The popular campaign to stop nuclear testing is integral to the story of Kazakhstan’s transition from a Soviet republic to an independent state. Between 1949 and 1989, the USSR conducted more than 450 nuclear weapons tests at the test site, or Polygon, near Semipalatinsk (now Semey) in Kazakhstan. As Togzhan Kassenova has explored in her work on the ‘Atomic Steppe’, this had a severe impact on the health of local populations and the surrounding environment, the extent of which is still being debated today.[1] For most of the Soviet period, information surrounding nuclear weapons testing was classified. However, in 1989, in a climate of increasingly open and critical debate facilitated by Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, the extent of the testing at the Polygon and the dangers it posed came to the forefront of public discussion in the Kazakh republic. Under the leadership of Kazakh poet Olzhas Suleimenov, the Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement was formed in February 1989 to campaign for an end to nuclear testing and the closure of the Polygon.
Reaching across borders and establishing transnational connections was integral to Nevada-Semipalatinsk’s mission. Even the name itself was intended to invoke solidarity with those affected by US nuclear testing in Nevada, and its logo depicted a Kazakh nomad and a Native American elder sharing a peace pipe.[2] From its very conception, therefore, it sought to establish connections with Indigenous peoples affected by Cold War superpower testing.[3] In the USSR, Nevada-Semipalatinsk swiftly gained traction. Suleimenov estimated that 50,000 people gathered on the 44th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing in August 1989 to attend a rally at the Polygon.[4] Support came from across the Soviet Union and the Kazakh republic, which itself had a significantly multi-ethnic population. Nevada-Semipalatinsk’s demands for an end to secrecy, independent scientific studies to determine the extent of harm caused by testing to both the population and the environment, and ultimately a universal ban on nuclear testing, soon garnered the attention not just of the USSR but of the world.[5] After the existence of the first Soviet grassroots antinuclear movement was reported in the foreign press in March 1989, both foreign diplomats and international peace and environmental groups reached out to Nevada-Semipalatinsk.[6]
A major example of this international cooperation was the 1990 International Citizens Congress for a Nuclear Test Ban, organised jointly by Nevada-Semipalatinsk and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). Over 600 participants from ‘all walks of life’, representing 21 different countries, travelled to Alma-Ata (now Almaty) in Kazakhstan to discuss the necessity of ending nuclear testing worldwide.[7] In order to reach the Congress, participants had to cross various borders. No international flights flew directly to the Kazakh republic itself, so the first stop was Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, where shuttles were waiting to take participants to a hotel near Red Square. For those who missed this service, a piece of paper with the words ‘please take me to the Rossiya Hotel’ in Russian was included with the itinerary package. The morning after their arrival in the USSR, a chartered flight with the Soviet airline, Aeroflot, took participants to Alma-Ata, where a welcome dinner hosted by Alma-Ata’s mayor was provided in Hotel Kazakhstan.[8]
Between 24th-27th May, after a welcome address from Olzhaz Suleimenov, participants attended talks by leading scientists and activists and heard testimonies from both Soviet and American ‘downwinders’ – those who lived ‘downwind’ of nuclear test sites – as well as a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing. They then took part in work groups to discuss the political, medical, environmental and ethical issues surrounding nuclear testing. At the end of the formal talks, before a rally in Alma-Ata’s New Square, participants were encouraged to sign Nevada-Semipalatinsk’s and IPPNW’s jointly produced appeals to Bush, Gorbachev, and other leaders of nuclear power states, which called upon them to respond to the popular demand for a nuclear test ban.[9] The importance of transnational connections did not cease after the congress. A few months later, an international peace march was held in Kazakhstan.[10] Moreover, Nevada-Semipalatinsk’s international cooperation did not just include professional ‘elites’. In his tours of the US, Suleimenov established connections with the West Shoshune people who were campaigning for an end to American nuclear testing on their ancestral lands.[11]
Throughout the Congress itself, leading roles were played by scientists and activists from Kazakhstan. Furthermore, experiencing Kazakh culture was a central feature of the congress. Scheduled activities included a tour of the city, museum visits, and a concert including Kazakh folk songs and poetry alongside a performance of Mozart.[12] After the Congress moved to the village of Karaul, where a foundation-stone for a future memorial to victims of nuclear weapons would be laid, music, dancing, and a feast in traditional Kazakh yurts was provided.[13] The Congress acted as a lively venue for cultural exchange and the formation of interpersonal connections. The names of the doctors and healthcare professionals who had signed up to help Nevada-Semipalatinsk with medical aid for the children of Kazakhstan affected by testing were unfortunately lost after the Congress, but IPPNW later reiterated the call on Nevada-Semipalatinsk’s behalf.[14] This was not the first-time foreign citizens had come to Kazakhstan to visit the test site. The Joint Verification Experiment of 1988 entailed Soviet experts visiting Nevada and American experts visiting Semipalatinsk in order to calculate the yields of their respective tests.[15] But the International Citizens Congress was a major example of the mobilising power of popular movements. Cross-border connections reveal the significant ‘eco-internationalist’ ethos of Nevada-Semipalatinsk.[16] But these connections were also crucial mechanisms through which citizens of Kazakhstan could establish agency over the question of nuclear technology in their own republic.
