1214 Ch. 29 • Democracy and the Collapse of Communismnuclear disasters. Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal and its claim to the remnants
of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet docked in Crimea raised tension between
Russia and Ukraine. In 1992, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan
all agreed that nuclear weapons stored on their territory would either be
destroyed or turned over to Russia. In 1996, nuclear warheads were shipped
to Russia for destruction. However, the problem of preventing the theft
and sale of nuclear materials, particularly to potential terrorists, remains
one of the most important concerns for the future.
The end of communism has left other problems. The rapid industrializa
tion in East Germany, Romania, and Czechoslovakia under communism
left horrendous pollution from coal-burning furnaces and virtually unregu
lated factories. Acid rain destroyed forests, killed rivers, and compromised
public health.
Suddenly freed from Soviet domination, the newly independent states
faced the challenge of putting their own foreign relations on a firm footing.
For many of the former Soviet republics, relations with Russia are com
plicated by centuries of animosity, nowhere more so than in Ukraine and
Georgia. Soviet rule had favored Russian interests, and in the Baltic states,
for example, brought the settlement of large Russian populations, as well
as troops (250,000 Soviet troops were stationed in Soviet republics other
than Russia at the time of the Soviet Union’s dissolution).
Like the Soviet Union, the Eastern European Communist states were
largely atomized societies of one-party rule without political infrastruc