Industrialization of Slovakia and Environmental Issues in the Period of the Communist Regime

After introduction concerning common features of Slovak industrialization as part of its modernization the author tries to show the envorinmental aspects of this process. His analysis is based upon examples of some factories. He states that all sorts of industrialization have a negative influence on environment. But the socialist industrialization of Slovakia caused even more damage because the priority was the development of heavy industry with its energy and raw material exacting character. Also with building new factories there had been no ecological approach. First at the beginning of the 1970s environmental problems aroused some interest. In comparison with industrial Western countries it was not so late but the differences in quality of ecological activities were enormous. In Slovakia as well as in whole Czechoslovakia the devastation of nature continued till the fall of the Communist regime whose economy was not able to follow new conditions after rise in prices of raw materials and fuel on the world markets. In 1982 Slovakia occupied the third place in Europe as to the air pollution on one inhabitant.