János Vargha
Born in 1949. Biologist, environmentalist.
Not only was the Soviet economy riddled with bankruptcy, it posed a serious threat to the environment. In the 1980s, the struggle against senseless pollution gained strength. In many socialist countries this was the first social movement, which dared criticise the regime. Estonia protested against mining activities in Virumaa, but in Hungary the main concern was the damming of the river Danube.
Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the USSR, once dreamt of turning around some large Siberian rivers such as the Ob, Yenisei and Lena, in order to water the deserts of Central Asia. Such utopian thinking was also behind the Czechoslovak and Hungarian communists' idea to check the waters of the Danube: the plan was to build a large hydro-electric power plant and to direct most of the waters from the natural river bed to an artificial canal. But the Hungarian people stood up in defence of their environment. More than in any other socialist country, it was the struggle for clean nature that brought about the downfall of Communism in Hungary.
János Vargha, a biologist, got wind of the project almost by chance. In 1984, he wrote an article, which for the first time informed the public of the project and which analysed the consequences of the dam for the environment. Vargha warned that the dam would lead to the drying up of the largest drinking water reserve in Europe and that the Danube's waters would become irreversibly polluted. Moreover, the energy production of Hungary would increase only by three percent, he pointed out.
Step by step the fight of a few environmentalists grew into a nationwide protest. Victory was achieved on 20 July 1989, when the communist government of Hungary decided to stop the construction of the dam. But by that time the backbone of the communist's hold of the country had been broken.
As an irony of history, the construction of the dam was completed after all, though not in its full extent. In the conception of the communists the system of dams and canals had to be built in co-operation between Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Though Hungary opted out, it was completed on the territory of Slovakia by the government of an independent and democratic Slovak state. To this day, the dam, and the environmental risks associated with it, have remained an object of serious dispute between the governments and experts of the two countries.
- Estonian SSR
- Latvian SSR
- Lithuanian SSR
- Russian SSR
- Byelorussian SSR
- Ukrainian SSR
- People´s Republic of Poland
- German Democratic Republic
- Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
- People's Republic of Hungary
- Socialist Republic of Romania
- Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
- The Moldavian SSR
- The People´s Republic of Bulgaria