ЭКСПЕРТИЗА СО АН СССР И ВЕДОМСТВЕННАЯ ЭКСПЕРТИЗА ПРОИЗВОДСТВА ВИСКОЗНОГО КОРДА НА БАЙКАЛЬСКОМ ЦБК: ПРОБЛЕМА СОГЛАСОВАНИЯ ПОЗИЦИЙ

Abstract

The article focuses on the discussions initiated by the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences about the economic feasibility of the Baikal pulp and paper mill (BPPM) in the early 1970s and, more broadly, the late-Soviet economic policy of production location. For the author, the Baikal counterversion is not a borderline issue of Soviet environmental protection or a clash of productivist and ecological discourses in Soviet social thought, which it appears to be for much of the historiography, but a chain of scientific and technical problems, which were or were not resolved in a clash of expert opinions. This exchange of opinions was moderated by the central Soviet agencies represented by the all-union Council of Ministers, Gosstroy and Gosplan of the USSR. The main thesis of the text is that by 1966, when the construction of the first stage of the mill was completed, viscose cord, for the sake of which was created the BPPM, technologically outdated in comparison with the synthetic, and the products of the enterprise have lost their strategic importance. At the same time, the complication of production by environmental requirements made the operation of the BPPM unprofitable, but the State Planning Committee, relying on expectations of technological innovations, up to Perestroika blocked any discussion of the reprofiling or closure of the mill. This was due to the soft budget constraint regime in which, according to J. Kornai, Soviet industrial enterprises were located. Maintaining this regime was generally a matter of state policy, and in the case of the BPPM its political nature was further strengthened by a combination of departmental interests that were under attack by opponents of pulp production at Baikal.