Could it have been a communist plot all along? Now that the Cold War is history, it's clear that at least in one sobering measure the USSR beat the West hands down.

Despite all the mischief in its military might, in 40-odd years of dancing toe- to-nuclear-toe with the Soviet bear, the U.S. was completely outmatched in its contribution of radioactive waste to the environment. So much for nuclear parity.

A joint study by U.S. and Russian officials, published in Physics Today last April, revealed that between 1949 and 1991 the former USSR's far-flung nuclear weapons complex released more than 560 times the amount of radioactivity into the planet's air, soil and water than did its chief Western foe.

When it comes to spilling toxic byproducts that naturally come from building nuclear arsenals, neither side could win any points for tidiness. But of the 1.7 billion curies-a standard measure of radioactivity-estimated to have been leaked into the world's ecoystems by the twin superpowers during the Cold War, the study holds the U.S. responsible for only a small fraction-about three million curies all told. Stacked against natural radioactivity found mostly in the world's oceans, the spill represents less than half a percent of what's already out there, scientists say. But such manmade contamination poses far greater health risks by being confined to comparatively smaller areas where people live.

The world knows about Chernobyl and about the Soviet Navy's well- publicized dumping of nuclear waste in the Sea of Japan and elsewhere, but these incidents pale compared to what's gone on in relative obscurity for nearly five decades in the Russian hinterland.

The vast flatlands east of the Ural Mountains is where the Soviet government set up the heart of its nuclear weapons manufacturing apparatus, with its requisite production reactors and large centers for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. The findings show that three huge centers, known as Mayak, Tomsk-7 and Kranoyarsk -26, are responsible for 99 percent of Russia's historic radioactive pollution, easily making the region the largest nuclear waste dump on Earth.

For decades, site operators pumped untold millions of cubic yards of wastewater laced with lethal levels of radioactive isotopes directly into rivers, lakes, deepwater wells and subterranean caverns. Discharges to the rivers and lakes around Tomsk-7, which came on line in the 1950s, have turned those bodies of water into highly radioactive cesspools, still brimming with radioisotopes of cesium and strontium, systemic poisons that can remain deadly for up to 10,000 years. Nearby Lake Karachai, called "the most polluted place on earth" by one writer, is believed to hold nearly one-and-a-half times as much radioactive, subatomic debris as was expelled by Chernobyl in 1986.

The chilling statistics, compiled and analyzed by DOE's Clyde Frank- Florida State's principle agency contact for Central and Eastern Europe-Don J. Bradley of DOE's Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Yevgeny Mikerin, head of science and technology in Moscow's Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom), suggest ample reasons why the Cold War's worst legacy is now everybody's problem. Not only is Russia's radioactive waste migrating via air, surface and subsurface waters, the country is still reprocessing spent fuel and running three Cold War production reactors, despite a continuing lack of adequate waste controls. In contrast, the last reprocessing plant and production reactor in the U.S. went cold in 1988.

Ten years after Chernobyl, only now is the world learning the human cost of history's worst nuclear accident. A report issued last year by the World Health Organization (WHO) showed that five years before the accident, the annual incidence of thyroid cancer among children living near Chernobyl was one per million. Since 1991, the figure has hovered near 100 per million per year, with no sign of let-up. WHO suspects the chief culprit is iodine-131, one of the radioactive agents created by Chernobyl's meltdown, and one of the most dangerous to enter the food chain.

Russia's radioactive headache, severe as it is, simply adds to a numbing dose of environmental pain that staggers the nation. Fact is, had the atomic genie never left the bottle, Mother Russia, along with a number of her former possessions, could still lay dubious claim to some of the most defiled water, soil and air to be found on the globe.

In their 1993 book, Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature Under Siege (Harper Collins, NY), authors Murray Feshback and Alfred Friendly, Jr. document an overwhelming array of environmental horrors that increasingly put millions of Russian lives at peril. Just as one example, the authors cite findings by Russian scientists that show air pollution in 68 cities around the country to be 10 times above government standards. In 1992, almost one seventh of the Russian population-about 40 million residents, including nearly a fifth of all city dwellers-were suffering a rate of sickness up to twice the national average. The upper class was hardly immune: Eight out of every 10 children born between late 1990 and mid-1991 in a Moscow clinic reserved for the elite arrived either prematurely, with birth defects or both-a phenomenon now strongly suspected by WHO to be linked to fouled water, food and air.

In Nizhny Tagil, an old mill town in the Ural Mountains, mothers play with their children in soot and grime which the town's huge steelworks deposits daily on playgrounds built right up to the factory gates. The scene is symptomatic of decades of flagrant disregard for the environmental and health impacts of Soviet-style industry, built and largely still run with only production in mind. Research published in 1988 showed that 16 percent of the USSR's territory (nearly 4 million square miles) was in one of three states of ecological stress: catastrophe, crisis or conflict.

Since the communist empire's crash, widespread economic strife has virtually impoverished the entire Russian Federation, dashing hopes that the Cold War's polluting legacy is finally at an end. In 1992, The Washington Post reported that for the first time since World War II, the number of deaths in Russia exceeded the number of births. The latest figures compiled by WHO show that the overall life expectancy of Russians has declined steadily since 1991 and stands at around 59 today, well below the average of most developed countries. In some highly polluted industrial centers, such as Nishny Tagil, life expectancies can run nearly six years shorter still.

Perhaps suspicious of motives, governments throughout the former USSR have been cautious about accepting Western help in tackling their now- notorious environmental problems. In Russia proper, reluctance there can be largely attributed, some observers say, to a political and economic system still in turmoil over restructuring. Others simply believe that Russia is stubbornly clinging to ways of the past, unable to wrest itself from a mind-set molded by 70 years of dominating world power.

"I believe the main problem is that Russia still wants to keep something of the superpower status it once had, and this creates problems with every (would-be) partner," says Dr. Peter Richter of Budapest's Technical University (TUB). Richter helps coordinate Florida State's environmental cooperative efforts in Central and Eastern Europe, which spring from a biennial symposium series begun in 1992 in Budapest.

"If the partner is a small country, they're afraid of being influenced again by Russia, and if it's a big country, then it's a power game. While this dilemma is being resolved, of course, the environmental misery continues."

To date, participation by Russian scientists in the Florida State's symposia has been marginal, partly because they lack travel funds, says Florida State's Dr. Roy Herndon, Richter's stateside counterpart. Whenever possible, Herndon waives registration fees and other costs for scientists squeezed by financial hardships in their native countries.

Encouragingly, he notes, Russian interest in Florida State's initiatives is steadily increasing. Last year, Herndon hired Dr. Mikhail Khank-hasayev, a Russian-born nuclear physicist and visiting scientist at Florida State, to help get things moving among his countrymen. The relationship quickly led to a cooperative agreement linking scientists at Moscow State University with other institutes within Russia, culminating in a workshop on nuclear waste management in Dubna, Russia, held last fall