THE ROLE OF SECRECY IN PRODUCING AND DISSEMINATING SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT OF THE NORTH OF SIBERIA IN THE SOVIET PERIOD (SECOND HALF OF THE 20th CENTURY)

The USSR declared a comprehensive, scientifically based approach to the study and development of natural resources. There was branch science with its own organizational structures, professional staff and their training system. The article analyzes the specifics of production and circulation of scientific knowledge about the environment in the USSR. These processes were under strict control of the party-state apparatus. Its central role in determining the policy of natural resource development and, in general, the relationship between society and nature manifested itself in a hypertrophied desire for unification, erasing the distinctions of different territories, bringing them to a common denominator of “even placement of productive forces”. Documents of state organizations and institutions, scientific works, in one way or another, related to natural resources had a certain level of secrecy, at least that of “For Official Use” («Confidential»). The framework of secrecy prevented the involvement of the public in the discussion of environmental problems of the North of Siberia in the USSR. The situation began to change in the second half of the 1980s, when democratic processes in the USSR gave environmental issues a full-fledged public status.