'These days it is not necessary to ask "whose lament resounds over the great Russian river". The Volga itself cries out, pock-marked length and breadth, ailing with dirty water, stretched out of shape by hydo-electric weirs, swelling from artificial reservoirs and year after year its celebrated wealth of fish stocks is exterminated. Looking at theVolga, especially, you understand the cost of our civilisation - that blessing which lured man, like a foolish infant, substuituting for the joy that was joy the egotistical achievements and victories'. One of a number of posters punlished by the Soviet state publishing house "Plakat" on the theme of the environment in teh late 1980s and early 1990s., writer, hero of socialst labour. (Text in Russian within the image of the poster, quoting an extract from the writings of Valentin Rasputin.)