Special weapons tester Oleg Tarasov, who took part in nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk test site in the 1970s, is now the head of the Novosibirsk committee of veterans of special risk units. In an interview with RIA Novosti correspondent Grigory Kronich, he explained how the explosions were carried out, what the role of conscript soldiers was, and how many years it took to receive legal benefits.
- Oleg Vasilievich, how did you end up at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site?
— By chance, my biography is ordinary. I graduated from school in Novosibirsk in 1973, but I couldn’t go to college - I joined the army... I served in military unit No. 55760, in the first team, which was the only one directly involved in nuclear tests.
- When you arrived at the nuclear test site, were you scared?
- No, on the contrary, it was interesting. We waited until we went on a business trip to the first explosion, then we discussed how things had happened. Over the course of two years, of course, this work turned into a routine. But there was a feeling that we were working with complex equipment, and not in a construction battalion. This means that we are not the last specialists. And we knew that we were creating a nuclear shield for the Motherland - this also aroused pride.
- Were the service conditions harsh?
— We lived in a unit on the territory of the city of Kurchatov, and went to the training ground on business trips. In two years I had 26 business trips. There are two-story barracks in the city, conditions are normal. And when I entered the soldier’s store, I was stunned. There are sprats, condensed milk, some compotes. After Novosibirsk, where stores had bare shelves at that time, it was a luxury. The supplies there were from Moscow.
- Was there hazing?
- What would it be like without her... But it wasn’t very harsh, I later found my colleagues, we didn’t have any anger left. And the floors were scrubbed, and there were fights... I had to stand up for myself. The army is, first of all, training, where you need to achieve something, work hard, solve problems.
But all our guys are normal, some graduated from college. Apparently, they were selecting who was smartest, after all, they worked with scientific equipment.
- What exactly did the military do?
— The research sector of the military institute worked there, we were assigned to departments. The team consisted of 120 people, of which 80 percent were from Novosibirsk. 23 officers worked directly with us, half of them were candidates of science. It was necessary to conduct research, our task was to ensure that data was obtained.
- Can you be more specific about what your role was?
— Specifically, I was involved in recording beta and gamma radiation during explosions.
There were two types of explosions at the Semipalatinsk test site. At site "G", in the mountains, inclined adits several kilometers long were dug. The charge was covered with a damper - a layer of concrete 6-8 meters thick. A pipe was led directly from the site of the explosion, from which each hardware complex was given another “thread” - a pipe for data collection.
The second type of explosions is in Balapan in wells 400 meters deep. It was an ordinary area. Before the explosion, we were taken several kilometers away; this was called the VR - waiting area.
Particles were recorded using an oscilloscope. Moreover, his testimony was photographed by an automatic camera with dry film development - such technology had never existed anywhere; Polaroid cameras appeared later. They didn’t spare any money at all, the sensors cost 50-80 thousand rubles each - this was at a time when the salary per year was one and a half thousand!
Since the equipment is expensive, and the results needed to be obtained as quickly as possible, the officers came up with the sensors themselves. For example, one came up with the idea of hanging such homemade sensors on poles during ground explosions. And I remember climbing after them in ordinary cotton (tunic and uniform trousers).
- Weren't you afraid of radiation?
— We were 18-20 years old, Chernobyl had not yet happened, we did not understand anything. We went to the adit in rubber protective suit and manually unscrewed the sensors - and these were boxes 80 centimeters high, and carried them out of the adit by hand. And then we sat on these sensor boxes and fried potatoes. One day in the mountains, and it was hot there in the summer, we found a lake - hurray! And they went for a swim. There were no brains.
- And the officers?
“They apparently understood better what was happening, they didn’t grab anything with their hands themselves, they just watched how we worked. Also my boss, with whom we had very a good relationship, slowly gave me a drink sometimes. It was impossible to openly - this is an army, discipline.
- Dosimetrists were supposed to measure the contamination of the territory...
- They measured it. But I don’t remember that the return from BP was delayed. It happened several times that the wells went up in the air; apparently, the charge was calculated incorrectly. All equipment, along with the well pipes, flew 300-400 meters up. We gave a damn from the waiting area. And then we drove back, literally an hour later, and collected the fragments of this equipment.
© Photo: Photo from the personal archive of Oleg Tarasov
© Photo: Photo from the personal archive of Oleg Tarasov
- Do you know what radiation dose you received in your service?
- No, I do not know. Nobody was interested in this. In the last six months of service and two more years after, terrible boils began to break out on my hands. This is already fraught with skin cancer. I have a third group of disabilities, diabetes, tachycardia, but I consider myself lucky...
