74 Olga Nikonova
How Secrecy Shaped the Professional Lives
and Careers of Medical Radiologists
The regime of secrecy can presumably be attributed to one of the main
“deforming” factors in the life of our protagonists. The isolation of the
enterprise, where Baisogolov, Gusʹkova, and other FIB-1 specialists worked,
caused impenetrable barriers within the medical-biological community of
scientists, and between Soviet specialists and the professional community
of radiologists abroad. At the same time, this secrecy made the Plutonium
Plant experts “invisible” for both world and domestic science, thereby undermining their careers. Many physicians and biologists in their texts recognize
measures to ensure secrecy as exaggerated and harmful.
Extreme secrecy was intertwined with the almost absolute novelty of the
phenomena faced by clinicians and researchers-experimentalists working in
biomedical institutions of the plant. “The creation of the nuclear industry
for the first time has faced mankind with a long repeated (chronic) general external influence of ionizing radiation on significant contingents of
people with the possibility of radionuclides entering their bodies,” underlined Baisogolov, Doshchenko, and Koshurnikova: “Essentially, there was
a complete lack of information at the clinic on such effects, pathogenesis,
the possibility of restoring lost functions and their dependence on the volume of exposure…” they expounded. 41 Both leading specialists of the Second
Therapy Department in the early 1950s – Baisogolov and Gusʹkova – point
out that in the USSR, data on the analysis of the consequences of the US
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 42 and clinical manifestations of acute
radiation sickness was available in individual publications on the topics of
interest to radiologists. 43 Articles from American and Japanese journals could
be read by Soviet physicians in translation in collections compiled by the
Third Department of the Ministry of Health. According to Baisogolov, the
articles were important and interesting, but not very concrete: “… as far as I
remember, they did not give a description of the mechanism of hematopoiesis
disorders, and this is the main thing in radiation sickness.” 44 Moreover, even
these translated articles could not be received freely. As Baisogolov writes,
they, “…for some reason, were stored in the First Department and were not
given out freely. Only after the intervention of A.I. Burnazian, who once
again visited Chelyabinsk-40, were they made more accessible.” 45
It was not only the available scientific research that was difficult to access.
The strict regime of secrecy complicated the very process of collecting empirical data. Medical workers were not allowed to keep diaries, records, or take
photographs of dosimetry data. As Gusʹkova points out:
in overcoming the regime’s prohibitions, physicians sought to know as
much as possible about working conditions and radiation doses to workers. This was very difficult in terms of secrecy, and so much remained
unknown. The memory of medical professionals was burdened with a
How Secrecy Shaped the Professional Lives
and Careers of Medical Radiologists
The regime of secrecy can presumably be attributed to one of the main
“deforming” factors in the life of our protagonists. The isolation of the
enterprise, where Baisogolov, Gusʹkova, and other FIB-1 specialists worked,
caused impenetrable barriers within the medical-biological community of
scientists, and between Soviet specialists and the professional community
of radiologists abroad. At the same time, this secrecy made the Plutonium
Plant experts “invisible” for both world and domestic science, thereby undermining their careers. Many physicians and biologists in their texts recognize
measures to ensure secrecy as exaggerated and harmful.
Extreme secrecy was intertwined with the almost absolute novelty of the
phenomena faced by clinicians and researchers-experimentalists working in
biomedical institutions of the plant. “The creation of the nuclear industry
for the first time has faced mankind with a long repeated (chronic) general external influence of ionizing radiation on significant contingents of
people with the possibility of radionuclides entering their bodies,” underlined Baisogolov, Doshchenko, and Koshurnikova: “Essentially, there was
a complete lack of information at the clinic on such effects, pathogenesis,
the possibility of restoring lost functions and their dependence on the volume of exposure…” they expounded. 41 Both leading specialists of the Second
Therapy Department in the early 1950s – Baisogolov and Gusʹkova – point
out that in the USSR, data on the analysis of the consequences of the US
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 42 and clinical manifestations of acute
radiation sickness was available in individual publications on the topics of
interest to radiologists. 43 Articles from American and Japanese journals could
be read by Soviet physicians in translation in collections compiled by the
Third Department of the Ministry of Health. According to Baisogolov, the
articles were important and interesting, but not very concrete: “… as far as I
remember, they did not give a description of the mechanism of hematopoiesis
disorders, and this is the main thing in radiation sickness.” 44 Moreover, even
these translated articles could not be received freely. As Baisogolov writes,
they, “…for some reason, were stored in the First Department and were not
given out freely. Only after the intervention of A.I. Burnazian, who once
again visited Chelyabinsk-40, were they made more accessible.” 45
It was not only the available scientific research that was difficult to access.
The strict regime of secrecy complicated the very process of collecting empirical data. Medical workers were not allowed to keep diaries, records, or take
photographs of dosimetry data. As Gusʹkova points out:
in overcoming the regime’s prohibitions, physicians sought to know as
much as possible about working conditions and radiation doses to workers. This was very difficult in terms of secrecy, and so much remained
unknown. The memory of medical professionals was burdened with a