Second sunset.
Forty years of Soviet nuclear testing come to an end, and the people bear witness to a cold, cruel warBetween China and the Caspian Sea stretch the mountains and plains of Kazakhstan, a southwestern republic of what was known until recently as the Soviet Union. For thousands of years the nomadic Kazakhs thrived in this semiarid territory, but throughout the last millennium they have been visited by history's cruelest forces. Overrun by Genghis Khan in the 1200s, then dominated by the Russian Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Kazakhs were involuntarily resettled onto collective farms by Stalin in the 1930s, a process during which some 2 million traditional herders died of starvation. In recent decades millions of Russians and people of almost 100 other ethnic groups were relocated to Kazakhstan, while many natives were transported to Siberia. At present, only 40 percent of the state's population is ethnic Kazakh.
The people of the steppes awoke to another nightmare shortly after World War II, when Stalin chose the Semipalatinsk region of Kazakhstan as the embarkation point for the Soviet Union's journey into the atomic age. Beginning in the late 1940s, hundreds of scientists and technicians were moved to the Semipalatinsk Polygon, as the test site was called, where they would spend the next decades designing, constructing, and detonating nuclear weapons. Between 1949 and 1962 almost 200 atomic and hydrogen bombs were exploded above the Semipalatinsk Polygon; nearly twice as many underground test have been conducted since 1963. These tests did not take place in a wasteland: Farms and ranching stations ring the Polygon, and hundreds of thousands of people live within a 50-mile radius of the test site. The residents of eastern Kazakhstan may have received more radiation, over a longer period of time, than any other people on Earth.
The personal tragedies of those who lived and grew up near the Polygon differ in detail, but overall the stories are similar. Farmers and villagers remember the years of atmospheric testing when, without warning, a huge fireball would rise in the sky. These "second suns," as people called them, were followed by towering mushroom clouds, deafening roars, and earthquake-like tremors. Occasionally, some of the largest towns directly bordering the Polygon would be hurriedly evacuated by military personnel before a test. Even then, however, 30 to 40 young adults would be ordered to remain behind and take cover in houses and barns. Those who were evacuated returned weeks later to an apocalyptic landscape strewn with damaged homes and dead animals; those who had been forced to stay were dazed, weak, and feverish, and soon exhibited signs of acute radiation sickness. Most have since died.
Health care was scarce--a few understaffed and ill-equipped clinics served hundreds of thousands of people --but military medical teams did visit certain villages regularly, giving extensive examinations to those who had not been evacuated before the tests. These subjects, however, were offered no diagnosis or treatment, and the research data remain classified.
But the effects of the tests are painfully evident in the surrounding villages, which since 1950 have been plagued by relentless health problems. An epidemic of babies born with severn neurological and physical defects continues, leukemia and other blood disorders are common, and many people suffer rare multiple ailments. Doctors say that the rate of chromosomal abnormalities in the third generation following exposure could be even higher than that in the first two.
While civilian medical personnel throughout the area provided the best care their limited resources allowed, until 1989 they were forbidden to record illnesses that might have been caused by exposure to radioactive fallout. The director of the Oncology Hospital in Semipalatinsk estimates that at least 60,000 people in the region have died from radiation-induced cancers; "officially," the area has the lowest cancer rate in Kazakhstan.
In mid-February 1989, an underground nuclear explosion at the Polygon released dangerous amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere. Scientists monitoring radiation levels reported the venting to Olzhas Suleimenov, a Kazakh writer and geologist running for election to the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union. In a televised campaign speech soon therafter, Suleimenov, departing from his planned text, revealed the history and consequences of nuclear testing in Kazakhstan. He called for the closure of the Polygon and announced a public meeting to address the catastrophe that had been hidden for 40 years.
More than 5,000 people attended, and the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Movement (named for the principal U.S. and Soviet testing grounds) was born. In the following months, representatives from the NSM traveled across Kazakhstan, informing people of what had gone on at the test site. Citizens throughout the republic staged mass demonstrations against further testing; startled Polygon officials cancelled several scheduled detonations.
Defying the public mood, authorities conducted what would prove to be the final nuclear test at the Polygon on October 19, 1989. Kazakhstan erupted in demonstrations once again.
In the summer of 1991 the Soviet government offered the republic 5.1 billion rubles to permit two small explosions; although strapped for funds, the Kazakh Parliament rejected the proposal. In late August, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev declared the Polygon closed, and soon thereafter Boris Yeltsin announced a ban on nuclear explosions in the Russian arctic, where the other Soviet test site was located. When the Soviet Union dissolved in December, the future of the test sites was left to the newly independent states.
Kazakh officials are now considering plans to convert the Semipalatinsk Polygon to a civilian research center. The test grounds, it has been proposed, could serve as an international memorial, an embodiment of Albert Einstein's beliefs that the atom can be controlled only "through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world," and that "an informed citizenry will act for life and not death."
[JAMES LERAGER is a San Francisco Bay Area photographer and writer. He is the author of In the Shadow of the Cloud: Photographs and Histories of America's Atomatic Veterans (Fulcrum Press, 1988).]
 Printer friendly
 Cite/link
 Email
 Feedback
| |
| Title Annotation: | victims of Soviet nuclear testing |
|---|---|
| Author: | Lernager, James |
| Publication: | Sierra |
| Date: | Mar 1, 1992 |
| Words: | 1001 |
| Previous Article: | In land we trust. |
| Next Article: | Florida: of manatees & retirees. |
| Topics: | |