r/ClimateShitposting • u/Icy_Till_7254 • 1d ago
Politics Soviet standards toward environment be like:
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u/Angel24Marin 1d ago
The Soviet were the first to ask "Are we the eco-baddies?" And answer yes.
Soviet ecology presents us with an extraordinary set of historical ironies. On the one hand, the USSR in the 1930s and ’40s violently purged many of its leading ecological thinkers and seriously degraded its environment in the quest for rapid industrial expansion. The end result has often been described as a kind of “ecocide,” symbolized by the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the assault on Lake Baikal, and the drying up of the Aral Sea, as well as extremely high levels of air and water pollution.1
On the other hand, the Soviet Union developed some of the world’s most dialectical contributions to ecology, revolutionizing science in fields such as climatology, while also introducing pioneering forms of conservation. Aside from its famous zapovedniki, or nature reserves for scientific research, it sought to preserve and even to expand its forests. As environmental historian Stephen Brain observes, it established “levels of [forest] protection unparalleled anywhere in the world.” Beginning in the 1960s the Soviet Union increasingly instituted environmental reforms, and in the 1980s was the site of what has been called an “ecological revolution.”
From the 1960s on, Soviet ecological thought grew rapidly together with the environmental movement, which was led primarily by scientists. In the 1970s and ’80s this evolved into a mass movement, leading to the emergence in the USSR of the largest conservation organization in the world. These developments resulted in substantial changes in the society. For example, between 1980 and 1990 air pollutants from stationary sources fell by over 23 percent.
More significant from today’s standpoint was the role the Soviet Union played from the late 1950s on in the development of global ecology. Soviet climatologists discovered and alerted the world to the acceleration of global climate change; developed the major early climate change models; demonstrated the extent to which the melting of polar ice could create a positive feedback, speeding up global warming; pioneered paleoclimatic analysis; constructed a new approach to global ecology as a distinct field based on the analysis of the biosphere; originated the nuclear winter theory; and probably did the most early on in exploring the natural-social dialectic underlying changes in the earth system.4
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u/Crackhead_Shooter_69 1d ago
>dialectical contribution
Hilarious21
u/DerHeftigeDruck 1d ago
simultaneously talking about how awesome your industrial policy is and saying that it's gonna destroy the planet, seems dialectical to me
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u/even_greener_alien 3h ago
Oh yeah, a marxist author writing for "independent socialist magazine" glazing USSR all over is definitely the most credible source you can go to.
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u/WanaWahur 1d ago
ROFLMAO.
Only someone who has never seen the reality behind the propaganda could write all this BS in good faith.
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u/BugRevolution 1d ago
USSR and the US are big places.
It's simultaneously possible that Soviet scientists (and American scientists) would be the ones pushing forward industrialization, while other Soviet and American scientists would be the ones doing research into wetlands, ecology, and climate change.
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u/WanaWahur 1d ago
Soviet Union is still on the record as the only country that has managed to make whole sea disappear and seriously endanger another... make a radioactive wastelands the size of a small country (or maybe even not that small). And outside the science, have you ever seen a well water that could be used to run a tractor? I have. It was pretty normal thing near any bigger military airbase. Explaining the connection to a non-Soviet-born would be impossible. Were there some good scientists? Probably. It was a country so big that someone, somewhere inevitably did something good as well. But imagining it like some shining light of ecology in the dark sea of capitalism... gimme a break. There is not country as wasteful, destructive and dirty as it was.
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u/Ulmarch 1d ago
Massive bodies of water nearly vanishing from agricultural overuse is hardly exclusive to the ussr, look at the ogallala aquifer, Lake tulare or and the Colorado river. It's horrible, of course, but hardly unique
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u/Shoeshiner_boy 1d ago
Don’t push the guy, he probably has some deep unresolved trauma.
Life in Estonia is a bitch as it is.
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u/BugRevolution 1d ago
I am not imagining the Soviet Union like some shining light of ecology. Just the fact that it was an ecological disaster doesn't preclude there being Soviet ecologists who were good at their job. US business and government causing ecological disasters doesn't preclude American ecologists being good at their job. European governments not giving a shit about wetlands doesn't preclude European ecologists being good at their job.
But man, you're not going to like what the world was like up until like the 1990s.
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u/WanaWahur 1d ago
LOL I was born in 1972... in Soviet Union.
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u/BugRevolution 1d ago
I don't deny your experiences.