At the same time as Nevada-Semipalatinsk was forging international links, the debate about the legacy, role and future of the Polygon was taking place in Soviet institutions and circulating across internal Soviet borders in the Union-wide press. To an extent, the Soviet authorities did respond to this popular pressure, establishing scientific commissions and reducing the number of scheduled tests. Nevertheless, gaining accurate information that citizens in Kazakhstan could believe in remained a challenge. But transnational connections could provide a solution. Sadly missing him at the Congress, in July 1990 Dr Saim B. Balmukhanov, of Kazakhstan’s Institute of Oncology and Radiology, wrote to Joseph Rotblat, a Polish-British physicist and co-founder of the Pugwash Conferences, which advocated for nuclear disarmament. Balmukhanov asked Rotblat for more information on his Izvestiia article which considered alternative methods to determine the extent of radiation suffered by victims of Chernobyl. As Balmukhanov explained, ‘it could be very useful for us in the Semipalatinsk region because the main contradiction between us and military men is the dose of radiation received by the people of Semipalatinsk Region’.[17] This is just one example of how people in Kazakhstan sought new sources of information, now that the once hegemonic official Soviet narrative was losing its legitimacy.
In August 1991, the Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev announced the closure of the Semipalatinsk Polygon. In December, the Soviet Union dissolved and Kazakhstan emerged as an independent country. But it also inherited a complex nuclear legacy. No clear consensus has emerged on the extent of damage caused by the tests conducted at the Polygon. Debates about how to measure radiation and its adverse effects continue in scientific and political spheres.[18] However, what is clear is the importance of Nevada-Semipalatinsk in ending nuclear testing in Kazakhstan. The example of the International Citizens Congress epitomised the understanding of members of Nevada-Semipalatinsk that the problem of testing was not constrained by borders but required international cooperation to create a ‘global culture of peace’.[19] In Suleimenov’s words, ‘only if we act together can we preserve life on earth’.[20] Transnational connections also enabled the people of Kazakhstan to assert their agency over the nuclear question domestically, placing pressure on authorities in the Kazakh republic and the USSR as a whole. By claiming a voice on the world stage and pursuing transnational goals, they also advocated for the future of their own republic.
[1] T. Kassenova, The Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up The Bomb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2022), p.4; p.29; p.6.
[2] P. Zheutlin, ‘Nevada, USSR’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol.46, No.2 (1990), 10-12.
[3] G.G. Rozsa, ‘The Nevada Movement: A Model of Trans-Indigenous Antinuclear Solidarity’, Journal of Transnational American Studies, Vol. 11, No.2 (2020), p.99.
[4] Zheutlin, ‘Nevada, USSR’, p.11.
[5] Ibid., p.10.
[6] “‘Nevada-Semipalatinsk’ Antinuclear Movement (Kazakhstan, USSR), Chronology of the Movement 1989-1990”, May 1990, Wilson Center Digital Archive, Personal Papers of Matthew Evangelista, Folder: “International Citizens Congress for a Nuclear Test Ban, Alma Ata ’90.”
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/300524 [Accessed 9.12.2023].
[7] “Program for the International Citizens Congress for a Nuclear Test Ban”, May 1990, Wilson Center Digital Archive, Personal Papers of Matthew Evangelista, Folder: “Alma Ata Congress.”
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/300516 [Accessed 9.12.2023].
[8] “Letter, Director of Public Affairs of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War to Test Ban Congress Participant”, April 16, 1990, Wilson Center Digital Archive, Personal Papers of Matthew Evangelista, Folder: “Alma Ata Congress.”
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/300513 [Accessed 9.12.2023]; ‘Program for the International Citizens Congress for a Nuclear Test Ban’, Wilson Center Digital Archive.
[9] ‘Program for the International Citizens Congress for a Nuclear Test Ban’, Wilson Center Digital Archive.
[10] Kassenova, Atomic Steppe, p.96.
[11] Rosza, ‘The Nevada Movement’, p.107.
[12] “Concert Program for the Participants of the International Citizens Congress for a Nuclear Test Ban”, May 27, 1990, Wilson Center Digital Archive, Personal Papers of Matthew Evangelista, Folder: “International Citizens Congress for a Nuclear Test Ban, Alma Ata ’90.”
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/300521 [Accessed 9.12.2023].
[13] ‘Program for the International Citizens Congress for a Nuclear Test Ban’, Wilson Center Digital Archive; Kassenova, Atomic Steppe, p.93.
[14] “Letter, Director of Public Affairs and Executive Director of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War to Test Ban Congress Participant June 1990”, June 6, 1990, Wilson Center Digital Archive, Personal Papers of Matthew Evangelista, Folder: “Alma Ata Congress.”
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/300517 [Accessed 9.12.2023].
[15] L.R. Sykes and G. Ekstrom, ‘Comparisons of Seismic and Hydrodynamic Yield Determinations for the Soviet Joint Verification Experiment of 1988’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol.86, No.10 (1989), p.3456.
[16] E.A.D. Schatz, ‘Notes on the “Dog that didn’t Bark”: eco-internationalism in late Soviet Kazakhstan’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol.22, No.1., 136-161.
[17] ‘Letter from the Institute of Oncology and Radiology, Alma-Ata to Joseph Rotblat, 3/7/1990’, in ‘Correspondence: Institute R-S’, in The Papers of Professor Sir Joseph Rotblat, Churchill Archives, Cambridge, GBR/0014/RTBT 11/2/2/39.
[18] M. Stawkowski, ‘”I am a radioactive mutant”: Emergent Biological Subjectivities at Kazakhstan’s Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site’, American Ethnologist, Vol.43 (2016), No.1, 144-157.
[19] A. Aitenova, A. Kulsariyeva and A. Ryskiyeva, ‘”Struggle for Peace, in their Own Land” as the Philosophy of the “Nevada-Semipalatinsk” Movement’, Human Affairs, 2023, p.12.
[20] O. Suleimenov, ‘Letter, Olzhas Suleimenov to Matthew Evangelista’, 2nd March 1990, Wilson Centre Digital Archive, Personal Papers of Matthew Evangelista, Folder: “Nevada-Semipalatinsk”. https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/300529, [Accessed 9.12.2023].