It is unknown who “grabbed” when and how much. There we had an electron gun - it was used to set the sensors, and it also gave radiation. They didn’t change our clothes - we received them like everyone else, but washed them in dirty water, which was drained from heating radiators. But we didn’t think that we felt bad in any way. We played cards and chess there, took part in sports competitions, and met the standards.
- What benefits do you receive and can this even be considered compensation?
“The benefits were not easy for all of us. The majority got everything that was due through the courts. My military ID says “special weapons tester,” but when I applied to be assigned a preferential category, they refused. “The fact that you served at the training ground does not mean that you participated in the tests,” was the answer.
It took me four years to get myself into the category of benefits, there are only five of them, they gave me the last one - “D”. Later I managed to switch to "b". Here the benefits are more serious, I retired 10 years earlier, social pension I receive.
- You head the Novosibirsk Committee of Veterans of Special Risk Units, how many people are there?
— There are 180 people on the list, but I don’t know anyone — addresses and telephone numbers have changed, and the lists were compiled before me. I found my colleagues and helped everyone get benefits. I went to the Moscow region, to Sergiev Pasad, where the archives of our unit are kept, and talked with the women who work there. They have no idea what nuclear tests are...
They refused, for example, those who had “battery operator” written on their military ID. I had to tell them that the equipment at the time of the explosion operates autonomously, from batteries, and the specialist turns on the power immediately before the explosion, and then turns it off.
- How many people did you manage to find?
— I haven’t found about 20 Novosibirsk residents - they died before they reached 40 years of age. That's why I consider myself lucky. Everything, I think, depends on the person’s immunity. By the way, all Novosibirsk residents should receive benefits along with us, because the cloud from the Semipalatinsk test site covered Novosibirsk.
In Altai, the authorities carried out measurements correctly. There, residents of part of the territory receive compensation; four cancer centers were built with federal money. But for us - nothing, because the authorities did not deal with this.
- Do you regret that you ended up serving at a nuclear test site?
- No, I don’t regret it. We were young, cheerful and good memories remained. And all the colleagues with whom I spoke also say so. We were doing our duty - that’s how it happened.
Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan - the first nuclear test site in the USSR. The site for the test site was chosen taking into account the terrain, which made it possible to carry out nuclear explosions in wells and adits.
According to open sources, the first nuclear explosion at the test site was carried out on August 29, 1949, the last one on October 19, 1989. In just 40 years, almost 500 air, ground and underground nuclear explosions were carried out at the test site. In addition to nuclear ones, 175 explosions using chemical explosives were carried out at the test site.
The landfill was closed on August 29, 1991. This day marks the International Day of Action against nuclear tests, approved at the 64th session General Assembly UN in 2009.
Do you think you are Russian? Were you born in the USSR and think that you are Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian? No. This is wrong.
Are you actually Russian, Ukrainian or Belarusian? But do you think that you are a Jew?
Game? Wrong word. The right word"imprinting".
The newborn associates himself with those facial features that he observes immediately after birth. This natural mechanism is characteristic of most living creatures with vision.
Newborns in the USSR saw their mother for a minimum of feeding time during the first few days, and most time we saw the faces of the maternity hospital staff. By a strange coincidence, they were (and still are) mostly Jewish. The technique is wild in its essence and effectiveness.
Throughout your childhood, you wondered why you lived surrounded by strangers. The rare Jews on your way could do whatever they wanted with you, because you were drawn to them, and pushed others away. Yes, even now they can.
You cannot fix this - imprinting is one-time and for life. It’s difficult to understand; the instinct took shape when you were still very far from being able to formulate it. From that moment, no words or details were preserved. Only facial features remained in the depths of memory. Those traits that you consider to be your own.
3 commentsSystem and observer
Let's define a system as an object whose existence is beyond doubt.
An observer of a system is an object that is not part of the system it observes, that is, it determines its existence through factors independent of the system.
The observer, from the point of view of the system, is a source of chaos - both control actions and the consequences of observational measurements that do not have a cause-and-effect relationship with the system.
An internal observer is an object potentially accessible to the system in relation to which inversion of observation and control channels is possible.
An external observer is an object, even potentially unattainable for the system, located beyond the system’s event horizon (spatial and temporal).
