Environmentalism and Estonia's Independence Movement

The spirit of environmentalism generated some of the most memorable images of the eastern and central European independence movements of the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1988, protesters formed a human chain around the Ignalina nuclear reactor in Lithuania. That same year, thousands of Hungarians marched through downtown Budapest to rally against their government's prospective participation in the construction of a dam on the Danube River. The environmental movements in the former eastern bloc marked the beginning of the end of Soviet era communism in Europe. However, many commentators have implied that environmental protest was a proxy for other, more politically explosive grievances. Environmentalism was decisive, it is argued, because it provided a release valve for pent-up frustrations and repressed nationalistic ardor. Re-examining the independence movement in Estonia, this article contends that environmentalism was not incidental to citizens’ larger aims. The specific, environmentally destructive activities people condemned embodied many of the features of the Soviet system that people despised generally. Resource-intensive and pollution-prone projects proposed by Moscow provoked a broadly conceived environmental revolt rather than environmental protest “in name only.” The environmentally related constituents of Estonia's independence movement included citizens’ opposition to pollution of the environment and waste of natural resources; perceived “mindlessness” of industrial policy in Estonia; the promise of new Russian-speaking immigrants to work in environmentally unfriendly industries; and economic exploitation of natural resources in Estonia for the benefit of other Soviet republics, especially the Russian RSFSR.