Sviatoslav Zabelin

A modest man who inspires trust, Svet Zabelin raised public awareness of environmental problems in the former Soviet Union and helped build a grassroots environmental movement that sparked the country’s democratic transformation.

The relentless drive to industrialize the country during the Soviet era resulted in widespread environmental degradation, a problem that continues as the Russian Federation further opens its borders to multi-national corporations to capitalize on its abundant natural resources. In 1970, Zabelin was the coordinator of the Student Nature-Guards Movement, a unique independent, non-governmental movement in the USSR. In 1987, during the period of glasnost, Zabelin and friends from the Nature-Guards Movement spearheaded the creation of the Socio-Ecological Union (SEU), a non-governmental environmental coalition that has grown to include nearly 200 smaller organizations throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States and the West. The projects of SEU are diverse and include assisting residents of areas contaminated with radiation, establishing a network of environmental monitoring stations, studying environmental illnesses and protecting threatened species.