Hypothesis No. 1. All-seeing eye
Let's assume that our universe is a system and it has an external observer. Then observational measurements can occur, for example, with the help of “gravitational radiation” penetrating the universe from all sides from the outside. The cross section of the capture of “gravitational radiation” is proportional to the mass of the object, and the projection of the “shadow” from this capture onto another object is perceived as an attractive force. It will be proportional to the product of the masses of the objects and inversely proportional to the distance between them, which determines the density of the “shadow”.
The capture of “gravitational radiation” by an object increases its chaos and is perceived by us as the passage of time. An object opaque to “gravitational radiation”, the capture cross section of which is larger than its geometric size, looks like a black hole inside the universe.
Hypothesis No. 2. Inner Observer
It is possible that our universe is observing itself. For example, using pairs of quantum entangled particles separated in space as standards. Then the space between them is saturated with the probability of the existence of the process that generated these particles, reaching its maximum density at the intersection of the trajectories of these particles. The existence of these particles also means that there is no capture cross section on the trajectories of objects that is large enough to absorb these particles. The remaining assumptions remain the same as for the first hypothesis, except:
Time flow
An outside observation of an object approaching the event horizon of a black hole, if the determining factor of time in the universe is an “external observer,” will slow down exactly twice - the shadow of the black hole will block exactly half of the possible trajectories of “gravitational radiation.” If the determining factor is the “internal observer,” then the shadow will block the entire trajectory of interaction and the flow of time for an object falling into a black hole will completely stop for a view from the outside.
It is also possible that these hypotheses can be combined in one proportion or another.
GARRISON LIFE OF THE SEMIPALATINSK LABORATORY
The location of the 9th zone laboratory at the Semipalatinsk test site and its location as part of a large garrison largely determined the specifics of life activity (Figure 10). The laboratory command has relations with the test site command, starting with the first commander - Colonel N.A. Silina - as a rule, were good. Colonel N.E., who served at the training ground for 16 years. Ivanov noted that the garrison command always met halfway in resolving any official and everyday issues of the laboratory.
Figure 10. Senior Lieutenant A.A. Vostrikov at the stand hometown hero Odessa on site No. 1
The laboratory personnel were involved in all the diversity of life at the test site during off-duty hours. Service in a special control laboratory, with practically irregular working hours, determined by test programs nuclear weapons at foreign testing sites, it was difficult and responsible, but still life was not confined to control rooms and instrument structures. And, perhaps, precisely thanks to active participation in social work, sports competitions, amateur performances, intense operational and technical work was successful.
From the first days of its existence, a tradition arose at the test site of planting trees in parks and along roads, near their houses and public buildings. The personnel of the 9th ZLSK supported this tradition in every possible way, landscaping all of their numerous technical sites, along with participation with the entire population of the residential town in planting and landscaping during the spring and autumn subbotniks and Sundays (Figure 13).
Almost everyone was involved in sports. Football, volleyball, Athletics, boxing. Even wrestling, exotic for the army, was cultivated in the laboratory. In the laboratory, master of sports in boxing, senior sergeant V. Krivonos, candidates for master of sports in freestyle wrestling: privates A.M. served and improved their sports skills. Gadzhiev, V.M. Batsoev, M.I. Dzhamzarov, Corporal V.Yu Efimov. Among the engineering and technical staff there were first-class officers - officers A.A. Vostrikov, V.V. Erastov. Sometimes laboratory athletes traveled with the training ground teams to regional competitions, and then it was considered an honor to replace them on duty. The great popularity of amateur artistic performances at the test site, in which residents of the town (Semipalatinsk -21) took part, was well known since the families of testers appeared here. And even more honorable was the recognition of the successes of the relatively small amateur artistic group 9 ZLSK. In 1974 - 1977, he took first place in the annual competitions of the Semipalatinsk garrison and was awarded challenge prizes. During the First All-Union Festival of Amateur Creativity in 1975 - 1977. The laboratory's amateur performance group was awarded a laureate's diploma, and the choir under the direction of the officer's wife L.V. Luchnoy was awarded a 1st degree Diploma. The team of the 9th ZLSK also distinguished itself in the military-patriotic work actively carried out in the garrison. To the 30th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War On technical site No. 1, with the hands of soldiers, among whom was a student studying to be a sculptor, a monument to the “Warrior Liberator” was built. In 1978, their sacred land was laid at the foot of the monument at the stands dedicated to the hero cities. The monument at the main technical site of the Semipalatinsk laboratory has become a landmark of the test site (Figure 14).
The authority of the laboratory was quite high, so the composition local authorities the authorities elected its representatives: the head of the laboratory, engineer-colonel A.K. Markov (deputy of the City Council of Semipalatinsk-21, 1974), head of the 6th group, Major A.V. Shumanov (deputy of the City Council of Zaisan, 1976, accountant of the logistics service, SA employee L.S. Vershinina (deputy of the City Council of Semipalatinsk-21, 1977). 
