GREENS IN EAST EUROPE--THE NEW OPPOSITION?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87R00529R000100020010-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 23, 2011
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: June 18, 1985
• Content Type: MEMO

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MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
NIC #03128-85
18 June 1985
Assistant National Intelligence Officer for Europe
SUBJECT: "Greens" In East Europe--The New Opposition?
1. We are beginning to see some signs that the traditional issues
driving the opposition in East Europe--political alienation, economic
grievances, suppressed anti-Soviet nationalism and desires for
autonomy--may be given new impetus as existing opposition groups get
involved in environmental causes. The latter issues might have
significant impact because:
-- A major accident in any of East Europe's Soviet-designed nuclear
energy plants could involve several contiguous East European
countries as well as non-Pact neighbors--like Yugoslavia,
Austria, and Sweden--and major allies like the FRG.
Since the war, all the East European regimes have pushed rapid
industrialization without much concern for environmental
side-effects or adequate health protection for workers. (The
already evident pollution comes from older, smoke-stack
industrial plants--many of Soviet design or origin.) Now,
Eastern Europe's boom years are gone and the burden of past debts
will make it difficult for them to rapidly undo errors by
retooling with safer, cleaner plants.
As the environmental movement gets off the ground, it could
complicate plans to expand reliance on nuclear power as an
alternative to declining conventional energy resources from the
USSR. (Today, fourteen nuclear plants, built under CEMA's
INTERATOMERGO program, are operational and by 1990 another
CL BY SIGNER
DECL OADR
The Director of Central Intelligence
Washington, D.C. 20505
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thirteen plants will be on line. Ten of the older plants now in
use are decidedly below US standards in design safety but there
are no known plans to take them off line.)
2. The pollution issue will likely be difficult to contain. The
authorities' efforts at suppression would put them in the posture of
stifling a group with immense appeal at home and among leftists in the
West.
The leaders of the Green movement in West Germany have already
anticipated the rise of an environmental cause in the East and
offered support and sympathy to traditional opposition groups--in
East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
environmentalists in
Budapest had joined force time with more
traditional opposition groups in calling for a boycott of
national elections in early June. The regime ignored the
challenge, in part, we think, to protect its good reputation with
the West European left. (Visits by Labor leader Kinnoch and
Willi Brandt were in the offing.)
3. We stress that the issue has not yet caught fire in a big
way--although it would rapidly do so in the event of a major disaster or a
series of smaller incidents with high visibility. For now, awareness
levels in East Europe differ widely. East German environmentalists, who
have the easiest access to the Greens in the FRG, apparently are far in
front. The Hungarians and the Yugoslavs, judging by rising concerns
evident in the press, are beginning to catch up. Some more recent
reporting we have noted would include:
-- Comments in a Die Presse interview by the Mayor of Belgrade last
fall that the Danube's radioactive contamination level increased
sharply after Hungary opened a second stage of its Pacs nuclear
plant last August.
(claims that Slovenian farmers protested
on 17-20 March over plans for nuclear waste storage from the
Krsko power plant at a site designed for more limited useage.
Press reports from Belgrade which have linked Petra Kelly to a
new domestic dissident group opposing a mammoth dam project on
Montenegro's Tara river.
the Kadar regime has interceded
with Prague urging it to reconsider a major dam project which
would uproot a perfectly preserved seventeenth century Hungarian
SECRET
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SECRET
village in Slovakia. (Nationalist dissidents in Hungary are
using the issue to generate support for their claim that the
Czechoslovaks are trying to eradicate all traces of the minority.)
4. We may soon be hearing more from Czechoslovak environmentalists
about their grievances.
there was 25X1
a serious accident with injuries during the run-up ot a nuclear
power plant at Dukovany this spring.
tailings from uranium 25X1
mining in northern Czech lands is polluting whole valleys and
contamination is beginning to seep into the Elbe where it flows
into East Germany.
5. For now we are proposing to explore cross-disciplinary aspects of
the environmental question with the proper DDI offices
25X1
25X1
SECRETI 25X1
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SECRET
village in Slovakia. (Nationalist dissidents in Hungary are
using the issue to generate support for their claim that the
Czechoslovaks are trying to eradicate-all traces of the minority.)
4. We may soon be hearing more from Czechoslovak environmentalists
about their grievances.
here was
a serious accident with injuries during the run-up of a nuclear
power plant at Dukovany this spring.
tailings from uranium
mining in northern Czech lands is polluting whole valleys and
contamination is beginning to seep into the Elbe where it flows
into East Germany.
5. For now we are proposing to explore cross-disciplinary aspects o
the environmental uestion with the ro er DDI offices
DCI/NIC/ANIO/EUR
DISTRIBUTION:
Orig - Addressee
1 - DDCI
1 - C/NIC
1 - VC/NIC
1 - EX REG
1 - DDI REG
1 - NIO/EUR CHRON
1 - NIO/EUR SUBJ
hh,
3
SFCRFTI
18 June 1985
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STAT
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