Soon I also gained some experience in production because each theorist had to be present when his 'products' were assembled for full-scale experiments. That was at the time of nuclear tests in the atmosphere.

    In addition, each of us had to accompany his product to the test site. That is how I made my first trip to the test site 130 kilometres nway from the city of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan in 1959. The Kazakhstan steppe, the Dagilen Range, and the Uzun-Bulak valley with its gently flowing stream and the tall reeds on its banks - all this produced an unforgettable sense of the grandeur and beauty of nature. Even today I still have dreams about the flowering artemisia in the boundless steppe of Kazakhstan. Many of us fell in love with that region. After all, it is where we spent the rigorous years of our youth.

    An atmospheric nuclear explosion!

    The first time I saw one, I was standing ten kilometers away from the blast site in the steppe. It was a clear and sunny day. There was a brilliant pinkish-white flash, followed by the appearance of a light-blue nimbus and the glow of the shock wave in the air - a symmetrical sphere with a distant outline. When the bottom of the nimbus reached the ground, it raised pillars of dust, hut they did not reach as high as the fireball because the test was conducted at a high enough altitude to reduce the amount of radioactive fallout left on the test site after the dust subsided. The fiery cloud rose upward, carrying the lethal danger far away from the ground and then dispersing the fallout over a vast area. Then (he heat hit us in the face. When the front of the wave reached us, it was as if the door of a wood-burning furnace had been opened momentarily. And that was not even a high-yield explosion! That was my 'baptism by fire' on the test site.

    Not many people witnessed the impressive sight of an atmospheric nuclear explosion, but it would have been better if those test had never been conducted at all! The Moscow Treaty of 1963 banned nuclear tests in space, in the atmosphere and under water, and the global radioactive fallout on our land began slowly to reduce. Then our country made the move to underground nuclear tests, We had only heard of these from American sources, and we were still taking just the first timid steps to master these testing techniques.

    I have a particularly vivid memory of an underground test to check the functioning of our 'products' after the exposure to the devastating effects of a nuclear explosion. Standing at the command post three kilometers from the entrance to the adit where the nuclear warheads had been installed, we conducted careful visual observations of the mountain. After the first minor subterranean jolt, I counted off the seconds in my head and stood there stock-still. Then I felt the second shock. That meant that everything had gone according to plan. I was covered with perspiration from the tension. Those few seconds felt like an eternity. I lifted the receiver of the red telephone and made my report to Moscow, thinking to myself that this would be my last trip to the test site because this was beyond human endurance. After making the call, I walked out of the command post, lay down on the grass and leaked into the distant blue heavens for a long time. The sun was just rising above the horizon, and its rays caressed the steppe lovingly and cleared my mind. Each test took just a tiny fraction of the tester's life, a single instant in which all the responsibility for the work of many thousands of people in this sector was concentrated, as if by magic.

    The test site in Kazakhstan was suitable for underground nuclear tests year-round, but winter was the most difficult season for the tests. The Kazakhstan steppe was no place for a casual stroll in winter. Howling gusty winds, blizzards and temperatures of 30 degrees below zero could make their appearance instantaneously and trap you, as if you were caught in the realm of an evil demon. It happened to us once when we decided early one Sunday morning to drive GAZ-69 jeep from the test adit in the Dagilen Range to Kurchatov, the town where our main base was located, on the bank of the Irtysh River. In fact, that is what we called out headquarters - 'the Bank'. The town was built on the steep banks of the swift and mighty Irtysh River, which flows into the great Siberian Ob, after the war in the 1940s as a part of the atomic project. It was always intended to serve the nuclear test site. In summer, when it was immersed in the greenery of poplars that were planted and lovingly tended by the inhabitants of the town, it was a vivid reminder of the fraternity of Russia and Kazakhstan. The kindergartens and nurseries, the schools and the officers' club, the snow-white buildings - all of these made that comer of Kazakhstan a wonderful oasis in the Kazakhstan steppe.

    When on that fateful morning we left the settlement of Gomy, known simply as 'G' and located at the foot of the Dagilen Range, there was nothing to warn us of the trouble ahead. We had to go about 150 kilometers, mostly along a dirt road in the steppe, and in two or three hours we should have arrived at a comfortable warm hotel, which even had showers and baths. The 'G' settlement had none of these conveniences, and even cold rusty water was a luxury there. We usually slept in our clothes to stay warm and we could not be bothered much by hygienic considerations under those conditions. Then we suddenly got a day off! I will remember it for the rest of my life.

