144 Tanja Penter
of water and then again for lunch I brought water, and, in the evening, I
collected everything from them and took it away. […] Yes, and I had to
dig 30-50-centimeter rivulets by the lake. […] In general, we did all kind
of works. […] I worked near the lake and on the eleventh dam I worked
in the swamp. 22
Avgusta Alevtina possessed a certificate of her work assignment as “liquidator” of the radioactive contamination at the river Techa. She made clear
and self-confident demands to the Chelyabinsk authorities, underpinned by
medical evidence:
I need free medical care and the apartment should be paid for by at least
half. I lost all my teeth in 1954. My thyroid gland is sick, a nodular goiter
of second degree, my eyes are aching, my legs and hands are numb. I
have not earned the second, but the first degree [of disability – T.P.]. I ask
you to check this and send me a certificate of the first category, because
I was there, in this place, from 1947 to 1963. 23
Some of the letter writers had witnessed the 1957 nuclear waste accident
themselves, such as Nikolai Vasil’evich P., who was 25 years old at the time.
He wrote in his letter:
While I was carrying out railway maneuvers, I heard a powerful explosion in the Ozero rayon. Afterwards a glow of fire shone in the sky. Later
it was told that an accident had happened with the release of radioactivity.
We later cleaned the railway tracks on the object together with the fire
department. After the accident they started to check with signal sensors
at the Ozero station to see if the railroad cars were clean: Green means
clean, red means dirty. There were days when the devices lit up red
without any wagons being there, just because of the wind. […] There
have been other accidents, but we didn’t think it was that serious then. 24
Nikolai Ivanovich K., who as a member of the military, had also experienced
the 1957 explosion directly on-site, which he reported in his letter about the
first safety measures at the scene of the accident: “In the evening we were
denied dinner. They said that all the food in the refectory was radioactively
contaminated. The next day they cut our hair and told us to take everything
we needed, towel, soap, and toothpaste. They took us to the disinfection. In
the sauna we were washed, checked with a machine and only then we got
food.” 25 But only one month later, he was reassigned to work on the object of
the accident and spent over a year working there. In his letter to the authorities, Nikolai Ivanovich also wrote about his serious health problems and the
fact that he now urgently needed help.
Civilian specialists, such as Aleksander Fedorovich S. who worked in
the geodesy department of the engineering office in Chelyabinsk-40 from
of water and then again for lunch I brought water, and, in the evening, I
collected everything from them and took it away. […] Yes, and I had to
dig 30-50-centimeter rivulets by the lake. […] In general, we did all kind
of works. […] I worked near the lake and on the eleventh dam I worked
in the swamp. 22
Avgusta Alevtina possessed a certificate of her work assignment as “liquidator” of the radioactive contamination at the river Techa. She made clear
and self-confident demands to the Chelyabinsk authorities, underpinned by
medical evidence:
I need free medical care and the apartment should be paid for by at least
half. I lost all my teeth in 1954. My thyroid gland is sick, a nodular goiter
of second degree, my eyes are aching, my legs and hands are numb. I
have not earned the second, but the first degree [of disability – T.P.]. I ask
you to check this and send me a certificate of the first category, because
I was there, in this place, from 1947 to 1963. 23
Some of the letter writers had witnessed the 1957 nuclear waste accident
themselves, such as Nikolai Vasil’evich P., who was 25 years old at the time.
He wrote in his letter:
While I was carrying out railway maneuvers, I heard a powerful explosion in the Ozero rayon. Afterwards a glow of fire shone in the sky. Later
it was told that an accident had happened with the release of radioactivity.
We later cleaned the railway tracks on the object together with the fire
department. After the accident they started to check with signal sensors
at the Ozero station to see if the railroad cars were clean: Green means
clean, red means dirty. There were days when the devices lit up red
without any wagons being there, just because of the wind. […] There
have been other accidents, but we didn’t think it was that serious then. 24
Nikolai Ivanovich K., who as a member of the military, had also experienced
the 1957 explosion directly on-site, which he reported in his letter about the
first safety measures at the scene of the accident: “In the evening we were
denied dinner. They said that all the food in the refectory was radioactively
contaminated. The next day they cut our hair and told us to take everything
we needed, towel, soap, and toothpaste. They took us to the disinfection. In
the sauna we were washed, checked with a machine and only then we got
food.” 25 But only one month later, he was reassigned to work on the object of
the accident and spent over a year working there. In his letter to the authorities, Nikolai Ivanovich also wrote about his serious health problems and the
fact that he now urgently needed help.
Civilian specialists, such as Aleksander Fedorovich S. who worked in
the geodesy department of the engineering office in Chelyabinsk-40 from