in 1963 work on the first two plants began.
At this juncture something truly remarkable occurred. In the Soviet Union, that closed society where, so we are told, the voice of the individual is never heard, there arose a thunder of protests from individuals in every part of the land. The editors of the monolithic All-Union papers,
Pravda
and
Izvestia
, having proudly announced the birth of the gigantic new production complex at Baikal, found themselves inundated by letters of outrage. As the two plants neared completion the intensity of the storm strengthened.
An elderly, much respected Moscow writer described to me what followed:
“The word Baikal became a rally cry even to people who knew very little about it except its name. They were acute enough to see that finally the high priests of progress-through-production had to be brought to their senses. The threat to Baikal made people understand that unless this was done the new world we were building would be no better than a ruined wasteland fit for machines, but not for human beings. Hundreds and thousands of professional writers, poets, artists and scientists took it on themselves to make Baikal the symbolic warning. They were joined by masses of workers and by revered members of the Academy of Science, and even by some state officials. Every magazine andnewspaper heard the voice of what was a true mass movement of the people.
“For a while the authorities who had designed the cellulose combine tried to drown out the protests. There were long articles lashing out at reactionary sentimentalists who tried to stop the glorious march of our revolution. There were some threats, and some of the more prominent of Baikal’s defenders were told they would get into trouble if they did not keep quiet. They refused to be quiet. The fuss kept getting worse. The plants were completed and began operations. They began pouring their poisons into the Sacred Sea. Within three months there were reports of fish dying in Baikal and even of people getting sick from eating fish caught in the Angara. The fight of the people to save the lake became more furious and then, quite suddenly, the authorities gave in. The plants were closed.”
I visited Baikal several times and on one occasion sat in a little cafe on the shore of the lake, watching its waters rage in the grip of a roaring October storm. Boris Arimov, an Irkutsk poet who spent seven years fighting for Baikal, sat with me and told me more of the story.
“When they closed the plants we suspected it was only for long enough to let things cool down. So, we did not let things cool down. We kept the fire going and gave it more fuel. Now we demanded that fishing be banned until
The battle to destroy the living world of Baikal was being won. Fishermen and seal hunters were receiving indirect assistance in their work of destruction from landsmen. In the mountain valleys drained by Baikal’s three hundred and sixty inflowing streams and rivers, the forests where the sables were hardly more than a memory were themselves being razed. Siberian cedars, high towering patriarchs, many of them more than a thousand years old, all but disappeared. Larch, and the lesser species, took their turn. The logs were floated down the once crystal rivers, gradually coating the stream beds with thick layers of bark until many of the lake fishes thatused the rivers as nurseries could no longer find suitable spawning grounds. Tannic acid and other decomposition products from sunken logs and bark began contaminating the waters of the lake itself.
Then, in 1962, the economic planners in Moscow decided to build a gigantic cellulose and wood-chemical combine on the south shore of Lake Baikal. Even by Soviet standards the plans were grandiose. There were to be five plants with their associated towns in the combine. Secure in the conviction that the true Good is to be found in more production, the planners turned their blueprints over to the builders and in 1963 work on the first two plants began.
At this juncture something truly remarkable occurred. In the Soviet Union, that closed society where, so we are told, the voice of the individual is never heard, there arose a thunder of protests from individuals in every part of the land. The editors of the monolithic All-Union papers,
Pravda
and
Izvestia
, having proudly announced the birth of the gigantic new production complex at Baikal, found themselves inundated by letters of outrage. As the two plants neared completion the intensity of the storm strengthened.
An elderly, much respected Moscow writer described to me what followed:
“The word Baikal became a rally cry even to people who knew very little about it except its name. They were acute enough to see that finally the high priests of progress-through-production had to be brought to their senses. The threat to Baikal made people understand that unless this was done the new world we were building would be no better than a ruined wasteland fit for machines, but not for human beings. Hundreds and thousands of professional writers, poets, artists and scientists took it on themselves to make Baikal the symbolic warning. They were joined by masses of workers and by revered members of the Academy of Science, and even by some state officials. Every magazine andnewspaper heard the voice of what was a true mass movement of the people.
“For a while the authorities who had designed the cellulose combine tried to drown out the protests. There were long articles lashing out at reactionary sentimentalists who tried to stop the glorious march of our revolution. There were some threats, and some of the more prominent of Baikal’s defenders were told they would get into trouble if they did not keep quiet. They refused to be quiet. The fuss kept getting worse. The plants were completed and began operations. They began pouring their poisons into the Sacred Sea. Within three months there were reports of fish dying in Baikal and even of people getting sick from eating fish caught in the Angara. The fight of the people to save the lake became more furious and then, quite suddenly, the authorities gave in. The plants were closed.”
I visited Baikal several times and on one occasion sat in a little cafe on the shore of the lake, watching its waters rage in the grip of a roaring October storm. Boris Arimov, an Irkutsk poet who spent seven years fighting for Baikal, sat with me and told me more of the story.
“When they closed the plants we suspected it was only for long enough to let things cool down. So, we did not let things cool down. We kept the fire going and gave it more fuel. Now we demanded that fishing be banned until
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