The Soviet practice of indiscriminately exploiting natural resources to feed its industrial machine had devastating consequences for the Aral Sea region. In 1959, under General-Secretary Nikita Khrushchev’s self-sufficiency plan, the Russians diverted the courses of the Amu Syr and Amu Darya rivers, the Aral Sea’s two main feeders, to irrigate newly planted cotton fields in Uzbekistan. With the diversion of two of its feeding rivers, evaporation took its toll on the Aral Sea. To exacerbate matters, the pesticides used to accelerate cotton growth heavily polluted the water system. Moscow’s attempt to transform one of its republics into a major agricultural center was a shortsighted project and was abandoned within a decade. But the environmental effects were not so transient: the Aral Sea has lost three-fifths of its water in the past 40 years, and its shoreline has at some areas receded more than 60 miles. What remains of the sea is salty and polluted.
