Fallout Memory Trajectories at Semipalatinsk 201
“we were young, we were singing songs together during these shifts, it was
a great collective and we firmly believed we worked for peace.” What was
perceived as normal and peace-building changed drastically over professional
lifetimes.
During the early post-Soviet period, journalists described nuclear testing
as “genetic genocide” 22 of the local Kazakh population, aligning fallout
exposures with the long history of Russian imperialism and Moscow’s
Cold War technoscientific agenda in Central Asia. Indeed, modernization
in pre-Soviet Kazakhstan, following 18th and 19th-century colonization,
despite many uprisings began to destroy the seasonal livestock economies
adapted to the steppe areas. While parts of the Kazakh elites in the 19th and
early-20th century adopted Russian sciences, 23 medical modernization also
came at the price of violent interventions into knowledge of the people as
well as the nomadic livestock economies altogether. Cold War technoscience
and post-Soviet transitions added further layers of violent disruption to livelihoods in northeast Kazakhstan.
Soviet modernity was not only about Lenin’s saying that “communism is
Soviet power plus electrification of the whole country” 24 but also about the
establishment of a public health infrastructure – a promise that Sovietization
held up to, albeit not without costs. During the Soviet era, medical modernization led to an increase in hospital beds and broad public health services,
for instance through fel’dshery, i.e., the paramedical health staff introduced
already with zemstvo medicine in the 19th century. During the post-Stalin
years and throughout the 1960s, the USSR became internationally renowned
for its comprehensive public health system, especially through the system of
fel’dshery and public health nurses providing healthcare in addition to district
hospitals in rural areas. 25
With the post-Soviet dissolution of institutions, official policies in the new
Republic of Kazakhstan began to reorient the collective memory. New narratives often recombined pre-Stalinist and pre-Soviet history of Kazakhstan,
evoking the nomadic tradition of the steppe in novel ways and as a counterpart to Russian settler colonialism in Central Asia. Interestingly, the new
historical narratives have also kept significant traditions from Soviet history,
such as the importance of commemorating the Second World War and the
many veterans from Kazakhstan. The episodes of hunger during the 1920s
and the Kazakh Famine of 1930–1933, during with 1.5 million people,
approximately a quarter of the population died, had been tragic part of the
formation of the Kazakh SSR, but did not become a central narrative in the
new Republic of Kazakhstan. 26 In short, the post-Soviet administration and
nuclear research institutions worked on reassembling the past – much beyond
the design of state symbols and memorials, or a makeover of slogans in public
places – toward the orderings of a newly built nation state.
Scientific medicine and radiation research again underwent transformation
in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. Scientific-technical infrastructures were substantially impacted as the USSR had dissolved – this included the loss of scientific
“we were young, we were singing songs together during these shifts, it was
a great collective and we firmly believed we worked for peace.” What was
perceived as normal and peace-building changed drastically over professional
lifetimes.
During the early post-Soviet period, journalists described nuclear testing
as “genetic genocide” 22 of the local Kazakh population, aligning fallout
exposures with the long history of Russian imperialism and Moscow’s
Cold War technoscientific agenda in Central Asia. Indeed, modernization
in pre-Soviet Kazakhstan, following 18th and 19th-century colonization,
despite many uprisings began to destroy the seasonal livestock economies
adapted to the steppe areas. While parts of the Kazakh elites in the 19th and
early-20th century adopted Russian sciences, 23 medical modernization also
came at the price of violent interventions into knowledge of the people as
well as the nomadic livestock economies altogether. Cold War technoscience
and post-Soviet transitions added further layers of violent disruption to livelihoods in northeast Kazakhstan.
Soviet modernity was not only about Lenin’s saying that “communism is
Soviet power plus electrification of the whole country” 24 but also about the
establishment of a public health infrastructure – a promise that Sovietization
held up to, albeit not without costs. During the Soviet era, medical modernization led to an increase in hospital beds and broad public health services,
for instance through fel’dshery, i.e., the paramedical health staff introduced
already with zemstvo medicine in the 19th century. During the post-Stalin
years and throughout the 1960s, the USSR became internationally renowned
for its comprehensive public health system, especially through the system of
fel’dshery and public health nurses providing healthcare in addition to district
hospitals in rural areas. 25
With the post-Soviet dissolution of institutions, official policies in the new
Republic of Kazakhstan began to reorient the collective memory. New narratives often recombined pre-Stalinist and pre-Soviet history of Kazakhstan,
evoking the nomadic tradition of the steppe in novel ways and as a counterpart to Russian settler colonialism in Central Asia. Interestingly, the new
historical narratives have also kept significant traditions from Soviet history,
such as the importance of commemorating the Second World War and the
many veterans from Kazakhstan. The episodes of hunger during the 1920s
and the Kazakh Famine of 1930–1933, during with 1.5 million people,
approximately a quarter of the population died, had been tragic part of the
formation of the Kazakh SSR, but did not become a central narrative in the
new Republic of Kazakhstan. 26 In short, the post-Soviet administration and
nuclear research institutions worked on reassembling the past – much beyond
the design of state symbols and memorials, or a makeover of slogans in public
places – toward the orderings of a newly built nation state.
Scientific medicine and radiation research again underwent transformation
in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. Scientific-technical infrastructures were substantially impacted as the USSR had dissolved – this included the loss of scientific