Regional and environmental problems of the USSR: a synopsis of views from the Soviet Parliament.

A geographer member of the USSR Congress of People's Deputies and member of a USSR Supreme Soviet Commission for Nationalities Policy and Interethnic Relations discusses key regional and environmental issues debated by those legislative bodies in 1989 and 1990: disparities in development levels and regional economic structure; effects of distorted prices on regional khozraschet; inadequate social infrastructure and imbalanced development in resource frontier regions; regional environmental problems exacerbated by decisions concerning location of new productive capacity; nuclear power generation and testing; administrative measures promoting environmental protection efforts; and discrepancies between the administrative-territorial and economic division of the country (translated by Jay K. Mitchell; PlanEcon, Inc.; Washington, DC 20005).