Alcohol abuse, crime and ethnic discrimination plague a Siberian territory where a Weber State College professor is taking part in a special study.
Geography Professor Deon Greer has written home a description of his experiences thus far in the Tuvan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, a territory in southern Siberia near the Mongolian border, where he's participating in a joint Soviet-Mongolian geographical experiment.He said alcohol abuse is an even more serious problem in Tuva, where Tuvans occupy the bottom of the Soviet economic ladder, than it is in the rest of the Soviet Union. Unlike in Moscow, alcohol is rationed in Tuva, and Greer and his wife noticed a shortage of items containing sugar, because the government is rationing it as well to prevent the making of bootleg liquor.
In Tuva's capital, Kyzyl, a city of 60,000, the crime rate is among the highest in the USSR, Greer wrote, "with as many as seven knifings occurring in one night, creating a populace fearful of going out on the streets after dark."
The area is also experiencing civil unrest, with a "spate of protests by Tuvans against the Russian population." Greer said the unrest is due principally to unemployment and salary differences between Tuvans and Russians.
Such goods as soap, matches and razor blades are in short supply, but shops have plenty of dairy products, bread, meat and fish, and the free market has fresh, local vegetables and products from other republics.
Even though glasnost is neither as well accepted nor understood as it is in European Russia, "The effects are spreading to the Tuvan A.S.S.R," wrote Greer and his wife, Julie.
They told of a reporter friend who, in the past, had been harassed, arrested and beaten for his liberal reporting. One evening when the reporter was visiting the Greers, he was summoned to the lobby of the building by the Russian KGB. He was then taken outside and ordered to "remove himself from the area." In the spirit of glasnost, however, the reporter replied, "I'll give you five minutes to depart yourselves, before I expose you to the entire country as well as the world." He and the Greers returned to their apartment without further incident.
The geographical experiment on which Greer is working involves a proposal to preserve the pristine state of Tuva, then use the area as a norm against which to test environmental deterioration elsewhere around the world.
But Greer wrote, "It appeared to us that the preservation of this untouched region would be nearly impossible, given the economic needs of the people and the readily exploitable resources available."