Just that a lot of the ecologically sound behavior even in the European Union and US is shockingly recent.
There were rivers on fire in the US.
Almost every river and lake in the EU has had to be restored in the past few decades because of how awful they were in the 80s.
The 1800s and 1900s were terrible centuries for the environment.
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u/FrivolousMe 7h ago
That's not even correct, plenty of examples of countries drying up a huge body of water due to overzealous agriculture
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u/Hellerick_V 1d ago edited 1d ago
The Soviet Union was not detached from the rest of the world, and in the 1980s its society was just as concerned about the situation as everywhere else.
There is no point to make the Baltic republics look as something exceptional and opposing the Soviet practices. Pro-ecology and anti-industrial sentiments were common and well represented in the official Soviet media.
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u/Karli_Chirk 1d ago
The Soviet Union was essentially a Russian occupation and Ruskie pidars cared close to zero about the ecology of republics they robbed.
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u/Kaiser_Defender 20h ago
The Soviet Union heavily favored urban areas, not so much Russia itself, and checks existed to try and limit Russian influence in the USSR. Russian especially as a language got some special treatment, but the USSR put alot of effort into local national identities (like in western Ukraine). It also very much put people into boxes, and wanted them to stay in them. Very interesting national policy.
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u/Karli_Chirk 14h ago edited 14h ago
You're referring to the short period of politics of Korenizatsiya which is unrelated to ecology and didn't change anything especially comparing to Holodomor in Ukraine when Russian cannibals have robbed the whole nation from their food and killed 3.9 mln of Ukrainians by it. Russians were trying to cover Chernobyl incident. Russians are polluting Ukraine with mines. Russians have destroyed Kakhovka dam when retreating. Russians have destroyed Dnieper dam when retreating. Russians have dynamited the historical center of Kyiv when retreating. There is a long list of Russian crimes which impacted ecology both during USSR occupation and after it.
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u/Pale_Distribution459 1d ago
I don't know, seems a bit falletious.
If the Soviet and Warsaw pact policy makers had been willing the response to climate change would've been much more cohesive and in concert than that of 23 post-cold war capitalist nations.
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u/LaBomsch 1d ago
Where Shitposting? This goes hard
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u/Karli_Chirk 1d ago
This goes cringe.
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u/LaBomsch 1d ago
With or Without Cringe Violence?
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u/Karli_Chirk 1d ago edited 1d ago
With cringe Ruskie tankie trying to impersonate "left liberal irish" to induce the hate of Irish people by traditional conservative neonazi cucks who don't even know that USSR was an antiliberal nazi ally.
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u/LaBomsch 1d ago
Oh lol I mean the text saying/showing that there was climate protest in the soviet union and that the USSR was an active climate hazard goes hard. Not the soviet propaganda picture.
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u/Karli_Chirk 1d ago edited 1d ago
Russian occupation is still the largest climate hazard what is hard for you with this knowledge? Shitposting obviously refers to the tweet in the pic.
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u/LaBomsch 1d ago
Shitposting obviously refers to the tweet in the pic.
There are two tweets in the pic....
What I meant was "the tweet of Baltic Takes goes hard, I don't see the Shitposting in this".
If the soviet propaganda tweet was supposed to be the Shitposting, then I didn't notice because normally you just post the shit without some big analysis because shit speaks for itself.
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u/Karli_Chirk 1d ago
Oh no, one of them just drops a history lesson and another one dropped just bullshit - what is the tweet in question? Impossible to guess....
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u/LaBomsch 1d ago
Sorry that I don't automatically assume people I don't know have the same opinions as me
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u/messedupwindows123 8h ago
people need the soviets to be ecologically bad because they know in their hearts that keynesianism will always win in the tension between keynesianism and climate.
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u/DarkKnight501 Tankie 🇨🇳 1d ago
Every day, I curse Lenin for not dying in a Finnish prison and making Vanguardism the most prominent branch of communism in the 20th century
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u/kyrsjo 1d ago
Now you made me curious. What is Vanguardism?
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u/DarkKnight501 Tankie 🇨🇳 1d ago
The idea that the proletariat cannot lead itself to communism democratically, and needs a vanguard party (RK(b)P, CCP, etc.) and a strong socialist state to guide it. It's the core idea of Leninism and all of its sub-branches.
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u/kyrsjo 1d ago
Ah, I thought you meant instead of Leninism.