    After driving for about an hour, we literally ran into a blizzard. A short time later we were hit by what seemed like a solid wall of snow. It kept getting colder. Our vehicle was already barely crawling along by that time, and soon it came to a halt after losing all of its bearings and running into a thick snow bank formed by the strong wind. It was still relatively early in the morning. We tried to get the GAZ out of the snow, working quickly with shovels - there were three of us with the driver. Soon however we were completely exhausted, and had accomplished almost nothing at all. The temperature kept dropping. After getting back into the vehicle, we started the motor and turned on the heat. We had nothing to eat or drink.

    Soon we saw a truck approaching us, roaming the steppe in search of the road. That was at around eleven o'clock in the morning. We asked the driver and the freight attendant to report that we were stuck and needed help as soon as they got to the settlement, but they managed to drive only to the next village and could not get through to the town. Oh, those field communication systems on the test sites! We thought that we still had the whole day ahead of us and calmly climbed back in to the GAZ to wait for help. The sinister storm grew more intense, darkness started to fall, and we later learned that the temperature had dropped to -35°C. Help did not arrive. At midnight we ran out of petrol because no one had expected the trip to take so long. We left the vehicle and drained the radiator. The night, the wind, the snow and the cold kept getting more brutal. Our driver offered to go for help on foot, but I stopped him: it would be certain death because of the blizzard, the lack of visibility and the darkness of the night. We got back into the vehicle, hoping to hold out till morning, and began telling each other about ourselves. The air inside the GAZ kept getting colder, and our breathing formed a thick layer of frost on the inside of the tarpaulin stretched across the vehicle frame.

    The driver kept repeating in a grim voice: 'They have written us off!' He was from Altay and knew the value of a human life in that kind of situation. His remarks made us feel terrible, especially after he told us that his brother had frozen to death just two kilometers from the village in the same kind of snow-storm.

    As soon as the sun's rays hit the steppe, the blizzard subsided as quickly as it had started. I tried to open the door with my numb fingers, but it was not easy. We were blocked in by the snow on all sides. This may have been what had kept us from freezing to death. I finally managed to get out of the vehicle and saw the rising sun and an absolutely clear sky. Not far away, a fox was looking at me with amazement. It could not understand where I had come from. A human being, all covered with frost, had emerged from a mountain of snow! All around me I saw a sea of snow, deposited there in thick drifts by the terrible dance of the wind and frost - a dance of life and death. I saw a high-voltage power line in the distance and figured out where we were. I decided to lead my group to the substation. It would be warm inside, and there would be an electrician on duty and a telephone. After walking across the banks and drifts for almost two hours, we were finally out of the cold. I looked in the mirror and did not recognize myself - my face was reddish-black. The driver was sobbing with joy. We learned that the blizzard had trapped many people and was one of the most severe storms for the last ten years. I thanked fate, the Almighty and nature.

    There were several such incidents during my years on the test sites. Each person has his own destiny. Sometimes I feel that I have become part of nature and that our ideas are our only link to the world. No, that was not the process of natural selection at work; it was a matter of natural harmony. Mother Nature smiled upon me, and this love was mutual.

    That is how we and the Kazakhstan test site worked together to create a nuclear shield for our Motherland for the sake of peace on earth.

    People gradually joined the family of nuclear arms testers. They were outstanding young men. They lived and worked far from their friends and relatives for several months each year under the severe conditions of field experiments, frequently risking their lives. Their sense of responsibility for each operation before and during the tests reinforced their courage and strengthened their camaraderie. Bad men and incompetent specialists did not stay around for long - reality itself drove them out of those work teams. Somehow I became part of the group without even trying, and I formed a lifelong bond with those young men. Later, when the intensive underground nuclear testing started, we took on the whole burden and the whole responsibility for our lengthy stay on the test sites together. The underground tests took much longer to plan and conduct than the atmospheric ones. That was a school for training genuine specialists.

    When I was working on diagnostic methods and systems to record high-speed processes at the Institute of Pulse Engineering in the 1970s, we designed a whole set of technical equipment and formed a wonderful team for test site operations.

    Naturally, the northern Kazakhstan steppe is famous not only for severe frosts and snow storms. Spring and autumn in the steppe are attractive with their inimitable charm of wormwood scent and the transmigration of flocks of birds which make stops on freshwater lakes, so rare in these parts, to muster new strength and to fly farther south to India and Australia, to stay for the winter in the warm lands. One late autumn day, on the way to Dagilen, we saw a pair of beautiful bustards. They strolled majestically, side by side, near a dusty road which meandered along the steppe. After a one- or two-hour drive along such a road the dust, like water, starts pouring down the windows of a GAZ vehicle, and you feel this dust even in your mouth. Only a stop gives you an opportunity to get a breath of fresh air and to enjoy the light wind which always blows in the steppe, enjoying its majestic infinity. The car driver told me that the bustards would probably stay there for the winter, though it meant certain death for them. One of them, he or she, could not, perhaps, continue its flight and they stayed there, in northern Kazakhstan, when the flock had left the place, continuing its perennial migration along the pathway paved by their distant ancestors.

