The Water

Stalinist industrialisation put a great pressure on the urban infrastructure. Nevertheless, as the inflow of workers into cities grew significantly, none of the investments were diverted into improving urban environments. 

Only some of the major Russian cities had sewerage systems, while everywhere else around the country human and animal excrement was left to wash away during the rain. But even sewerage systems often didn't help, as the water was being discharged back in the river with no treatment at all. 

The Soviet Union lagged some 30 to 50 years behind such countries as Britain, France or Germany, compensating instead the absence of adequate level of sanitation by immunisation and antibiotics against water-borne diseases (e.g tuberculosis, pneumonia, gastro-enteric infections).

Apart from the risk of catching disease, the urban residents in USSR had to cope with the difficulties associated with the lack of indoor piped water. The routine tasks such as laundering, washing and cooking required significant amount of time and energy, adding to already difficult living conditions ( e.g. working long hours in the under-heated factories and walking long distances to work, in the absence of adequate public transport).

By the end of the 1930s the impact of industrialisation on country’s water supplies was beginning to attract attention. Unfortunately, not because of it’s harm to human health, but because of the economic damage it was causing to the factories and fishing industry. 

For instance, in winter, the chemical pollution in Oka, Northern Donets and Viatka was so strong, that fish would die from oxygen starvation while the discharge from a single factory like the Nizhnii Tagil coke-oven products factory could eliminate fish in the River Tagil over a 200-300 km radius.

Northern Donets

Furthermore, the organisation of water supplies in the Ural region was so inefficient that the pollution of rivers by upstream factories made them unusable for the ones downstream, not talking about the health impacts it implied.

However, none of the attempts by Soviet government to instal anti-pollution equipment succeeded. Waste treatment considered to be of a minor importance to the ones in power, so often the installation process could not be completed due to lack of building materials or labour power. 

Christopher Burton’s «Destalinization as detoxification? The expert debate on industrial toxins under Khrushchev» highlights that often Soviets were guided by two misleading environmental concepts:

1. A belief that powerful rivers are «self-cleansing» and able to dilute industrial waste, and
2. the idea that there was a maximum allowable concentrations of toxins (предельно допустимые концентрации).

These concepts ignored the facts that any amount of toxins tend to build up over time in surrounding flora and fauna and that toxins can interact to produce even more dangerous substances. Whether the Soviet Government truly believed in their truthfulness or used these theories as excuse - remains an open question. 

The main point here is that the policies and behaviour regarding water pollution back in Stalin era could be responsible for an ecological catastrophe that occurred later in 1980s and still persist today.

Reference:

Filtzer, Donald (2009) "Poisoning the Proletariat : Urban Water Supply and RiverPollution in Russia's Industrial Regions during Late Stalinism,1945-1953"