"The Crimea and the nuclear power plant are incompatible!": protest ecological movement in the second half of the 1980s and mobilization of the regional community

On the basis of archival documents, memoirs, and materials of periodicals, the regional ecological movement directed against the construction of the Crimean nuclear power plant (NPP) mostly active in 1988 and 1989 is characterized in the article. Through the analysis of the genesis of the protest ecological movement in a latent phase and the circumstances of its development to the public level during the late "Perestroika", the author analyzes the main forms of the activity of the fighters against the construction of the NPP and their opponents, as well as the role of central and local government and the mass media in the solution of the problem. The main forms of the protest activity were the participation in scientific discussions and expert groups; publishing critical materials in the mass media; appealing to the highest state leaders; participation in elections of all levels and formation of orders to deputies; petitions; and organization of peaceful public actions (pickets, meetings). The opponents of the ecological activists represented the thousands of workers of the Crimean NPP and tried to use the same methods; however, their activity did not cause sympathies, was disproportionately covered in the mass media, and local authorities expressed solidarity with the opponents of the construction of the nuclear power plant. The conclusion was drawn that, besides the general factors for the whole Soviet Union during this period ("the Chernobyl syndrome"; a protest against the monopoly of the state and party authorities; the promotion of alternative political actors; the euphoria of "glasnost’"), the Crimean ecological movement promoted the formation of a specific consciousness of the regional community based on the idea of an exclusive tourist and recreational value of the Crimea as the main "All-Union health resort".