And also, it was a better solution to their particular set of challenges: powering remote installations far from the nearest urban center (and powerplant).
Anti-nuclear sentiment in Europe seems to have hardened as a consequence of (a) Chernobyl, (b) Germany realizing they'd be on the front lines in any war, & (c) various other nuclear incidents (US and UK).
They weren't Soviet puppets: they formed their own positions and advocated for them.
(Another reason I missed above: the conflation of nuclear power with nuclear weapons)
There's usually far too much squabbling inside a given volunteer group for any external pressure to be able to redirect their will.
Which is simply: even after several iterations on this topic -- no one seems to be able to point to any actual indications of the Soviets having promoted such propaganda in the West.
What the hell are you talking about? That’s like saying it’s inconsistent for a basketball team to try and score points while also trying to prevent the opposing team from also scoring points. It’s certainly adversarial, but so was the geopolitical relationship between the Soviet Union and the West.
> I think you meant to say…
Don’t patronize me. I meant to say exactly what I said.
The hypothesized messaging, that is. There's no evidence of such a propaganda campaign from Soviet side in those years (cover or overt), so this entire discussion is moot anyway.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/k4iggr/a...
It's also why the Chornobyl facility was officially named the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant, and so on.
The only thing they didn't do was "promote anti-nuclear propaganda in the West".
And no one said that they were, nor are they "attacking" that point of view.
More to the point it's still a rather harebrained conspiracy theory with no evidence to support it.
It was definitely not "third world", and you aren't even using the term correctly. As Wikipedia explains:
In the Cold War, some European democracies (Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden, and Switzerland) were neutral in the sense of not joining NATO, but were prosperous, never joined the Non-Aligned Movement, and seldom self-identified as part of the Third World.You’re making a tedious semantic argument while conceding my central point, that Finland was non-aligned. I’ve heard of respectful disagreement but you’ve managed to pull off disrespectful agreement.
And when people do fact-check you, you say they're making "tedious semantic arguments", or being disrespectful.
There's nothing disrespectful in their doing so, of course. They're just setting the record straight -- again, chiefly in regard to this nutty theory you've been promoting. If anything, they're doing you a favor.
Though I do agree that this discussion has gotten quite tedious.
My point—which seems to be well-received since it’s up about 12 points—is that if the Soviets did, in fact, support these movements, it wouldn’t be inconsistent with their own use of nuclear power, or even their efforts to develop nuclear power in “non-aligned” countries in an attempt to curry political favor. Your attempts to claim otherwise are bizarre and incoherent, and none of your fact checks are factual or indeed even relevant to the topic at hand.
The Western antinuclear movement had their own agency and motivations, but because they happened to align with Soviet interests
> they may have received material support from the Soviets. If they did....
It should be obvious that it would have served the interests of the Soviet Union if their geopolitical adversaries had less abundant energy and less practical expertise in nuclear technology. I make no claims about whether or not the Soviets attempted to advance these particular interests by interfering in the domestic politics of their adversaries, even though they did interfere in other ways to advance other interests.
I think we can leave it at that.
Your question was:
> Which "interests" were you referring to, other than the interest of discouraging nuclear power development in the West?
There is no “other than”. Discouraging nuclear power development in the West (by which in this context, I am reiterating because it was insufficiently clear earlier, I mean the countries aligned with the US and against the USSR during the Cold War) was the Soviet interest that would have been served by Soviet attempts to interfere in the domestic politics of Western countries (by which I mean “First World”, US-aligned countries, just so we are crystal clear on that point).
And I expanded on that point, actually:
> It should be obvious that it would have served the interests of the Soviet Union if their geopolitical adversaries had less abundant energy and less practical expertise in nuclear technology.
Why would you expect some other Soviet interest to be served? Perhaps you were confused by my use of the superficially plural term “interests”? In that case, please forgive the imprecision of my language. As I’ve explained, the Soviet interest in curbing the use of nuclear power in Western countries (by which, let me remind you, I mean countries that were Soviet adversaries) was multifaceted, but in common usage, when someone speaks of a country’s or a party’s “interests”, they are not necessarily thinking of some countable number of distinct points of interest.
Care to cite some examples? You know, the factual kind?
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85T00153R0003000...
Nuclear power is not, as a photograph of a banner on the CND's website tells me, the answer to climate chaos.
If we go by the article you provided (and I am skimming it properly) - it doesn't mention nuclear power at all.
The NKVD/KGB/FSB was and continues to be known to engage in kneecapping actions in enemy states. Many Northern nations were kindled into taking an anti-nuclear stance. It is taking a lot of initiative for Northern Europe to extricate itself from dependence on Russian natural gas. Russia used natural gas control as retaliation following sanctions.
Occam’s Razor would suggest these things are linked.
Occam's Razor would seem to cut the other way, actually.
Stasi and green activist contacts are also documented. (Most funding came from fossile fuel orgs/persons, not eastern block.) https://www.dw.com/en/study-confirms-that-stasi-infiltrated-...
I didn't see anything in that in that wikipedia article about it. Besides, the claims of defectors are frequently exaggerated and fall apart. They have a strong tendency to try to say what they think their audience want to hear.
>Stasi and green activist contacts are also documented. (Most funding came from fossile fuel orgs/persons, not eastern block.) https://www.dw.com/en/study-confirms-that-stasi-infiltrated-...
This article is 0% about the conspiracy theory and 100% about how the stasi tried to infiltrate a political party - which is, yes, quite plausible.
As I said, it's quite the conspiracy theory.
That doesn't mean they favored (or otherwise sought to promote) all of the aims and goals of the organizations. Or even any of their aims, necessary.
Their primary goal in doing so was, first and foremost, that of their very motto:
To know everything
Simple test. Look for issues which aren't really green but which benefit Moscow (and these days, Beijing.) Where do the "green" groups stand? I haven't been paying attention for quite a while because I spotted too many such things long ago and figured Moscow was pulling the strings.
Last month a bus caught fire in some random village in Czech Republic and apparently that was Putin’s fault too.
This is getting to the point where I have to check if he is hiding in the closet before I leave the house
Meanwhile we have dozens of official think tanks influencing our politics and their sources of funding are not disclosed. Could be oil companies, could be China, could be the devil himself!
They supported anti nuclear stuff , anti renewables stuff and anti fossil fuel extraction stuff.
The end effect being people in Europe would be dependent on buying natural gas from Russia.