The End of Grassroots Ecology: Political Competition and the Fate of Ecology during Perestroika, 1988-1991

Abstract

This article deals with the Moscow ecological groups which appeared during perestroika, like many other “informal” political clubs whose specificity was to be independent from, but tolerated by, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). It focuses on the effects the 1989 electoral campaign for the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies had on their evolution. The ecological issue had stirred people into action and had been more and more present on the political agenda since 1986. However it almost vanished as a significant political stake and as a nascent grassroots movement in these first contested elections, at least in Moscow. The very configuration of political interplay during this campaign incited the informal clubs and the “radical” CPSU reformers they were supporting to relegate to the background the ecological issue. Henceforth, ecological groups were confined in the margins of the political space.