Vastuseisust protestideni: võitlus fosforiidikaevanduste vastu 1970. ja 1980. aastate Eestis. (Estonian)

This article examines the planning of the phosphorite mines in Virumaa and the opposition to them from the beginning of the 1970s until the second part of the 1980s when the phosphorite project terminated. In Estonia, phosphorite mining began in the interwar period in Maardu, near Tallinn. After the Second World War, the production volumes started to grow and the underground mining was replaced with opencast mining, which was considered to be more innovative. Opencast mining was supposed to bring along lower production expenses, coupled with higher output and productivity. However, it soon became apparent that opencast mining is both environmentally harmful and wasteful in terms of resource consumption. Around the same time, the geological surveys conducted in northern Estonia resulted in the discovery of promising new phosphorite deposits in Virumaa, firstly in Toolse and later in Rakvere. While the phosphorite reserves in Toolse are around ten times bigger than those in Maardu, the deposits of Rakvere are considered to be the largest in Europe. When the Soviet Union's command economy demanded an increase in the volume of manufactured phosphorous fertilisers, the pressure to develop the phosphorite deposits in Virumaa began in the 1970s and gradually strengthened in the coming years. In 1972, the commercial reserves in the Toolse phosphorite deposit were confirmed, and preparations to establish an opencast mine in Toolse were made. As the phosphorite project was Union-wide, the Estonian authorities and scientists had little say in the planning process. Yet, relying on the opinion expressed by the Academy of Sciences of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (ESSR), the ESSR leadership did not give its consent to an opencast mine. The main argument concerned the environmental danger of burying the dictyonema shale which lies on top of the phosphorite layer. The Estonian scientists demanded a more comprehensive use of the non-phosphorite resources contained within the deposit if the mining project were to go ahead. This trial of strength for the Estonians would last the whole decade: institutions in Moscow responsible for the phosphorite project tried several times to implement the opencast mine for Toolse, but each time the authorities in Estonia rejected it. At the beginning of the 1980s, the Rakvere deposit was also adopted into Moscow's agenda. Though it was considerably larger, and thus more attractive than the Toolse deposit, the Toolse deposit was not abandoned either. The first underground mining stage was to be implemented in Kabala located to the east of Rakvere. Though the phosphorite project had never been openly discussed in previous years, it became even more secretive in the early 1980s. Even the ESSR leadership, not to mention the Estonian scientists, did not know precisely how the phosphorite project, which was still under the tight control of the authorities in Moscow, was running. Nevertheless, snippets of information about the phosphorite mining leaked to the public, and it was believed that the environmental costs in Kabala would be higher than anywhere else in Estonia. In any case, the phosphorite project came under renewed scrutiny a few years later due to Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and glasnost. The heightened awareness of the environmental risks of phosphorite mining among Estonians translated to the most significant protest action ever to occur in Soviet Estonia. One major impetus for the protest campaign against phosphorite mining came in the form of an interview with a senior Moscow ministerial official in February 1987, which aired on Estonian television. For the first time, the wider public learned of Moscow's true intentions with regards to the phosphorite project, as well as its current state. In the following months, hundreds of protest letters and public addresses were sent to the media and state institutions. The protest movement, which was both environmental and nationalist in character, remained, however, a small-scale campaign that lasted for a relatively short time. The campaign reached its peak by May in Tartu, where student demonstrations took place. However, by the summer of 1987, the protest campaign had started to die out. In autumn 1987, the planning of phosphorite mines was terminated without having ever reached further than the initial stages of investigation and design engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teesid: Artikkel käsitleb fosforiidikaevanduste planeerimist Virumaale Toolse ja Rakvere-Kabala piirkonda. Toolsesse asuti Moskva ametkondade eestvõtmisel kavandama lahtist kaevandust 1970. aastate alguses, Kabalasse kümmekond aastat hiljem maa-alust kaevandust. Fosforiidikaevandamine ohustanuks tõsiselt keskkonda ning kaevandustele oli Eestis tugev vastuseis. Gorbatšovi perestroikaja glasnosti-poliitika toel kasvas vastuseisust 1987. aastal välja esimene suurem protestiliikumine Eesti lähiajaloos, mis oli nii keskkonnakaitseline kui rahvuslik. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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