ore or less unregulated. In addition, some 100,000 Soviet citizens engaged legally in small-scale crafts and trades. The rest of the Soviet market economy was technically illegal and so hidden and described as the "underground economy." The transition has built on both the legal and the illegal market economy (Leitzel, 1995, 27).
As noted, earlier land use policies and associated policies had left the Soviet Union in poor economic condition, and this extended to its environment. The state-owned properties of the Soviet Union had no incentive to increase the efficiency of their use of natural resources or to decrease the amounts of pollution they were emitting. The states' decision to increase and speed economic growth without regard to weighing the costs of increased pollution backfired. The people of the former Soviet Union today experience a premature death rate, higher infant mortality statistics, and increased health problems as the result of policies which did not curb pollution with available technology. The pollution of their rivers makes part
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