162 Tanja Penter
It seems to be specific for the developments in the former Soviet space that
here environmental victims stand on an equal footing with the victims of the
Stalinist and National Socialist dictatorships and play an equally important
role in the nation-building processes. The Chernobyl victims were even the
first group of victims for whom legal regulations were created in Ukraine,
Belarus, and Russia and might have had a certain model character for the
legislature. The process of coming to terms with and overcoming the experience of dictatorship after the end of the Soviet Union therefore has a strong
ecological component here, which requires that approaches to transitional
and environmental justice be thought of as interconnected.
The heritage of the atom in former Soviet space is manifold. It has produced a specific legal legacy that has shaped the new social orders after the
end of the Soviet Union. More recently, this process has also taken on an
international dimension, manifested in a growing number of appeals to the
ECHR by Russian and Ukrainian environmental victims. The once unnoticed environmental victims of the Soviet past have learned to assert their
rights vis-à-vis national and international institutions and organizations.
In the new social orders of the post-Soviet states, different groups of victims
competed for supply privileges and public recognition, among them victims
of Stalinism, victims of Nazi crimes, victims of nuclear disasters, and others.
They were all part of a larger process of victimization in the post-Soviet
states, which means that former Soviet citizens who experienced suffering
and injustices under Soviet rule, for the first time, perceived themselves as
victims. This becomes very tangible in the new cultures of remembrance for
victims that emerged in the successor states after the collapse of the Soviet
Union, in which environmental victims often occupy a prominent place.
Moreover, the compensation and social protection acts also contributed to
making the radioactive danger visible. Risks of radioactive contamination
are normally invisible and not sensible for human beings. To measure them,
scientific expertise and special technical devices are necessary. Most of the
citizens are not able to obtain their own picture of the degree of contamination and the involved everyday risks. It remains the responsibility of the state
to know about and inform the citizens about these risks. I thus argue that the
compensation laws and practices formed an important element of the public
visibility of radioactive contamination by presenting certain standards and
threshold values and linking them to a specific compensation practice, thereby
confirming the link between diseases and radiation exposure. As a result, the
knowledge of local communities about state compensation practices might
have been very much connected to the knowledge about radiation risks. And
in reverse, if measures of social protection and compensation did not take place,
this might have contributed to a “double invisibility” of radiation risk. 111
One of the important legacies of the atom for historians is not least the fact
that compensation and social protection laws have produced a specific historical tradition that is now available for research to evaluate. These sources
include thousands of application documents and letters from environmental
It seems to be specific for the developments in the former Soviet space that
here environmental victims stand on an equal footing with the victims of the
Stalinist and National Socialist dictatorships and play an equally important
role in the nation-building processes. The Chernobyl victims were even the
first group of victims for whom legal regulations were created in Ukraine,
Belarus, and Russia and might have had a certain model character for the
legislature. The process of coming to terms with and overcoming the experience of dictatorship after the end of the Soviet Union therefore has a strong
ecological component here, which requires that approaches to transitional
and environmental justice be thought of as interconnected.
The heritage of the atom in former Soviet space is manifold. It has produced a specific legal legacy that has shaped the new social orders after the
end of the Soviet Union. More recently, this process has also taken on an
international dimension, manifested in a growing number of appeals to the
ECHR by Russian and Ukrainian environmental victims. The once unnoticed environmental victims of the Soviet past have learned to assert their
rights vis-à-vis national and international institutions and organizations.
In the new social orders of the post-Soviet states, different groups of victims
competed for supply privileges and public recognition, among them victims
of Stalinism, victims of Nazi crimes, victims of nuclear disasters, and others.
They were all part of a larger process of victimization in the post-Soviet
states, which means that former Soviet citizens who experienced suffering
and injustices under Soviet rule, for the first time, perceived themselves as
victims. This becomes very tangible in the new cultures of remembrance for
victims that emerged in the successor states after the collapse of the Soviet
Union, in which environmental victims often occupy a prominent place.
Moreover, the compensation and social protection acts also contributed to
making the radioactive danger visible. Risks of radioactive contamination
are normally invisible and not sensible for human beings. To measure them,
scientific expertise and special technical devices are necessary. Most of the
citizens are not able to obtain their own picture of the degree of contamination and the involved everyday risks. It remains the responsibility of the state
to know about and inform the citizens about these risks. I thus argue that the
compensation laws and practices formed an important element of the public
visibility of radioactive contamination by presenting certain standards and
threshold values and linking them to a specific compensation practice, thereby
confirming the link between diseases and radiation exposure. As a result, the
knowledge of local communities about state compensation practices might
have been very much connected to the knowledge about radiation risks. And
in reverse, if measures of social protection and compensation did not take place,
this might have contributed to a “double invisibility” of radiation risk. 111
One of the important legacies of the atom for historians is not least the fact
that compensation and social protection laws have produced a specific historical tradition that is now available for research to evaluate. These sources
include thousands of application documents and letters from environmental