DOI: 10.4324/9781003246893-5
4 Between Profession and Politics
Specialists in Radiation Medicine
at the plutonium Plant No. 817
in the Chelyabinsk Region
Olga Nikonova
The atomic project, within the framework of which medical and biological
radiology was born and formed in the USSR, embodied the scale, inconsistency, and tragedy of the Soviet history of the twentieth century. As David
Holloway writes, the atomic project “became a peculiar combination of the
best and the worst in Soviet society – enthusiastic scientists and engineers,
educated under the Soviet regime, and prisoners who lived in inhuman conditions of camps.” 1 The accelerated pace of construction and commissioning
of weapons-grade plutonium production plants led to technological errors in
the production and disposal of radioactive substances and to accidents at one
of the first nuclear facilities in the USSR – the Plant No. 817 in 1949–1951,
1957, and 1967. These events resulted in the radiation exposure of builders,
workers of the combine, and the population of nearby settlements, as well
as the serious radiation-contamination of a part of the territory of the Urals’
region. The risks and consequences of accidents at nuclear production plants
prompted the formation of specialized expert communities, including in the
fields of radiation, medicine, and biology. How these expert communities
functioned, how they obtained, accumulated, and used knowledge demonstrate the specificity of interrelations between science and politics in Soviet
society, as well as the importance and role of experts in solving political and
social problems in the Soviet period.
The focus of this chapter is on the physicians who were engaged in radiation
medicine at the Plutonium Plant No. 817, and specifically, the most prominent figures among them – Grigorii Baisogolov and Angelina Gusʹkova. The
total number of the group of Ural experts in the field of radiation medicine is
currently impossible to determine due to the lack of access to the archives of
the closed enterprise. The presence of memoires, including memoires about
the individuals, and scientific and popular literature, which were authored by
Baisogolov and Gusʹkova themselves, determined the choice of personages
for this chapter. All sources are publicly available and appeared mainly at
the turn of last century, from the 1990s to the early 2000s. The memoirs of
Baisogolov and Gusʹkova often take the form of interviews or are built into
literary or journalistic essays about them. Many of the texts have a “jubilee
character,” which has led to a specificity of the narrative – fragmentation, the
4 Between Profession and Politics
Specialists in Radiation Medicine
at the plutonium Plant No. 817
in the Chelyabinsk Region
Olga Nikonova
The atomic project, within the framework of which medical and biological
radiology was born and formed in the USSR, embodied the scale, inconsistency, and tragedy of the Soviet history of the twentieth century. As David
Holloway writes, the atomic project “became a peculiar combination of the
best and the worst in Soviet society – enthusiastic scientists and engineers,
educated under the Soviet regime, and prisoners who lived in inhuman conditions of camps.” 1 The accelerated pace of construction and commissioning
of weapons-grade plutonium production plants led to technological errors in
the production and disposal of radioactive substances and to accidents at one
of the first nuclear facilities in the USSR – the Plant No. 817 in 1949–1951,
1957, and 1967. These events resulted in the radiation exposure of builders,
workers of the combine, and the population of nearby settlements, as well
as the serious radiation-contamination of a part of the territory of the Urals’
region. The risks and consequences of accidents at nuclear production plants
prompted the formation of specialized expert communities, including in the
fields of radiation, medicine, and biology. How these expert communities
functioned, how they obtained, accumulated, and used knowledge demonstrate the specificity of interrelations between science and politics in Soviet
society, as well as the importance and role of experts in solving political and
social problems in the Soviet period.
The focus of this chapter is on the physicians who were engaged in radiation
medicine at the Plutonium Plant No. 817, and specifically, the most prominent figures among them – Grigorii Baisogolov and Angelina Gusʹkova. The
total number of the group of Ural experts in the field of radiation medicine is
currently impossible to determine due to the lack of access to the archives of
the closed enterprise. The presence of memoires, including memoires about
the individuals, and scientific and popular literature, which were authored by
Baisogolov and Gusʹkova themselves, determined the choice of personages
for this chapter. All sources are publicly available and appeared mainly at
the turn of last century, from the 1990s to the early 2000s. The memoirs of
Baisogolov and Gusʹkova often take the form of interviews or are built into
literary or journalistic essays about them. Many of the texts have a “jubilee
character,” which has led to a specificity of the narrative – fragmentation, the