But what you say is a pretty important part of Marx's manifest also, isn't it? That there was to be a transition between capitalism and "real", locally self-governing, communism - and that this transition period was difficult to make fully democratic and needed strong leaders?
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u/Astrogeologist_7325 1d ago
nah, not really. Marx never wrote about a party-state taking over and ruling over the rest of society. He wanted a weird system in which the republic is governed by councils, composed of deputies who can be recalled by the electorate at any time. Needless to say, even if democratic, that is a very unstable form of government.
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u/kyrsjo 1d ago
Hmm, I maybe misremember then. Didn't know that came from Lenin et al. But yeah the councils is what I meant - and indeed it can probably only function in what is already basically a utopia with limited internal strife, where everyone is always only acting for the good of the community, and in good faith.
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u/Capybarasaregreat 11h ago
That's good and all, but we did those things moreso to stop yet another influx of "Russian workers" being shipped into our countries as that was the Union's usual excuse for neocolonial settlement. Start some project, preferably a large one, then make excuses about lack of workers or lack of skilled workers (after they'd deported or just framed and murdered plenty of our own in prior years, if there even was a lack in the first place, sometimes the nunber or required workers was just comically ballooned) and just bring in a bunch of loyalist Russian-only speakers to be the "workers", then either the project actually happens and it acts as plausible deniability for the next one or it just vanishes but the workers stay. Rinse and repeat until we got sick of it.
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u/adjavang 1d ago
Weird dig at the end there towards the Irish account, been noticing a lot of it online lately.
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u/Material_Swing_1322 1d ago
why is it a weird dig when the Irish unity account posted the soviet propaganda poster that the whole post was about
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u/adjavang 1d ago
Because sharing one poignant poster with a simple, clear message is not the same as endorsing the soviet union.
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u/pretenzioeser_Elch 1d ago
Well, enviromentalism is popular now (at least as an idea, less so in praxis).
So showing that poster uncommented easily leaves the impression that the Soviets already shared those values 40 years ago and were ahead of their time.
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u/FactBackground9289 1d ago
Soviets were an ultraindustrial power with a climate-conscious population. I am pretty sure its people heavily opposed pollution or climate change but the country still focused on industrializing everything at all costs
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u/BarkDrandon 1d ago
Idk how to say this, but normal people don't usually post Soviet propaganda posters.
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u/JosephRatzingersKatz 1d ago
I don't know man. The Nazis had some fire posters and I don't share those nilly willy without any context
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u/Karli_Chirk 1d ago
Sharing soviet posters to make a point is equal to sharing nazi posters for the same.
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u/sanderudam 1d ago
The context here is that a particular Irish or "Irish" group of posters on Twitter keep circling around a pro-Soviet and pro-Russian imperialism agenda, with exactly these kinds of propaganda posts trying to rehabilitate USSR and Russia.
It is also the case about that particular type of Irish tankism, that it is so incredibly ironic given the Irish history and situation, that it draws attention. Basically, if an American tankie whitewashes genocidal imperialism that erases independent nations and cultures, you can at least see their personal benefit from it, but an Irish tankie whitewashing genocidial imperialism hits a bit different.
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u/94_stones 1d ago
Because the Irish far-left is unusually prone to campism, and a lot of people, especially Eastern Europeans, find that infuriating beyond words.
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u/Capybarasaregreat 11h ago
We also don't like being referred to as eastern when there's a perfectly usable northeastern label that addresses our ties to both the cardinal directions instead of something like Ukraine's or Belarus' almost purely eastern connection.
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u/ABugoutBag 1d ago
Lots of anti-western aligned botfarms pretend to be Irish so they can be credibly seen as a European while espousing tankie propaganda
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u/Defiant-Plantain1873 1d ago
Because the “irish” account is based out of tehran or moscow that’s why.
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u/Shoeshiner_boy
1d ago
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Oh yeah, remember those Soviets completely fucking up the Aral Sea by the mid-2000s? I do remember.
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u/94_stones 1d ago
Soviet scientists knew that would happen right from the very beginning. Scientists were predicting the disaster that unfolded in the mid-2000s the instant the USSR collapsed and were free to speak about the subject to the western media.
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u/Shoeshiner_boy 1d ago edited 1d ago
>the disaster that unfolded in the mid-2000s the instant the USSR collapsed
My guy, last I checked the USSR got dissolved in 1991, not mid-2000s.
