Ukraine'S Troubled Nuclear Industry: Fill & Download for Free

Of the 15 republics, the first to break away wereLithuania, Estonia, LatviaThe Russian FederationFormally, Russia became independent before everyone else, but in practice the three Baltic countries fought for independence from the USSR first. Unrest and riots started in many places before that, for different reasons including food shortages and inter-ethnic tensions (in Azerbaijan, in Georgia). However, that's not quite the same as independence movements.The Baltic countries were annexed by the USSR in 1940, which was followed by mass incarcerations and exile to Siberia, — they had all the historical and political reasons to seek independence. People in Russia were convinced by populists that the economic troubles they suffered (after oil prices crashed in the mid 1980s) were due to Russia’s “feeding” other republics, which wasn't really true.Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan were producing more food than they consumed (Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Lithuania and Latvia also produced a lot of agricultural products and exported in several categories).Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan were significant oil exporters.Turkmenistan exported a lot of natural gas.Ukraine was a major producer of coal, hydroelectric and nuclear power, various metal ores, steel and chemicals.Ukraine and Belarus were highly industrialized, and Russia depended on them for many systems and components, including ICBMs produced in Ukraine and ICBM trucks produced in Belarus. Latvia also had significant industry, relative to its size.Republics other than Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Belarus were too small in population and economy to draw down the Soviet economy.By the time Yeltsin attempted to establish a USSR-light with Belarus and Ukraine, Ukraine held a referendum and firmly insisted on independence. Ukraine also had many valid reasons to seek independence, including the 1932–33 Holdomor — a famine and atrocities engineered by Stalin to take the crops from farmers, and export profitably — during which millions died.Other republics than Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Russia and Ukraine, didn't really “break away” from the USSR. They were left without the USSR, so declared independence. The subsequent Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) had 11 signatories — the missing ones were the three Baltic countries and Georgia. This suggests that Georgia was more independence-minded than, say, Ukraine. However, I doubt that Georgia's independence movement really affected the fate of the USSR as much as those in the Baltic countries and Ukraine.

It's hard to pick the worst.Ukraine. Repeatedly raped by the Soviet Union, with its surfeit removed and redistributed; at its height, it punched so far above its weight that Stalin became furious with the inhabitants and decided to essentially go on a giant massacre there. Even after that, Ukraine, with basically 18% of the USSR's population, accounted for 40% of its agricultural output and a third of its heavy industry. In recompense, the powers-that-be in the Kremlin built a shoddy nuclear power plant that exploded and killed a bunch of people. When the USSR fell apart, Ukraine received a pittance (when it deserved more) in terms of the military hardware of the erstwhile Soviet Union. To this day, Russia still isn't happy that the Ukrainians might want to forge a path all their own -- Russia still thinks of Ukraine as a vassal state; within its sphere of influence.Poland. Similar to Ukraine, but repeatedly invaded and destroyed. Its borders today are an artifice (as are all borders, I guess), engineered by Stalin's henchmen at the conclusion of WWII (though, the present borders are slightly better in terms of natural bounty than the ones before this. Warsaw rose up at the end of WWII to cast off the Nazis, hearing (literally HEARING) the Red Army shelling the Wehrmacht. They successfully hampered the Germans, but Stalin decided to allow the Germans to re-invade and annihilate the city to weaken it and make it ripe for Soviet dominance at the conclusion of the war. Top down Soviet-style obsession with industrial production saw Poland become a heavily polluted place, Krakow being the worst.The Czech Republic. Before WWII, the Czech portion of Czechosolovakia was incredibly wealthy -- more than France on a per capita basis. The Slovakia portion (a backwater) consistently dragged it down. It was then partitioned by Hitler. At the end of the war, the imposition of Soviet style communism saw real living standards depressed by over 80% (per Tony Judt - "Postwar"). In the 50's a series of purges and show-trials destroyed the flourishing, very wealthy nation. It revolted and was crushed by the Soviets in the 60's. The communist kleptocracy cared little for pollution and top-down mandates for heavy-industrial production saw the Czech portion of Czechoslovakia the most polluted place in Europe, with a third of rivers effectively dead and significant portions of the forests dead or dying from pollution.The luckiest would be:The United Kingdom - isolated away from the troubles of the continent; benefited from that isolation; started the industrial revolution; one of the planet's wealthiest nations for longer than anybody else.Switzerland - incredibly wealthy, uninvaded for over a century, heavily armed, very free.Austria - 100% complicit in the rise of the Third Reich & Holocaust, was given a pass at the conclusion of WWII and labeled "Germany's first victim" (my fucking ass); before the war was very poor (as poor as Spain) and in the 30 years after the war, saw itself become one of the bastions of freedom and wealth in the western world (by copying Switzerland mostly).Netherlands - gateway to the continent; it can charge (and has) a premium for shipping anything out of the Rhine; has always been one of the freest, most liberal places on the planet. Second only to Britain on the list of "richest for the longest" as a stand-alone nation-state.Norway - was the poorest of the Nordic nations until they went all Middle Eastern and discovered sickening amounts of fossil wealth (petroleum & natural gas), still -- the place has been a beacon of liberalism and freedom for a century (I guess it was a "co-nation" with Sweden and not really subjugated, per se).

There was an enormous amount of crime the 1920s including banditry and organized crime families (as in the US, probably worse). In the 1930s, state violence (collectivization, suppression of rebellions in Ukraine, Stalin's purges) overshadowed everything else. There was a lot of crime during WWII (including marauding, extrajudicial killings, and even cannibalism during the Siege of Leningrad), but it was hushed down for patriotic reasons. Crime after WWII was also high, as illustrated in the iconic 1980s movie The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed. Perhaps, crime decreased in the late 1950s when the economy picked up and poverty decreased. But quite a few people suffered in various man-made environmental accidents and poorly planned nuclear tests (Totskoye nuclear exercise). The stagnation of the 1970-80s brought a new wave of crime.Street crime and gang violence were common even in large cities, like Kyiv, Ukraine where I grew up. Groups of drunk young people looking for trouble, hit-and-run accidents, street robberies, burglaries, pick-pockets, scammers, con artists, deadly environmental pollution, and even serial murderers (like Andrei Chikatilo). I've encountered more than enough myself, and heard of even more from friends and relatives. A number of movies and TV shows in the 1980s focused on contemporary crime (Следствие ведут ЗнаТоКи). Mortality statistics were classified in the USSR, including violent crimes and suicides, as a way to prevent further spread of crime and limit discontent. Overall crime was not uniform across cities and districts, and the police would typically pay more attention to downtowns. So, crime in general and gang violence in particular were higher in uptowns and suburbs. Many gangs in Moscow were named after suburbs (like Lyubertsy).In Ukraine, the general trend has been for more crime in Russian-speaking areas because they were mostly industrial (Donbass) and touristy (Crimea). Industrial cycles create unemployment, which begets crime. Touristy places bring people with money, free time and inclination for vice.In Russia, the trend was the opposite - "persons of non-Slavic appearance" were associated with organized crime, gang violence and drugs. This worked in several ways - both through traditions of violence around the Caucusus mountains, and through trade (fruits from Georgia and Armenia, etc) which often became the target of crime groups and provided financing to them through protection racket. Much of Chechen funding for the Chechen war was provided by organized crime operating in Moscow.I don't think the general trends changed much with the fall of the USSR (except for the Baltic countries that joined the EU), but economic crimes and police corruption have multiplied.