Fallout Memory Trajectories at Semipalatinsk 199
legacies combined with new scientific developments shaped specific versions
of risk assessment and nuclearity. 14 I will first address the role of the nuclear
weapons program in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, followed by an examination of
three scales of memory practices, which biomedical scientists have brought to
work in order to document radiation effects. Thus, this chapter traces the
ways in which environmental effects materialize at different scales and
through biomedical concepts of life – chromosomal, transgenerational, and
populational – as they are mobilized in the meticulous labor and memory
practices in radiation science.
Post-Soviet Reassembling: Retrieval and
Containment of the Cold War Nuclear
As part of the secret atomic program, Soviet authorities had decided to
place the USSR’s first nuclear weapons test site in the steppe area near
Semipalatinsk, in the northeast of Kazakhstan. The area is situated south of
the Altai region in today’s Russian Federation, and not far from the border
to the Xinjiang region of China. 15 In 1947 construction works for a closed
nuclear city at the shores of the river Irtysh began, as a key step of the nuclear
program at the dawn of the Cold War. At the command of Lavrentii Beria
on August 29, 1949, the first Soviet nuclear bomb (22 kt TNT eq.) was detonated at the test site, under vast political pressure, during unfavorable weather
conditions. 16 This first nuclear explosion in 1949 led to fallout reaching to
settlements northeast of the test site and into parts of the Altai region, up
to the city of Biisk, as aerial surveys showed. 17 Following the first Soviet
nuclear test, military aircraft conducted measurements of the fallout and the
radioactive cloud; in western countries, the detonation was detected on seismographic monitoring instruments. Under secrecy yet witnessed by largely
ignored local communities, 18 nuclear weapons testing amounted to an official
total of 456 nuclear detonations between 1949 and 1989, according to numbers published by Russian authorities. 19 Official sources counted 116 above
ground nuclear explosions at the Semipalatinsk test site. This included the
first Soviet hydrogen bomb on August 12, 1953, with a yield of 400 kt TNT
eq., the most massive detonation conducted at Semipalatinsk. Atmospheric
nuclear testing continued until 1963 and, as a result of the first moratorium of
the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, nuclear testing proceeded with underground nuclear devices from 1965 through to 1989, before the test site was
closed in 1991. Due to the sheer impossibility to take the complex formation
of the exposure situation into account, Kazakhstani dosimetrists would begin
their assessments by focusing on the most dose-contributing nuclear tests.
With Kazakh author Olzhas Sulemeinov as a prominent spokesperson and
backed also by the movement Nevada-Semey, the issue of nuclear testing
had played a role in the formation of opposition during the Gorbachev era,
following the Zheltoksan (December) protests in Alma-Ata, which had been
violently met by police and military. 20 Closing the Soviet nuclear test site was
legacies combined with new scientific developments shaped specific versions
of risk assessment and nuclearity. 14 I will first address the role of the nuclear
weapons program in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, followed by an examination of
three scales of memory practices, which biomedical scientists have brought to
work in order to document radiation effects. Thus, this chapter traces the
ways in which environmental effects materialize at different scales and
through biomedical concepts of life – chromosomal, transgenerational, and
populational – as they are mobilized in the meticulous labor and memory
practices in radiation science.
Post-Soviet Reassembling: Retrieval and
Containment of the Cold War Nuclear
As part of the secret atomic program, Soviet authorities had decided to
place the USSR’s first nuclear weapons test site in the steppe area near
Semipalatinsk, in the northeast of Kazakhstan. The area is situated south of
the Altai region in today’s Russian Federation, and not far from the border
to the Xinjiang region of China. 15 In 1947 construction works for a closed
nuclear city at the shores of the river Irtysh began, as a key step of the nuclear
program at the dawn of the Cold War. At the command of Lavrentii Beria
on August 29, 1949, the first Soviet nuclear bomb (22 kt TNT eq.) was detonated at the test site, under vast political pressure, during unfavorable weather
conditions. 16 This first nuclear explosion in 1949 led to fallout reaching to
settlements northeast of the test site and into parts of the Altai region, up
to the city of Biisk, as aerial surveys showed. 17 Following the first Soviet
nuclear test, military aircraft conducted measurements of the fallout and the
radioactive cloud; in western countries, the detonation was detected on seismographic monitoring instruments. Under secrecy yet witnessed by largely
ignored local communities, 18 nuclear weapons testing amounted to an official
total of 456 nuclear detonations between 1949 and 1989, according to numbers published by Russian authorities. 19 Official sources counted 116 above
ground nuclear explosions at the Semipalatinsk test site. This included the
first Soviet hydrogen bomb on August 12, 1953, with a yield of 400 kt TNT
eq., the most massive detonation conducted at Semipalatinsk. Atmospheric
nuclear testing continued until 1963 and, as a result of the first moratorium of
the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, nuclear testing proceeded with underground nuclear devices from 1965 through to 1989, before the test site was
closed in 1991. Due to the sheer impossibility to take the complex formation
of the exposure situation into account, Kazakhstani dosimetrists would begin
their assessments by focusing on the most dose-contributing nuclear tests.
With Kazakh author Olzhas Sulemeinov as a prominent spokesperson and
backed also by the movement Nevada-Semey, the issue of nuclear testing
had played a role in the formation of opposition during the Gorbachev era,
following the Zheltoksan (December) protests in Alma-Ata, which had been
violently met by police and military. 20 Closing the Soviet nuclear test site was