Still Room For Training In Glasnost

In these days of great and rapid change, it is easy to overlook the effects of three-quarters of a century spent suppressing information. Across the spectrum, from top party official to minor bureaucrat, the arts of obfuscation, distortion and lying were so deeply ingrained as to come naturally.


So it was perhaps only to be expected that when an oil leak spewed thousands of tons of oil onto the frozen tundra of Russia's far north, the official response was first to say nothing and then to deny all.


That kind of response to an ecological disaster -- and even the official Russian estimates of the size of the spill warrant that description -- has a long history. When the Chernobyl disaster struck in April 1986, for example, officials were more concerned with covering up the accident than with taking steps to deal it.


In the glasnost years of Mikhail Gorbachev, newspapers began to get used to the idea of reporting on the less positive sides of Soviet life. Thus one began to hear about air crashes, epidemics, industrial accidents, floods and earthquakes -- despite the best efforts of officials still intent on keeping such matters dark.


Gradually the message seemed to be getting through: openness did not necessarily undermine the country by exposing its weaknesses to its detractors, but on the contrary could serve to avert disasters by alerting attention to them before they struck.


But clearly, this message has not yet penetrated the frozen minds of the Russian far north. Back in August, a pipeline carrying crude oil in northern Komi to refineries in central Russia burst near the regional center of Usinsk. The oil company decided to build a 7-meter high earth wall around the fault to contain the oil spewing from it while they repaired the leak -- and to say nothing about it to the outside world.


Then the inevitable happened. After heavy rain, the wall gave way under the growing weight of the oil, which poured out to form a 12-kilometer-long, meter-deep slick across the surrounding tundra. And still the officials said nothing.


Only when the story got out, through television pictures and the pages of the New York Times, did the officials speak. And their response, in keeping with the finest Soviet tradition, has been to deny everything. Never mind the pictures of clean-up teams vainly shovelling through waist-deep sludge -- as far as the officials are concerned, there has been no disaster.


A government commission has now been formed to start an investigation. In 1994, one can only hope that its reaction will be to look for and reveal the causes of the spill so that it can be redressed.