Fallout: In Kazakhstan, the human wreckage of Soviet nuclear tests

National Review, Sept 2, 2002 by Robert Elegant

Semey, Kazakhstan

Tears glint in the eyes of Melgis Metov, a tall Kazakh who was once a tough platoon leader in the Soviet army and later an instructor in physics. Melgis is now the mainstay of a small group of seriously ill "atomic soldiers" whose number is declining with tragic rapidity. Some 5,000 Kazakh troops served in the Semipalatinsk (now Semey) Polygon, an area of just over 7,000 square miles where the USSR developed its nuclear weapons. Some 40 atomic soldiers are still alive. But not for long. Radiation sicknesses are killing them.

The tears in Melgis's eyes are spontaneous and natural, quite consonant with the intense culture formed by the combination of the former nomads, the high-strung Kazakhs, and their former overlords, the emotional Russians. His given name is redolent of the Communist period: It is constructed from the initials of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Giosef Stalin. Melgis is a common name in Kazakhstan, a Central Asian republic roughly one-third the size of the U.S. It does not embarrass the veteran in his mid 50s, although he is now fiercely anti-Moscow.

Melgis Metov hates not just Communists, but Russians -- not only because of the deadly radiation to which the Red Army, well aware of the danger, deliberately exposed its own troops and tens of thousands of civilians, but also because Moscow to this day refuses to acknowledge the extent of the horror the Soviets wrought. Although the USSR collapsed more than a decade ago, the Russian government still conceals most of the vital records regarding the effects of nuclear testing.

For half a century, Moscow simply denied the existence of such documents -- and it still flatly refuses to offer any assistance to the Red Army veterans harrowed by radiation.

For three strenuous days, I traveled around the Semey Polygon, and saw at close hand the devastating results of some 500 nuclear explosions. The U.S. conducted many similar tests, and some Kazakh experts say parts of Nevada are more heavily contaminated than the USSR's polygon; but they do not deny that the U.S. generally tried to shield soldiers and civilians from radiation. Moreover, the pioneer medical investigator Viktor Moshkevich wrote in a definitive report that "no territory in the world has suffered from radioactive, chemical, and bacteriological weapons as much as Kazakhstan"; he added that the Semey Polygon is "the most heavily contaminated place on earth."

I met scores of men and women, and spoke at length with victims sacrificed to Soviet fears and ambitions, as well as the unrestrained whims of scientists. I spoke with administrators, physicists, technicians, and researchers who were the cogs of the Soviet nuclear machinery. I also spoke with the highly competent professionals -- chiefly scientists, physicians, and statisticians -- who are now working to assess the full impact of four decades of atomic explosions, and to succor the tens of thousands who still suffer. Few of these dedicated workers receive as much as $100 a month -- not a living wage, even in Kazakhstan's remote northeast. Nor does Moscow provide any medical or research assistance, though Japan and the U.S. have contributed significantly, and other countries a mite: Sweden, $60,000.

From the first test in August 1949, what really mattered to Moscow was developing the most destructive weapons for defense -- or offense. The effect of radiation on exposed men, women, and children was a secondary interest. All the data collected were classified Top Secret to forestall protest or interference at home or abroad; some soldiers working close to ground zero learned of the dangers only through the revelations of Western intelligence.

I was forced to conclude that the USSR was, truly, an Evil Empire. Evil is the uniquely correct word because the terrible effects were themselves the Soviets' purpose. The horrors were not the unsought -- even if culpably foreseen, and even more culpably ignored -- consequence of another policy. The Soviets' unmistakable intent in the Semipalatinsk Polygon and other, smaller polygons was to subject hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians to massive radiation -- and then assay the effects, psychological and tactical as well as physical.

Soldiers and junior officers equipped with no protective gear except goggles and rubber gloves, which were useless, otherwise wearing only shirts and trousers, were ordered to ground zero to read instruments an hour or two after an explosion. Only when the nuclear warhead of a straying missile went off close by were troops hustled away. A mobile shower-truck, hardly a common amenity of the Red Army, allowed them to wash off contamination. They were then ordered to resume the clothes they had been wearing. Quasi-independent physicians allowed to survey the health hazards in the polygon were bludgeoned by the KGB into silence, thus ensuring that nothing would be done to help the victims.

The Soviets understood from the outset that atomic explosions in the atmosphere -- no more than a hundred feet above ground -- posed especially fearsome health risks. When Field Marshal Grigori Zhukov ordered 45,000 troops to engage in war games less than an hour after a nuclear explosion overhead, he watched the maneuvers from a lead-lined tank. As revealingly, a museum opened in 1950 for young officers displayed full knowledge of the risks of radiation. Also: the splattered lungs and livers of dogs, sheep, and cows; rock powdered or twisted into grotesque shapes; and models of the tunnels dug into hills for the underground explosions to which the Soviets were limited by international agreement in 1962.