Since the beginning of the 1990s, after the cessation of testing at the Semipalatinsk test site, garrison life became increasingly stagnant. The tasks for the Semipalatinsk laboratory for monitoring nuclear weapons tests at foreign test sites were reduced, and the work of the Molniya-Cascade simulator was stopped. The number of the laboratory slowly but steadily decreased. More and more of it was civilian personnel. By the time of the breakup Soviet Union in the laboratory there were 255 military personnel and 40 SA employees (Figure 15).
In 1994, military unit 14053, or the Semipalatinsk zonal laboratory of special control, then it was headed by Colonel I.I. Goncharov, was disbanded. Capital buildings and structures on well-equipped technical sites were transferred to the Republic of Kazakhstan. 
First row (from left to right): Lieutenant Colonel I.I. Goncharov, Lieutenant Colonel A.B. Zigalenko, head of the political department of the research and development department at the test site, deputy head of the test site for science, Major General F.F. Safonov, Lieutenant Colonel S.I. Shushlebin, Colonel E.I. Rukolyansky, head of the SSK USSR Ministry of Defense, Major General G.G. Shidlovsky, chief engineer of the UIR, Lieutenant Colonel I.M. Dolgikh, Lieutenant Colonel N.I. Fedorchenko. 2nd row: senior lieutenant A.I. Strebkov, Lieutenant Colonel N.I. Samokhin, Lieutenant Colonel R.G. Yedikhanov, captain Yu.A. Konkov, captain D.I. Nasretdinov, warrant officer S.A. Alferov, warrant officer S.A. Zaitsev, captain Yu.S. Gasparyan, senior warrant officer V.V. Fakharnisov, warrant officer I.M. Tuguzhekov, Major S.A. Kamyshansky; 3rd row: captain E.F. Ezdakov, captain V.V. Nekhoda, senior lieutenant K.I. Okolelov, Major Yu.A. Subbotin, Major S.P. Volkov, senior lieutenant A.N. Kravchenko, captain O.N. Kuleshov, Lieutenant Colonel Yu.I. Serebryakov, senior lieutenant L.L. Litvinov. 4th row: senior lieutenant S.N. Prokuronov, Major A.I. Russov, Major V.V. Brusentsov, senior lieutenant V.V. Sirotin, Lieutenant Colonel V.V. Rodyukov, Lieutenant Colonel A.N. Malyavin, warrant officer V.V. Vanshin, Major A.V. Rubtsov. 5th row: Major V.A. Volkov, captain A.V. Solovyov, senior lieutenant A.M. Zinov, senior lieutenant A.V. Tokarenko, Major A.N. Nagalov, Lieutenant D.B. Vasiliev, senior lieutenant I.K. Provalsky, senior lieutenant S.N. P..?. 6th row: Sergeant A. Suyanov, Captain I.V. Alekseev, warrant officer D.V. Nightingale
Figure 15. Personnel of the Semipalatinsk laboratory at the headquarters building on site No. 1 (during the reception of cases and the position of the commander of military unit 14053, Lieutenant Colonel S.I. Shushlebin, with Colonel E.I. Rukolyansky.
AFTERWORD
The history of the Semipalatinsk laboratory, which started (on paper) in Provideniya Bay in Chukotka in 1957, has not ended and continues with the work of Kazakh geophysicists at the Institute of Geophysical Research of the National Nuclear Center of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The boat set sail from Chukchi coast 50 years ago and plowed the ocean of time along the course of detecting nuclear explosions, it was constantly improved, turned into a large ocean-going research vessel, operated by a trained crew and sailing under the Soviet flag. Fortunately, after a short drift, the voyage continued, but now on a renovated ship and under a different flag - the Republic of Kazakhstan. A new, well-trained team of specialists, armed with modern knowledge, is steering the ship on the course of the CTBT, geophysical sciences, peace and cooperation. Moreover, the ship became the flagship in the now large flotilla of scientific ships: the Borovoe GO, seismic groups Makanchi, Karatau, Akbulak and Aktyubinsk stations.
The authors of the article, who are to a certain extent involved in the formation and development of the Semipalatinsk laboratory, wish the Institute of Geophysical Research of the National Nuclear Center of the Republic of Kazakhstan seven feet under the keel in its scientific voyage in the next 50th anniversary and new achievements.
