The Legal Heritage of the Atom 165
19. Collection of private letters in: Regional State Archive Chelyabinsk (Ob’edinennyi
gosudarstvennyi archiv Cheliabinskoi oblasti, OGAChO), F. R-1212, D. 1-23. I
thank Laura Sembritzki for providing me with a copy of the letters. The names of
the letter writers have been anonymized.
20. Both facts of radioactive contamination, the accident of 1957 and the continuous
pollution of the river Techa with radioactive waste water, were explicitly considered in the Russian law.
21. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
22. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
23. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
24. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
25. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
26. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
27. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
28. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
29. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
30. Transformation research, which flourished after 1991, was initially dominated by
politological studies that examined the system change from socialism to capitalism,
particularly at the level of economic transformation, political institutions, and the
actors in the transformation process. Much less is known, however, about how the
transformation processes were perceived and processed by individuals and social
groups themselves. Methodological approaches of ethnologists can be made fruitful, who, criticizing the politological approach to transition, focused primarily on
the question of how far-reaching social transformation processes affected the social
network of relationships and the living environments of citizens in post-socialist
states. In doing so, they countered the notion of a clear break between two successive social systems with a perspective on the complex and sometimes contradictory
continuities at the social, political, and economic levels that were expressed in
different social practices and cultural representations. See, among others, Christopher Hann (ed.), Postsozialismus. Transformationsprozesse in Europa und Asien Aus
Ethnologischer Perspektive (New York, NY: Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag,
2002); Michał Buchowski, Rethinking Transformation. An Anthropological Perspective
on Post-Socialism (Poznan: Humaniora, 2001); Katherine Verdery, What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? (Princeton, NJ and New York, NY: Princeton University Press, 1996).
31. On the growing number of complaints by Russian citizens to the European Court
of Human Rights see: Lauri Mälksoo and Wolfgang Benedek (eds.), Russia and
the European Court of Human Rights. The Strasbourg Effect (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2018).
32. See Angelika Nußberger and Caroline von Gall, eds., Bewusstes Erinnern und
bewusstes Vergessen. Der juristische Umgang mit der Vergangenheit in den Ländern Mittelund Osteuropas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011).
33. The Chernobyl disaster on April 26, 1986 has been the object of much scholarly
attention: Olga Kuchinskaya, The Politics of Invisibility: Public Knowledge about Radiation Health Effects after Chernobyl (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014); Edward
Geist, “Political Fallout: The Failure of Emergency Management at Chernobyl,”
in: Slavic Review, 74, 1 (2015): 104–126; Aliaksandr Dalhouski, Tschernobyl in Belarus: Ökologische Krise und sozialer Kompromiss, 1986–1996 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2015); Melanie Arndt (ed.), Politik und Gesellschaft nach Tschernobyl: (Ost-)
Europäische Perspektiven (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2016); Melanie Arndt, Tschernobylkinder: Die transnationale Geschichte einer nuklearen Katastrophe (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020); Adam Higginbotham, Midnight in Chernobyl: The
Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2019); Serhii Plokhy, Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy (London: Penguin, 2019);
19. Collection of private letters in: Regional State Archive Chelyabinsk (Ob’edinennyi
gosudarstvennyi archiv Cheliabinskoi oblasti, OGAChO), F. R-1212, D. 1-23. I
thank Laura Sembritzki for providing me with a copy of the letters. The names of
the letter writers have been anonymized.
20. Both facts of radioactive contamination, the accident of 1957 and the continuous
pollution of the river Techa with radioactive waste water, were explicitly considered in the Russian law.
21. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
22. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
23. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
24. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
25. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
26. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
27. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
28. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
29. Collection of private letters in: OGAChO, F. R-1212, D. 1-23.
30. Transformation research, which flourished after 1991, was initially dominated by
politological studies that examined the system change from socialism to capitalism,
particularly at the level of economic transformation, political institutions, and the
actors in the transformation process. Much less is known, however, about how the
transformation processes were perceived and processed by individuals and social
groups themselves. Methodological approaches of ethnologists can be made fruitful, who, criticizing the politological approach to transition, focused primarily on
the question of how far-reaching social transformation processes affected the social
network of relationships and the living environments of citizens in post-socialist
states. In doing so, they countered the notion of a clear break between two successive social systems with a perspective on the complex and sometimes contradictory
continuities at the social, political, and economic levels that were expressed in
different social practices and cultural representations. See, among others, Christopher Hann (ed.), Postsozialismus. Transformationsprozesse in Europa und Asien Aus
Ethnologischer Perspektive (New York, NY: Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag,
2002); Michał Buchowski, Rethinking Transformation. An Anthropological Perspective
on Post-Socialism (Poznan: Humaniora, 2001); Katherine Verdery, What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? (Princeton, NJ and New York, NY: Princeton University Press, 1996).
31. On the growing number of complaints by Russian citizens to the European Court
of Human Rights see: Lauri Mälksoo and Wolfgang Benedek (eds.), Russia and
the European Court of Human Rights. The Strasbourg Effect (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2018).
32. See Angelika Nußberger and Caroline von Gall, eds., Bewusstes Erinnern und
bewusstes Vergessen. Der juristische Umgang mit der Vergangenheit in den Ländern Mittelund Osteuropas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011).
33. The Chernobyl disaster on April 26, 1986 has been the object of much scholarly
attention: Olga Kuchinskaya, The Politics of Invisibility: Public Knowledge about Radiation Health Effects after Chernobyl (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014); Edward
Geist, “Political Fallout: The Failure of Emergency Management at Chernobyl,”
in: Slavic Review, 74, 1 (2015): 104–126; Aliaksandr Dalhouski, Tschernobyl in Belarus: Ökologische Krise und sozialer Kompromiss, 1986–1996 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2015); Melanie Arndt (ed.), Politik und Gesellschaft nach Tschernobyl: (Ost-)
Europäische Perspektiven (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2016); Melanie Arndt, Tschernobylkinder: Die transnationale Geschichte einer nuklearen Katastrophe (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020); Adam Higginbotham, Midnight in Chernobyl: The
Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2019); Serhii Plokhy, Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy (London: Penguin, 2019);