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And what does the future hold for the world's last great wilderness? Will it eventually be destroyed by industrialization? Already the wolf and the Siberian tiger are vanishing, and poaching is endangering the sable. In 1968 Soviet naturalists protested that toxic wastes from a cellulose factory were threatening the more than 1,000 unique species of plant and fish life in Lake Baikal, the purest and deepest fresh-water lake in the world. After much delay, filters were finally installed, though Moscow's Literary Gazette says that it is still questionable whether Lake Baikal can retain its complex ecology.
Human Fog. There are plans afoot to divert water from the Ob River 2,000 miles to drought-afflicted Kazakhstan. The scheme has obvious value for Soviet agriculture, but nobody seems to have weighed the environmental risks of such meddling. The extreme cold contributes to air pollution as well. Since moisture hangs in the air, "human fog" shrouds cities like Tyumen and Yakutsk in winter, trapping vehicle exhausts and wastes from power stations. Siberia's future, obviously, is far from settled.
In Tyumen they like to tell of a ten-year-old boy from the Yamal ("Edge of the World") Peninsula, beyond the Arctic Circle, who was given a prize trip to Moscow. When he returned, he was interviewed on the radio and asked what he thought of the historic Kremlin. "Sibir luchshe [Siberia is better]," the boy replied. For all Siberia's hazards and hardships, there are enough Russians who feel the same way to bring new life to the land that Dostoevsky once called "the house of the dead."