Soviet Whaling Shows Failure Without Accountability

The Soviet whale hunt illustrates what happens absent public awareness and responsive government: despite signing the 1948 quota treaty, the USSR—with no international observers aboard—killed hundreds of thousands of excess whales for no real need (using only ~30% blubber, despite being oil-self-sufficient) simply to meet Stalinist five-year fisheries-tonnage plans, rewarding hunters as heroes for output disconnected from what people needed.