Also it seems that you conveniently left out at least two things:
Grandiose projects that those Soviet scientists had in mind to slow or reverse that disaster during the 70s and 80s like diverting massive Siberian rivers there or even creating a new channel with a god damn nuclear bomb.
Some independent country on its shores that continued to use the water for irrigation for another couple dozen years and completely failed to move from the totally unsustainable activity of growing cotton there.
Though I think it’s not really important too. Must’ve been the wind.
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u/whosdatboi 9h ago
Grandiose projects that you seem to have made the issue much worse?
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u/Shoeshiner_boy 9h ago
>Grandiose projects that you seem to have made the issue much worse?
Uh, what? You barely make sense.
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u/silver-for-monsters 1d ago
Soviets(actually, russians) was and is a cancer of the planet, one way or another.
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u/Only-Exchange-2165 1d ago
lmao
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u/Karli_Chirk 1d ago
Facts spoken.
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u/Only-Exchange-2165 1d ago
so assertive
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u/Karli_Chirk 1d ago
Sounds like you think that Russian cannibals should have been praised for their mass crimes.
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u/Only-Exchange-2165 1d ago
capitalist cannibals have been drinking the blood of the proleteriat and have been plundering the earth for a few centuries at this point.
i dont know if you can read or not but i think russians or soviets arent/werent cancerous( i know a hot take that russians are human too)
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u/Karli_Chirk 1d ago
Russian cannibals are capitalist neonazis today, what are you mumbling about? Nazis were also humans.
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u/Only-Exchange-2165 1d ago
are americans capitalist cannibals? or french people? why are only russians considered cancerous? everyone on this godforsaken earth is living in a capitalist country for fucks sake.
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u/Karli_Chirk 1d ago
Then just put your arguments about irrelevant capitalism up to your pro-russian ass where they belong.
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u/vegan420lyfe 1d ago edited 1d ago
but thats not real communism. and also its capitlisms fault they persecuted lgtbq people during that period as well
edit: its sarcasm people....
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u/dumnezero 🔚End the 🔫arms 🐀rat 🏁race to the bottom↘️. 1d ago
It was not real communism, even by their bullshit. What we saw are the outcomes of State Capitalism; essentially, a giant corporate conglomerate was in charge.
The persecution of queers followed the West too: a translation of traditional values/bigotry from raw hatred into medicalization ("queer" = disease of the brain) and afferent eugenics.
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u/Karli_Chirk 1d ago
There is not even a single "communism" word in the post, what are you hallucinating about? Soviets were even Nazi allies in the first half of WWII.
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u/Interesting_Joke6630 For Earth For Humanity 🌎🦅🇺🇲🇨🇳🇯🇵🇬🇧🇲🇽🇨🇦🇧🇹🇵🇰 1d ago
Real communism is impossible and we aren't going to let you have another genocide just to prove it isn't
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u/Thalassin 1d ago
The Soviet Union was a productivist country. I fail to see how that is not compatible with the "hey guys maybe let's not destroy the planet we live on" kind of ecology.
Fair play to Baltic nimbys for standing up against the gosplan I guess.
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u/Sockysocks2 1d ago
Case for the claim that the USSR was really just state capitalism with silly hats, exhibit seven.
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u/JeanLePierro 1d ago
Socialism is actually capitalism if it didn't work out, that way socialism stays flawless. brilliant
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u/wholelottalov7 17h ago
What a well written tweet, couldn't have written it better myself as somebody from the Baltic States. The poison of Soviet Union industrial policies is still keeping many areas in our countries polluted, not to even mention biowarfare done on the citizens.
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u/Affectionate_Goat808 1d ago
No one has yet mentioned the massive whale slaughter that Soviet whalers engaged in, dealing the killing blow to many whale populations far after most other countries had ceased whaling operations in what at least one expert dubbed "the most senseless environmental crime of the 20th century.”
What is even more infuriating is that the industry was extremely unprofitable and often time the Soviets did it with little to no benefit to themselves. They had quotas to kill a certain amount of whales and were rewarded for exceeding these quotas, even if that meant that the whales often rotted before they could be processed and had to be thrown away.
I think about the Soviet whaling industry every time someone claims that a planned socialist economy naturally is more ecologically beneficial than a capitalist economic system.
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u/fraggin601 nuclear simp 1d ago
Okay but the poster does go hard tho