The protection and rational use of natural resources and the environment presuppose the preservation of the productivity of nature and opportunities for its extended use.

At the June (1980) Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, L. I. Brezhnev stated: "A maximum effort- and this point must be stressed- must be made to fulfill and overfulfil the plan in the concluding year of the Tenth Five-Year Plan, to commission priority...

The problem of preserving the ecological equilibrium is especially urgent in regions undergoing industrial development for the first time; this is particularly so in Western Siberia, which is virtually untouched by man, and which, unlike Central Russia, has not been changed by technical progress....

The development of the scientific-technical revolution is inseparably linked to the progressive increase in the utilization of mineral resources. Between 1960 and 1975 the extraction of oil in the USSR (including gas condensate) increased 3.3 times; gas - 6.3 times; iron ore â 2.2 times; and...