The Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk from 1949 until 1989 with little regard for their effect on the local people or environment. The full impact of radiation exposure was hidden for many years by Soviet authorities and has only come to light since the test site closed in 1991.

Background

“First Lightning”, a twenty-two kiloton nuclear bomb was detonated at seven in the morning on August 29, 1949 at the Semipalatinsk testing site in northern Kazakhstan. Hiroshima was bombed once, the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown was a single incident. The people of the Semipalatinsk region of Kazakhstan were deliberately subjected to nuclear fall out for four decades by the Soviet Union.

No other human beings have been exposed to such long and relentless nuclear fallout and radioactive bombardment. For over 40 years, there were over 456 nuclear tests – 26 in the atmosphere, 78 at ground level. Today, people in Semipalatinsk continue to suffer cancers and genetic mutations as a result of the nuclear tests.

Until 1991 there was a closed cantonment in Semipalatinsk, called “Kurchatov – 21”. It was inhabited mainly by officers and their families. It was a town of the country’s significance which was provided for by Moscow.

The officers didn’t care a damn that they were carrying out experiments on the whole nation and that millions of people were in jeopardy. They were just doing their job. The entire Semipalatisk area is rutted with marks of explosions. There are still some lakes that were formed in huge shell holes and they are teeming with fish of incredibly big sizes. Shepherds still catch them with their hands and fry them on fires.

That long-suffering land still has the caves, galleries and cold catacombs where nuclear devices used to be kept. Remains of military equipment, railings, and the debris of military objects are scattered about everywhere. There were times when whole villages would be erected to imitate enemies’ dwelling zones. Whole towns made of plywood and concrete. The steppe still keeps the remains of those surreal pictures of the not too distant past.