Red Leviathan

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The twentieth century was a tragic era for whales, with numerous species nearly driven to extinction by industrial whaling. This account, drawing from previously secret Soviet archives and interviews with former whalers, reveals the Soviet Union's significant role in this destruction. As countries like the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Norway expanded their whaling efforts, Soviet leader Josef Stalin decided that the USSR must join the hunt. This led to a massive and often wasteful slaughter of humpback, fin, sei, right, and sperm whales in the Antarctic and North Pacific, conducted in blatant violation of International Whaling Commission regulations. While Soviet recklessness and Cold War dynamics fueled this devastation, the narrative uncovers a more intricate history that highlights both the successes and failures of the Soviet experiment. Notably, the whaling activities inadvertently contributed to modern cetacean studies, as Russian scientists aboard whaling ships made significant discoveries about whale behavior. Ultimately, the Soviet public began to oppose their country's whaling practices, aligning with Western environmentalists like Greenpeace to help end industrial whaling, just in time to prevent the potential extinction of the world's whales.