Nuclear Testing in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan’s nuclear history is a story of extreme hardship, but it’s also a story of resilience and hope. The Soviet nuclear tests that were carried out for 40 years inflicted unbelievable harm on the environment, the people and the animals. People suffered and continue to suffer from a wide range of illnesses, of course, many cancers, body deformities but also suicides. In fact, suicide was an unknown phenomenon in Kazakhstan; there was not even a word for it in the Kazakh language. And during the period of Soviet nuclear test, the suicides just were on the rise. And for a long time, it looked as though there was no hope. But the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev as the Soviet leader, the weakening of the Soviet system in the late 80s allowed Kazakhstan’s government and people to reclaim agency over their own fate and their land. 

Kazakhstan’s anti-nuclear movement was called Nevada-Semipalatinsk. It was created in 1989 after a regular underground nuclear test that was confirmed to release high level of radiation. It was nice that they specifically included Nevada because the Kazakh anti-nuclear movement always saw it as part of the global fight against nuclear testing, against nuclear weapons. It was a grassroots movement that was made up of people coming from different ethnicities- Kazakhstan is a polyethnic society, different professions, different ages. So it was really an all-nation struggle but also it’s very moving how the international peace activists from the US, Canada, Europe, Japan uh some peace activists from Russia, they helped the Kazakh anti-nuclear movement. They would come to the rallies and protests and be together. And so that incredible movement was so powerful that the Soviet military didn’t have a chance to continue testing beyond October of 1989. But the protest continued because what they wanted was for the site to be shut down altogether and that became possible in 1991 on August 29th. Kazakh government, still a Soviet republic, still under the leadership appointed by Moscow, Kazakhstan was able to shut down the Semipalatinsk nuclear testing site and ban nuclear tests on its territory. 

That decision was the nation’s first major step in reclaiming agency because during the Soviet period there wasn’t much participation in the fate of the nation. And I also want to mention the butterfly effect. So there is this massive Kazakh anti-nuclear movement that shuts down the Semipalatinsk nuclear testing site. The Soviet military continues testing for a little bit at Novaya Zemlya. But then there is a Soviet moratorium on nuclear tests. Then there is the US moratorium on nuclear tests and then there is the 1996 treaty on banning nuclear tests. So I feel that there is this important contribution that this absolutely grassroots movement contributed, and it’s a story that serves as an important reminder today that there is a lot of power in ordinary people uniting behind a goal. 

The next stage in Kazakhstan’s nuclear history is also a story that inspires and gives hope. In ‘91, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Kazakhstan had more than a thousand Soviet nuclear warheads, more than a hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles and around 40 heavy bombers that could fly and drop nuclear bombs on the US mainland. Kazakhstan also had tons of nuclear material and nuclear facilities. And so if for some reason Kazakhstan, as a newly independent state, would have made a decision to pursue a nuclear program a latent nuclear program it would have a very strong foundation, much more than, for example, Iran has at the moment. 

Why did a young country decide not to follow a nuclear path? And here I want to talk about security. I believe that Kazakhstan’s case can be used as a counternarrative to those who claim that nuclear weapons mean more security. Kazakhstan absolutely felt vulnerable. It was a new state, two nuclear powers on both sides, poorest borders, no military of its own, economy in complete crisis. So definitely security concerns. However, Kazakhstan rightfully decided that nuclear weapons would not make it more secure, but quite the opposite. A new state concerned with keeping its sovereignty and statehood recognized that nuclear weapons would not help because what Kazakhstan needed to survive as a state is to be integrated into the international community to have access to foreign technology in order to start developing natural resources that it had so that it could boost up the economy. It wanted access to international institutions and so on. But there was also an important driver behind Kazakhstan’s disarmament choice and it was um national identity building. 

During the Soviet period, Kazakhstan remained invisible to the outside world. I don’t know how many of you for example knew much about Kazakhstan and it was partly because of how the Soviet Union presented itself to the outside world, right. Everybody imagined that it was you know all you know Slavic people blonde, blue eyes, but there were also all these other republics with different cultures different ethnicities. So finally Kazakhstan had this chance to present itself to the outside world on its own terms and there was this very strong normative discussion and I actually was amazed when I worked with the archival documents from the early 90s and I could see how the analysts- and here a disclaimer, one of them one of the advisers was my own late father- and that they talked about in 1991 they were talking about the NPT and while the Kazakh leadership and the policy analysts did agree with the criticism that the NPT was, you know, a discriminatory structure dividing into nuclear haves and have-nots. Still, they thought the NPT the Treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons was an important norm that should not be undermined. So they accepted the the norm of the NPT and Kazakh leadership, understood that choosing a nuclear path would destabilize the global nuclear order. And the country wanted to be viewed as a nation that respects international norms and does not create risks to international security. One of the phrases that I remember from my interviews with one of the key decision makers from Kazakhstan, he said, “We just didn’t want to become a Central Asian North Korea.”