Those in Western Europe who had blamed all environmental ills on Western capitalism were forced to rethink their ideology. In both Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, environmentalism became one of the most important rallying points for opposition to communism, and with good reason. For with the parting of the Iron Curtain, it was revealed that among the leading legacies of cynical communist rule was a frightening pattern of environmental degradation and disasters, some of them perhaps irreversible.