LITERATURE
1. Vasiliev, A.P. Chronicle of laboratories and observation points / A.P. Vasiliev // Born of the Atomic Age Part 1, ed. 2, M.: 2002. P. 305 306.
2. Vasiliev, A.P. Chronicle of laboratories and observation points / A.P. Vasiliev // Born of the Atomic Age Part 1, ed. 2, M.: 2002 P. 309 310.
3. Ivanov, N.E. Special control laboratory at the Semipalatinsk test site / N.E. Ivanov // Kurchatov Institute. History of the atomic project Issue 7, RRC Kurchatov Institute, M.: 1996., pp. 188 190.
4. Nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and National security, Sarov-Moscow, 2001. p.28.
5. Danilov, B.M. Some of the most significant results of the development and development of seismic means of monitoring nuclear explosions / B.M. Danilov // Born of the Atomic Age Part 1, ed. 2, M.:-2002 P. 129 130.
6. Shultsev, K.P. Nuclear explosion radiation simulator / K.P. Shultsev // Kurchatov Institute. History of the atomic project Issue 7, RRC Kurchatov Institute, M.: 1996. P. 237 240.
7. Kravchenko, V.A. Business trips, business trips, but not only / V.A. Kravchenko // Born of the Atomic Age Part 2, ed. 2, M.: 2002. p. 61.
8. Galkin, V.M. Years of formation and formation of the scientific base of the SSC / V.M. Galkin V // Kurchatov Institute. History of the atomic project Issue 7, RRC Kurchatov Institute, M.: 1996. p. 180.
9. Cherepanov, S.N. Creation of a radio-technical automated stationary complex for detecting nuclear explosions / S.N. Cherepanov // Born of the Atomic Age Part 3, ed. 2, M.: 2002. P. 64 67.
10. Sutulov, E.A. Participation in Soviet-American work on seismic monitoring of nuclear explosions E.A. Sutulov // Born of the Atomic Age Part 2, ed. 2, M.: 2002. P. 155 157.
11. Kostin, V.M. Experimental studies of the capabilities of satellite monitoring of underground nuclear tests / V.M. Kostin, V.N. Murashev // Born of the Atomic Age Part 3, ed. 2, M.: 2002 P. 181 182.
- Location: Almaty, Kazakhstan
Semipalatinsk test site. Part 1: Chagan and Kurchatov
I don’t remember how long ago I knew that somewhere in the endless steppe of Kazakhstan, under the Soviets, entire cities were built without a single inhabitant, only to destroy them with an atomic bomb. Later I learned that this place is called the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site (SNTS), saw it very poignantly, and even discovered that you can get there, as in, as part of an excursion. However, a search on the Internet showed that there is no specific information about tours here, only rare reports from those who have visited, but through a cunning combination of calls to the National Nuclear Center of Kazakhstan and its Institute of Radiation Safety, I learned that three companies are accredited for tours to the Semipalatinsk test site. The most attractive of them turned out to be Togas-Intourservice from Semipalatinsk, where I applied. And since my route from the Russian Altai to the Kazakh Altai ran through Semipalatinsk, I decided to add a visit to the Semipalatinsk test site to my own.
I will talk about the Semipalatinsk test site in two parts. Only in the second will we go where you can’t go without an escort - to the Experimental Field, to the epicenter of the first Soviet nuclear explosion and to the ruins of buildings that survived nuclear explosions. And in the first part I will tell you about the towns of Kurchatov (12 thousand inhabitants) and Chagan on the Irtysh between Semipalatinsk and Pavlodar associated with the test site.
According to the stand in the museum of the landfill, whose phone number is not worth looking up on the Internet, it all started like this. To be fair, the “Beria note”, famous in near-nuclear circles, also had a prehistory - research in the field atomic nucleus were actively carried out in the 1930s both in the West and in the USSR, and the report “On the use of uranium as an explosive and toxic substance” was first presented by Kharkov scientists led by Friedrich Lange back in 1940. Well, after “Beria’s note,” spies worked almost more actively than physicists, so that the USSR had comprehensive information about the structure of the American atomic bomb just two weeks after its first tests. The resolution on the creation of the future Semipalatinsk test site was adopted on August 22, 1947, and already in November Molotov said directly about the “secret of the atomic bomb”: “this secret has long ceased to exist.”
