In 1972, as part of the process of detente, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) entered into an Agreement on Cooperation in the Field of Environmental Protection. One of the more than 40 specific projects under this exchange deals with "Legal and Administrative Measures for Environmental Protection." The scope of the project includes studying the roles of nongovernmental organizations: public interest groups in the U.S. and mass movements for nature protection in the Soviet Union.

In September 1978, an American delegation composed of environmental lawyers and scholars and representatives from environmental organizations and the federal government went to the Soviet Union with the primary purpose of learning about and establishing contact with the Soviet nature protection societies. We spent two weeks in various parts of the Russian and Kazakh Republics, meeting with representatives of environmental organizations, government agencies, and scholarly institutions. We sought to learn whether citizens play a role in environmental protection in the Soviet Union, what the role is, and whether it is meaningful. This field is one about which Americans know little and about which little has been written.