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The manic nuclear weapons development in the Soviet Union during the Cold War left an unprecedented environmental legacy which has yet to fully be characterized. Within the framework of the treadmill of destruction theory the article examines the historical development of the Soviet nuclear weapons complex. Adopting a path dependency method, it explores the dynamics of a societal commitment to "exterminism." The article argues that this commitment generated a treadmill of destruction - a contingent and historical anthropogenic process that accelerates additions to and withdrawals from the environment. In presenting this history, it asserts that the crystallization of an "exterminist" social context facilitates the emergence and inertia of this treadmill, and its widespread radioecological consequences. Within-case comparative historical evidence of treadmill of destruction dynamics in the commodity chain of extraction and production of nuclear weapons is identified in the uranium mining and milling boomtowns that were driven by military imperatives rather than economic growth coalitions, and in the enormous secret nuclear weapons production cities constructed to meet the demands of the exterminism. Although the radioactive risks of Soviet nuclear warmaking are widespread, Gulag prison laborers, ethnic and indigenous groups have been unevenly victimized by the resulting environmental contamination. Ongoing efforts to ameliorate risks to these groups and the broader society continue to suffer from the historical suppression and systematic distortion of evidence linking the Soviet Union (and Russia) with environmental damage resulting from its nuclear activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided by critical realism, we revisit and recast two prominent theories of environmental degradation: the treadmill of production and treadmill of destruction. In this recasting, the treadmill of production and the treadmill of destruction are not conceived of as competing theories. Rather, they offer complementary abstractions of generative mechanisms. Both refer to a treadmill: an anthropocentric process wherein (1) powerful organizations appropriate and transform nature to amass power and capital, (2) competition among these organizations propels accelerating degradation of the environment, and (3) these organizations obscure, distort and suppress information about the environmental damage. The macrosocial context, the organizations at the center of them, and the elites that command these organizations makes these treadmills distinct. Future theorization and empirical/historical research can and should engage a wide range of theories advanced in environmental sociology and related literatures. The goal is not to establish the single best unitary theory. Rather, the goal is to identify and gain insight into the generative mechanisms that shape and constrain human interactions with the environment. By definition, a treadmill spans the biophysical and the social/cultural realms. The critical realist tradition emphasizes an important ontological asymmetry: the biophysical is necessary for the social/cultural realm to exist, but it can exist independently. Recognizing this asymmetry, historical contingency and social change are at the center of analysis when studying the waxing, waning, transformation and demise of treadmills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]