Well, for me it all started with this film, which was shown directly on TV in the wake of Perestroika, when I was walking under the table, and there were demonstrations under the window of my house on Kievskaya. Phrases like "two-story stone house, which stood two kilometers from the epicenter, was destroyed to the ground; the wreckage was thrown a kilometer" was imprinted in my memory for the rest of my life. These were tests of the first Soviet "fully functional" hydrogen bomb RDS-37, the most powerful (1.5 megatons) in the history of the Semipalatinsk test site.
This was not my first time in Semipalatinsk, and back in 2011 I talked about this ancient city in three parts( . || . || .). My train arrived at 10:40 am from Barnaul, and at the station I was met by a representative of the travel agency, Anastasia, and a Kazakh driver, whom we simply called Uncle Yura. Tours to the Semipalatinsk test site are still infrequent, and the few clients so far are overwhelmingly foreigners from foreign countries. Usually groups leave Semipalatinsk at 9 am, and we, taking into account the late arrival of the train and a couple of stops in the city (I needed to at least change currency), left at half past eleven, and nevertheless, looking ahead, I will say that we managed to do everything , although in some places we had to hurry. From Semipalatinsk to Kurchatov it’s about a 2-hour journey along a minor road, which was pretty broken, and in one place also washed out by the summer flood, so that the bridge being repaired had to be driven around along the bottom of the sai:
Monotonous white villages flashed by, built in the twentieth century for Kazakhs who had switched to a settled life; abundant herds; distant dusty mountains. On the right, every now and then the dark Irtysh appeared in the stunted floodplains, in this part it did not at all resemble the great Siberian river; on the left, a train, and sometimes even stations, periodically appeared right out of the steppe grass. Built in the 1940s to a station simply named Konechnaya, it was a dead-end line to serve the landfill, but in 2001 it was extended 184 kilometers to Aksu station, connecting Semipalatinsk and Pavlodar directly.
On the right, 70 kilometers from Semipalatinsk, a ghost town so characteristic of Kazakhstan loomed in the steppe:
This is Chagan, a Soviet military town, unofficially named after the river, but in documents it appeared as Semipalatinsk-4 or simply Polovinki. It was built in 1954-62 as a base for the 79th Heavy Bomber Division, perhaps with an eye to the fact that the aircraft based here would participate in nuclear tests, at the same time practicing dropping atomic bombs on targets. But in 1963, the USSR signed an agreement banning nuclear tests in air, water and space, at the test site a mining machine became more important than an airplane, but the air base remained, and situations like “yesterday my dad flew to the North Pole” among Chagan children, now adults and people writing memories on the Internet (sometimes, alas, quite dubious) were the order of the day here. At the same time, the airfield, known under the code names "Filon" or "Dolon", was used to supply the test site and its towns - both with materials and equipment for testing, and with consumer goods: the "Moscow supply" here was almost the most secure corner of the entire Kazakh SSR. But the connection with the test site was also the opposite - periodically the Halves were covered with a radioactive cloud, and if in the 1960s the locals openly ignored warnings and calmly harvested vegetables and melons, which were ordered to be destroyed as dirty, then (according to unverified data from memories) in 1989 It was almost with the protest of local officers that the Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement, which grew to transoceanic proportions and achieved the closure of the Semipalatinsk test site by the early 1990s, began. Next came the turn of Chagan himself - the airbase was closed in 1997, the village was resettled, and only the latest TU-95MS, during the division of the army, were secretly replaced with old TU-95K with Far East- taking off towards each other during the exercise, at the meeting point they changed call signs. The operation was a success - they did not notice the substitution, or rather they turned a blind eye to it, and soon the planes from Chagan were put under the knife. A memorial sign at the entrance to the village has stood since 2004, and in the distance you can distinguish houses among the greenery - in local Shanghai, that is, a private sector area, there are still a dozen and a half families who refused to leave somewhere.
Behind their houses and the operating substation is this Ak-Zhol (“white road”):
Behind these bushes every now and then piles of bricks and rubble appear - it’s easy to think that atomic bomb exploded at one time somewhere here. The same street under the Soviets - the population of Chagan reached 12 thousand people:
But from then on, even the good Stalinist House of Officers was not spared:
And only in the middle, along the once perpendicular Oktyabrskaya Street, there is still a block of empty five-story buildings, captured in the title frame of the post:
And although according to statistics, Kazakhs here make up 54% of the population, Russians in Kurchatov still make up 40%, and 1.5% of the population, that is, a couple of hundred people, makes up such a seemingly disappeared minority as the Germans. And I would say that externally Kurchatov is a more Kazakh city, but internally it is more European.
