Yeah, I was pretty horrified in a restaurant in Japan to see whale on the menu.

Not sure what changed, but I still fell headlong into the Japan trap! But good to have my assumptions challenged so I learn more.

Bruh, where did you get the information that the Soviet Union nearly drove the blue whale to extinction? Japan was the close-second in catching whales, so they share almost the same amount of responsibility for it. I would understand if the USSR had the majority, but it was just a plurality. So, this question should be completely removed and changed for something else, cuz it's factually wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling#/media/File:Number_of_whales_killed,_OWID.svg

Blue whales are nowhere close to the most catched species of whales, so why exactly them? Isn't it just a narrative to show that "Soviet Union" bad and other countries good, like some of them still continue to hunt whales, and we don't have the information about the legality of the process? Hell, we only have the numbers of Soviet whaling because the Russian goverment in 1990s simply disclosed the information. We don't exactly know the real whaling numbers for other countries, cuz they can easily hide it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_the_Soviet_Union_and_Russia#Effects_of_illegal_whaling

I've found some questionable stuff under the topic "Effects of illegal whaling". It does give some questionable source.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/6kumw8/historical_population_of_blue_whales_oc/

Found this on Reddit, it has a good source with numbers, but still, if we look at the picture, it looks like most whales were killed before 1937, when the USSR was not really that industrialized... Maybe I'm wrong, ofc, but it seems like it's just an Anti-Soviet stuff so everyone believes that they did nothing to protect the environment and were inherently evil in every way (it's not true).

Another source that I found https://iwc.int/management-and-conservation/whaling/total-catches

I 100% think that numbers for Japan are not really correct, they're likely hiding it. Still, why blame only Soviets? Japanese operated in the Antarctic too, and continued to do so. They didn't really choose that much what species they're gonna kill, it's nearly impossible for commercial whailing to operate on the same area and kill zero whales of the specific species, while your competitor (USSR) kills all of them. Sounds like complete BS.

To sum it up, it is a Cold War-era propaganda stuff, and now it continues to fit the narrative cuz Russia and NATO are enemies again. I don't personally support Russian actions anywhere, but the Soviet Union has nothing in common with Russia in ecological aspect. Russia is many times worse.