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In early June 2020, a few residents of Stepnogorsk learned of a clandestine, state-initiated plan to import toxic PCBs (polychlorinated biphenols) into the city for storage and eventual disposal by a local firm. Alarmed by later news that an incinerator for that waste, among additional waste from throughout Kazakhstan, would be built in ‘their’ city, grass-roots activists organized through social media, door-to-door petitioning and public demonstrations to halt the operation. This public act of refusal gained much media attention for the former Soviet secret city, well known for its uranium mines and myriad environmental issues associated with decades of extraction and waste storage. Rather than opposing industrial development championed through their pro-growth city leadership outright, demonstrators expressed a moral demand for transparency and civic respect without rejecting industrial life, what I describe as aspirational pragmatism. This form of hopeful accountability is a civic position grounded in historical dependencies on state and industry, shaped by post-Soviet economic decline and ongoing toxic exposure, revealing how residents of marginalized industrial cities negotiate survival, recognition and dignity amid environmental harm.
Robert Kopack (Fri,) studied this question.