In terms of its architecture and structure, Kurchatov, the city of the nuclear test site, is more similar to towns at test sites like (Sary-Shagan) than to nuclear closed administrative towns like the already mentioned Chkalovsk. But the officers’ house was not saved - during the period of devastation, the building burned down and was demolished:
22a. photo from Wikimapia
The main street in Kurchatov is Abai Street, parallel to the Irtysh, in the past apparently Lenin, on which most of the previous shots of the city were filmed. At its corner with the main road is the same abandoned Irtysh. A little further away is the Stalin quarter:
Department store in a state that is incomprehensible to the eye:
And something called "October", now listed on Wikimapia by the market:
The main road itself, connecting the test site, Degelen station, the National Nuclear Center and the main square here is called Kurchatov Street, and the monument to Igor Vasilyevich closes its perspective:
The houses along the road are clearly older, not from the opulent 1950s, but timidly getting used to peaceful life 1940s:
The Semipalatinsk test site was founded in 1947, and was initially designated in documents as the mountain-seismic station "Degelen" (along the steppe mountains on that side), and then as Training Site No. 2 or Military unit No. 52605. During the construction period, its leader was Lieutenant General Pyotr Rozhanovich, but he died in 1948 and was replaced by Major General Sergei Kolesnikov, while the scientific director remained seismologist Mikhail Sadovsky, later the creator of the program for detecting nuclear explosions by ground vibrations. The place for the test site suggested itself: sparsely populated, devoid of obstacles such as forests or mountain ranges, the Kazakh steppe, far from the borders, was ideal for constructing such facilities, and only in Semipalatinsk itself did the Chinese consulate have to be closed... and several thousand people evicted from their native lands. The test site was ready for use in 1949, but in parallel with it, a city was built, or rather, this ensemble of it main square. Behind the monument to Academician Kurchatov is the former holy of holies, the Polygon Headquarters, and now the prosaic akimat (mayor's office):
On the right (if you stand facing the akimat) is one of the offices of the National Nuclear Center of Kazakhstan, and initially - “Kurchatov’s house”, that is, a complex of laboratories (with living quarters) that worked under the direct supervision of Igor Vasilyevich.
Opposite is the House of Culture, I don’t know exactly when it was built, but I really want to present a grandiose banquet in it with the participation of the colors of the Soviet nuclear physics and personally Lavrentiy Beria on the occasion of the fact that now “Russ have A-Bomb”.
But still, it’s more likely that the building was built about ten years later:
But this is the view from this square on November 22, 1955, when the RDS-37 hydrogen bomb was exploded at the test site. Its explosion, 70 kilometers from the city, the most powerful in the history of the test site, was about 100 times more powerful than in Hiroshima:
Here is the video from which these screenshots are cut, with the unique humor of that bad era: “We got up early, friends! We’ll have to lie down on the ground again!” - a nuclear explosion generates two shock waves, direct and reflected from the ground. In fact, during tests at the test site, glass in houses was sometimes knocked out even in Semipalatinsk, 200 kilometers from the epicenter, and in Kurchatov, people unmistakably learned about the upcoming tests from glass jars in grocery stores, out of harm’s way placed on the floor. 18.5 thousand square kilometers turned out to be too small a space for a hydrogen bomb, but by that time the second nuclear test site on Novaya Zemlya, originally organized for testing, had been operating for a year nuclear torpedoes, and served as more powerful “land” ammunition.
At the same time, one should not think that only “damned commies” were involved in such things: the USSR conducted 936 nuclear tests, and the USA - 1054, moreover, starting earlier (1945 versus 1949) and finishing later (the last Soviet test was in 1989, the last American one was in 1992, that is, after the collapse of the enemy). The infamous exercises at the Totsky training ground () were only a response to the American series of similar exercises, the Desert Rock series, and cunning businessmen from Las Vegas during the testing days sold tickets to the observation decks of their skyscrapers to admire the nuclear mushroom above the Nevada desert. Then mir-druzhba-zhvachka came, and I regret that I forgot to go beyond the square of the House of Culture, where there is another iconic monument of a completely different era - the American Hotel, opened in 1989, so nicknamed because of the overseas delegations that regularly visited the city. It should be noted that in the first years of independence and the accompanying confusion, it was difficult for the authorities to ensure control over the vast territory of the training ground; looting flourished there (which the Kurchatov special police fought to the best of their ability), and in 1996-2012 the United States (and since 2002 Russia) launched the test site has an entire secret program to collect plutonium and other potentially dangerous materials and objects to prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorists.
