Kazakhstan: Life and Death in the Shadow of the Mushroom Cloud : Fallout: Soviet citizens remember how they were misled on nuclear testing. They wonder why the U.S. has not agreed to stop such tests.

“I witnessed the first H-bomb explosion,” said Talgat Slyambekov. “Afterward they gave us a checkup and the military men gave us some vodka as protection against radiation.”

In this remote village on the northern steppe of Soviet Kazakhstan, the wind drives ice and snow against dilapidated shacks. The hardship of life is etched in the face of every resident. In Karaul, life has been especially hard. Since the dawn of the atomic age the Soviet Union has tested its nuclear weapons here.

Karaul would seem an unlikely place to test the reach of Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reforms. But on the wind that howls across the barren landscape, glasnost has come to Karaul. In late February I talked with residents about the effects of nuclear testing on their lives. For four decades they have been afraid to speak, but now they voice anger and a deep sense of betrayal.

“For 40 years,” Slyambekov said, “the military-industrial complex has waged undeclared nuclear war against us. I call this genocide. They tried to eliminate us. No one ever told us that there was any danger.”

When the Soviet Union tested its first hydrogen bomb in 1953, Karaul was evacuated; 40 people were told to remain behind, Slyambekov one of them. “We never knew why they left us here.”

Rimhan Gabduilin also remained behind. He is a slight man with a thin voice, but speaks forcefully about the day he saw the mushroom cloud of the H-bomb. “Of the 40 people they left in this village, only six are alive today. All the others died when they were 50 or 60 years old. The military men told us it is not dangerous at all. If it isn’t dangerous, why do they check the wind direction before any test? Why don’t they explode the bombs next to Kurchatov City itself?” Kurchatov is the home of the secret-weapons laboratory that conducts Soviet nuclear tests.

“They never asked for our permission to put this test site here,” said Slyambekov. “They knew it was dangerous even back then. But we were really afraid to talk about it openly. It was a real secret. But with glasnost and perestroika we have some democratic change in this country . . . . For the last two years I’ve tried to do my best to abolish nuclear weapons and to eliminate this test site.”

“Please--tell your government that we are all human beings,” pleaded Zagnar Zunuszanov, a former party leader in the region. “Who wants to commit suicide? Who doesn’t think about his children? Such a person would be a fool or a madman. Americans are not fools. Please tell them, and your government, that we shall not repeat history. We are just people trying to stop nuclear tests, but the United States keeps on testing. We are ready to close our test site. Why don’t Americans do the same? Why do you let it happen?”

The Soviet victims of the bomb are angry with their government. They are also puzzled and frustrated by the U.S. refusal to join the Soviets in a mutual test moratorium. From August, 1985, to February, 1987, the Soviets unilaterally stopped nuclear testing but failed to elicit U.S. reciprocity. Gorbachev has repeatedly pledged that the Soviet Union will enter a moratorium on a moment’s notice if the United States will do the same.

U.S. anti-nuclear activists have been unable to match the success of a new anti-testing movement in Kazakhstan called the Nevada/Semipalatinsk Movement (after two major nuclear test sites).

Only a year old, the movement has had a profound impact on Soviet nuclear testing. Alexei Manshosov, first secretary in the Foreign Ministry’s disarmament section, said the Nevada/Semipalatinsk Movement forced cancellation of 11 of the 18 scheduled tests in 1989. The test site has remained silent since October of last year, an unusually long time.

In March, Moscow capitulated to one of the movement’s most urgent demands. The government announced that nuclear tests in Kazakhstan would be phased out by 1993 and testing moved to a remote island near the Arctic Circle, Novaya Zemlya.

Men like Zunuszanov, Gabduilin and Slyambekov are part of the movement’s strength, resolute in their support of charismatic leader Olzhas Suleimenov, a poet and writer. Suleimenov rode a wave of Kazakh anti-nuclear sentiment to a seat in the Congress of People’s Deputies, and from there to the Supreme Soviet, where he is a formidable presence who has the ear of Gorbachev.

Tajiken Humadilov, a proud veteran of the Great Patriotic War (the Soviet name for World War II), is also a strong supporter: “I spent my whole life working for the party, the Soviet people and the government. All this time I wondered why the United States--a great, powerful country whose people believe in God--wanted to stay ahead of us. For many years I believed that what our government was doing was necessary--that we needed rockets and bombs to protect us from the United States. We didn’t know whether the atomic mushrooms were armful or not.

“Five people in my family died of cancer,” said Humadilov. “My older brother in 1960. My oldest son last year. My younger brother two years ago. My parents died of cancer when they were old . . . . So how can I support the creation of this weaponry after so many people died of it?”

Humadilov’s account reflects a trend in the Soviet Union--what some call “radiophobia”--to blame all illness on radiation from various sources. There could, of course, be other explanations for the illnesses in Humadilov’s family, but like many others, he believes death is linked to the test site.

Evidence is mounting in the United States and the Soviet Union that nuclear-weapons production and testing has taken a severe toll on health and the environment. The first independent medical reports on the impact of tests on residents of Kazakhstan will be issued during the International Citizens Congress on a Nuclear Test Ban this May in Alma-Ata. The congress is being convened by the Nevada/Semipalatinsk Movement and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

Ulogbek Baiurbekov shouted out as I was about to leave Karaul: “We veterans of the Great Patriotic War demand that this test site be closed,” an ultimatum from a 75-year-old who fought in one war and witnessed preparations for another.

What is so striking about the villagers’ sentiments is how similar their stories are to those told by Americans from towns like St. George, Utah; Fredonia, Ariz., and Bunkersville, Nev. For years American “downwinders” (those who live downwind from the U.S. Nevada Test Site) have waged an unsuccessful legal battle against their government, for redress from injuries allegedly suffered as a result of nuclear tests. The U.S. government knew the tests posed a serious threat to those living downwind. But rather than warnings, government only issued false assurances.

“It isn’t money they want,” said Steve Erikson, a spokesman for the organization Downwinders. “They want an admission by the government that it did this to them. All along the government has said, ‘Oh no, we didn’t.’ It has left a lot of people with this nagging doubt about why their family members are dying or dead. It’s a sense of justice they want, not money.”

Half a world apart, patriotic citizens--downwinders who also believed in their government--were enduring the same hell for the same reasons. Human guinea pigs were created, trust betrayed; loyalty and patriotism were exploited.

In May at the International Citizens Congress, U.S. downwinders and Soviet downwinders will meet for the first time. They will have much to tell one another--all consider themselves victims of the atomic bomb.