94 Sophie Roche
the invisible risks that radiation has caused, the visible aspect of Soviet modernity influenced the societies and workers living in areas of uranium or nuclear
power plants much more. Whereas the invisible consequences are the same to
all workers, the integration of the modernity discourses varies not only culturally but is also contingent on the composition of workers and the relationship
in which the nuclear power plants are geographically positioned. The social
and natural environment are crucial for the long-term integration of the risks
and damage that accompany nuclear production sites. In the following pages,
I will begin by giving two examples from the Urals and from Semipalatinsk
in Kazakhstan, before moving to an in-depth discussion of the Khujand case.
In her book comparing nuclear production sites in the United States and
the USSR, Kate Brown shows how the site of Ozersk in the Urals was constantly framed as individual responsibility for the sake of communism. 32
Generals received the full responsibility for the nuclear project and put all
their energy into its success. Ivan Tkachenko, for instance, was personally
responsible for providing permission to technical workers to leave the zone,
a control pyramid that placed success and failure in the hands of individuals.
Beria, the head of the NKVD, personalized responsibility and pressure in
order to meet deadlines, a system that was employed at all levels of Soviet
administration. 33 The individualization of responsibility toward the Soviet
Union within a politically shaped worker hierarchy is well exemplified in the
following description:
Muzrukov in his forties, was in poor health. After the war, Muzrukov
had fallen ill with tuberculosis, and in 1947 he was still weak and had
only one lung. Beria ordered that either Muzrukov or Tsarevskii be on
the job night and day, overseeing construction of the reactor, Site A1 and
the plutonium processing plant, Site B.20 He made the two men personally responsible for the new deadlines, and in so doing put in motion
an administrative engine that finally managed to transform the muddy
anthill of human exertion and misery into Europe’s first plutonium plant.
Beria did so by cementing the fate of the plant to the personal destiny
of his leadership. He made it clear that if the plant failed, so would they.
The big bosses, fearing arrest, then rushed to attach the same consequences to their harried subordinates. They placed foremen in charge of
distinct projects-lumber mill, tool factory, water treatment plant, reactor, processing plants-and made it clear that failures to meet deadlines, as
well as mistakes or accidents, would be criminally prosecuted. 34
The use of the Gulag in a context of technological advancement was not so
much thought of as a system of slavery, although it had cost dearly in human
lives, but the media made it a success: “an icon of how the Gulag penal system
could reconfigure geography, human beings, and society itself in service to
socialism.” 35 The “labor caste system” established a dynamic of work progress that was to turn an uninhabited place into the most technologically
the invisible risks that radiation has caused, the visible aspect of Soviet modernity influenced the societies and workers living in areas of uranium or nuclear
power plants much more. Whereas the invisible consequences are the same to
all workers, the integration of the modernity discourses varies not only culturally but is also contingent on the composition of workers and the relationship
in which the nuclear power plants are geographically positioned. The social
and natural environment are crucial for the long-term integration of the risks
and damage that accompany nuclear production sites. In the following pages,
I will begin by giving two examples from the Urals and from Semipalatinsk
in Kazakhstan, before moving to an in-depth discussion of the Khujand case.
In her book comparing nuclear production sites in the United States and
the USSR, Kate Brown shows how the site of Ozersk in the Urals was constantly framed as individual responsibility for the sake of communism. 32
Generals received the full responsibility for the nuclear project and put all
their energy into its success. Ivan Tkachenko, for instance, was personally
responsible for providing permission to technical workers to leave the zone,
a control pyramid that placed success and failure in the hands of individuals.
Beria, the head of the NKVD, personalized responsibility and pressure in
order to meet deadlines, a system that was employed at all levels of Soviet
administration. 33 The individualization of responsibility toward the Soviet
Union within a politically shaped worker hierarchy is well exemplified in the
following description:
Muzrukov in his forties, was in poor health. After the war, Muzrukov
had fallen ill with tuberculosis, and in 1947 he was still weak and had
only one lung. Beria ordered that either Muzrukov or Tsarevskii be on
the job night and day, overseeing construction of the reactor, Site A1 and
the plutonium processing plant, Site B.20 He made the two men personally responsible for the new deadlines, and in so doing put in motion
an administrative engine that finally managed to transform the muddy
anthill of human exertion and misery into Europe’s first plutonium plant.
Beria did so by cementing the fate of the plant to the personal destiny
of his leadership. He made it clear that if the plant failed, so would they.
The big bosses, fearing arrest, then rushed to attach the same consequences to their harried subordinates. They placed foremen in charge of
distinct projects-lumber mill, tool factory, water treatment plant, reactor, processing plants-and made it clear that failures to meet deadlines, as
well as mistakes or accidents, would be criminally prosecuted. 34
The use of the Gulag in a context of technological advancement was not so
much thought of as a system of slavery, although it had cost dearly in human
lives, but the media made it a success: “an icon of how the Gulag penal system
could reconfigure geography, human beings, and society itself in service to
socialism.” 35 The “labor caste system” established a dynamic of work progress that was to turn an uninhabited place into the most technologically