But, alas, the American Hotel completely slipped my mind, and from the square I almost mechanically walked towards the Irtysh, to the high and still neglected embankment:
Its architecture clearly shows how unusual the town Bereg was:
Beyond the bend is the village of Grachi, whose residents clearly knew more than the official ones. It was no coincidence that the same Chagan pilots were teased by colleagues from other units as “deaf and dumb.”
The remains of some kind of monument, or maybe just a sculpture on the embankment. A monumental school building rises above the floodplains:
Having made a circle, I went to Victory Square:
With a tall military obelisk, I don’t know exactly what year it was erected. New defenders of the fatherland, blacksmiths" nuclear shield"We worked here...
Another monument. On the flag on the right are the contours of the polygon. “Victims of nuclear tests” in Kazakhstan are a very large group of beneficiaries, and how many people the test site killed - as in the case with, is impossible to calculate. No one here got to the point of acute radiation sickness, and the doses of radiation received mainly from emergency situations at the test site and their own irresponsibility in everyday life only undermined their health in a thin trickle - it’s just that people here aged earlier, got sick more seriously, and “burned out at work” more often.
Behind the monument, in the park between Victory Square and Kurchatov Square, lies a small Kazan Church:
It was rebuilt in 1992-93 from the “Beria House” - the mansion in which Lavrenty Palych stayed during the first Soviet nuclear tests on August 29, 1949. Viewed from here, Beria is by no means an ominous executioner, but the creator of a nuclear shield, which to this day remains Russia's main geopolitical asset.
There is a young and very friendly priest in the church, but, according to him, there are few parishioners. On the ground floor there is a refectory, a utility room, a church shop, on the second floor there is the temple itself:
There is also a mosque in Kurchatov, between the Irtysh restaurant and the department store, opposite the library, and was rebuilt from a pharmacy:
But the walk around the city was my own initiative, although if I have free time, Togas-Intourservice will show the city. At some point, Aisulu, a guide from the Semipalatinsk Test Site Museum, called us, and Uncle Yura took us back to the National Nuclear Center of Kazakhstan. Now they are trying to make a kind of “Kazakhstani” out of Kurchatov with a complex of nuclear institutes founded back in 1992, simultaneously with the closure of the test site, and now everything is serious here - since 2010 they even have their own small tokamak (an experimental prototype of a thermonuclear reactor, that is, a small man-made star ), created for materials science problems. It is in a low building on the right behind the bushes, and on the left is a complex of radiation technologies (2009) - radiation exposure can be used for, for example, cross-linking polymers or sterilizing medical devices:
The NNC includes the Institute of Nuclear Research (founded in 1957 in Alma-Ata), the Institute of Atomic Energy, the Institute of Radiation Safety, the Research and Production Center for Explosive Works and the Baikal design enterprise. And this is the business center at the National Nuclear Center - Kazakhstan is trying to keep up with the scientific and technological revolution and stimulate the implementation scientific developments into business. Unfortunately, I don’t know how effectively all this works.
And opposite them, in the former town of that same military unit No. 52605, there is a tall building of the Institute of Nuclear Research and a blue Stalin-era building of the Institute of Radiation Safety. We are interested in the latter - visits to the nuclear test site by outsiders are under his jurisdiction:
In the frame above you can see the checkpoint - it’s not easy to get inside, and the burly guards at the entrance studied our passports, checking them against the list, for several minutes. But here we are on the territory, the actual program of the tour to the Semipalatinsk test site from Togas-Intourservice begins - first an hour at the museum, then a 3-4-hour trip to the Experimental Field. Just then the wind rose, ripping my hat off and throwing it about twenty meters away - it was going to be a fun trip...
The backyard of the IRB, from which the excursion “loaf” with a driver, guide and dosimetrist departs. The blue building of the IRB is the former command of the military units of the training ground, followed by laboratory and administrative buildings.
The museum is on the second floor. I remember how I scoured half the Internet, trying to find his contacts, but I never found it. Because the museum is purely departmental, and without the mediation of a travel agency or akimat (if you are a respectable guest) you cannot get into it. At the entrance there is Igor Kurchatov’s office with authentic furnishings:
Here is a photograph of another laboratory building where Kurchatov worked when he came to Semipalatinsk-21, which was later named after him. It is located in the depths of the town of IRB, and tourists are not taken to it.
But I will leave most of the exhibits of this museum for the next part, adding them to the Experimental Field - the place where they were directly used. For now, I will show only a couple of objects, just to make it clear what kind of POWER we are going to:
This piece of pumice is nothing more than fused underground nuclear explosion granite, and this metal bow is a pipe crushed by an explosion:
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