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Why The USSR Senselessly Drove Whales To The Brink Of Extinction
Whaling for the sake of whaling
Whaling has long been a part of Russian culture. Russians have participated in whaling activities for centuries, tapping into the fertile whaling grounds in the far northern waters of the planet. However, in the 20th century, when the rest of the world started winding down their whaling economies, the Soviet Union doubled down. Instead of pulling back, the USSR started sending whaling ships all over the world in hopes of bagging more and more of the aquatic mammals.
Over the course of the 20th century, the USSR would go on to slaughter hundreds of thousands of whales, many of them threatened or endangered. During the 1960s and 1970s, treaties and quotas were put into place to try and prevent the overhunting of whales. Instead of complying, the Soviets continued to bring in their hauls while presenting the governing bodies with doctored books and records that vastly undercounted their kills. The USSR hid their crimes from the international community and continued to wipe out pods of whales even when evidence started to grow that such activities were putting the natural whale populations at risk of extinction.
So why were the Soviets so intent on whaling? Were they gaining serious benefits from the wholesale slaughter of whales? It was all derived from the centrally planned economy, which favored numbers for the sake of numbers.
Quotas, Quotas, Quotas
After World War II, the Soviet Union looked around the world and began reorganizing its peacetime economy. The Soviet Union long adhered to a centrally planned economy. Economists would meet and set quotas for various economic activities. Each region and industry was tasked with meeting certain goals. Every quarter, these quotas were evaluated and underperformers were punished, stripped of valuable stipends and sometimes relocated to different industries or even entirely different regions. No one wanted to miss quota and risk losing their house and being shipped to Siberia.
Nothing escaped the Central Planning Committees gaze and that included whaling. Despite the fact that crude oil and synthetic lubricants had long replaced whale oil as a viable material, the Soviet Union…