    The birds stuck together and majestically, paying no attention to us, tramped quietly along their way, on their strong and rather long feet. That picture of the faithfulness of the loving couple did move us to tears.

    Every summer I had to rove the dusty steppe roads a lot, but It was always difficult to tear one's eyes from the scene of a majestic and proud steppe eagle sitting on the top of a wooden telegraph pole or a jerboa sitting on its hind pads near the road and leaning upon a sizable tail. One could never forget those brown eyes. They reflected the entire steppe and a great vitality of life on our planet.

    And so much I had to travel by those sometimes hardly visible roads in the steppe. Especially beautiful is the way from the Dagilen mountains to the flat, table-like, Balapan plain on the boundary of the nuclear test site. This is where the underground nuclear tests were conducted in the holes bored vertically down to a depth of several hundred metres. Nuclear tests in boreholes required significantly less money and time as compared to the tests in the adits of horizontal emplacement holes in the granite of the Dagilen mountains. However, adit tests provide much more diagnostic information and, in addition, the resistance to the devastating effects of a nuclear blast can be most efficiently verified by carrying out specific tests in adits where the specialists can equip every section of the hole in compliance with the objectives of the tests and can install large-size military hardware, and simulate the conditions of a nuclear blast in space, near the surface and deep underground.

    Therefore, every time there had to be solved the problem of whether we should promptly receive information about the serviceability of nuclear warhead design or whether we should analyze very thoroughly all stages of nuclear explosion development and, moreover, in different spatially separated areas of an experimental explosive device. But I will dwell upon that a bit later.

    And now I would like to continue the story about the roads of the nuclear test site: a small section of a concrete road from the town of Kurchatov and, a little farther on, the turn to a field road leading up to the Dagilen mountains or Balapan plain. The first time I followed that road I was staggered by the smooth surface of white-blue lakes which mirrored the gentle colours of a clear sky above. We approached one of them, and an enormous salt lake appeared before our eyes. Water was not seen. Everything was covered with crystals of salt. I trod hesitantly on that mass and my foot in a tarpaulin topboot started sinking slowly. Water showed under my foot and the salt began to swallow up the topboot imprint. Tarpaulin topboots, green trousers and jacket were the usual outer wear of the testers on the nuclear test site, while white doctor-like cotton gloves and a white cap always presented a contrast.

    But the most astonishing sight was the ancient Kazakh tombs in the vicinity of those salt lakes. They were partially collapsed and half-abandoned, and that oppressed one's heart even more. The periphery of the nuclear test site was not guarded, though its boundaries on the map were known to all neighbouring collective farms. We often saw large herds of horses and a shepherd on horseback in the vast expanses of the test site, so people could always have come freely to those clay mausoleums, resembling small square roofless houses, to put them right. It seems to be a local custom, however, to bury and to forget.

    Every time, when passing by the dead salt lakes and the tombs, one would be worried by a feeling of bitterness for those who had forgotten their ancestors. At that time I always recalled Ibragim Kunanbaev (Abai Kunanbaev), a great Kazakh poet-enlightener of the nineteenth century, who roamed from place to place on the territory of the Genghis Khan mountains where the Ahai District of the Semipalatinsk Region is currently located. And here is his appeal to the poets:

Look around more vigilantly than the steppe eagle,
Touching the strings of thoughtfulness in the heart.

It is true that, currently, there is much that the Kazakh people and poets should think about. Great Abai might have visited those places. And the steppe lived its own life and gladdened the heart nnd the soul of the living.

    Once, a large herd of saigas, these wild goats of the steppe vastness, ran across our path. The herd's leader easily jumped over the road and the whole herd of nanny-goats followed. It was a spectacular scene. The leader - a strong and clever beauty - confidently led the herd away at a high speed towards the horizon of the steppe feather-grass swayed by the wind. They were gone in a flash.

    The leader is not just a symbol of nature: it also means continuation of a healthy species; it means life of the herd under the laws of nature; it means improvement and development. People are wrong when they sometimes forget about this, thinking that it is the masses who play a decisive role. It is not true; the organisation and the leader are of the utmost importance.

    At the approaches to the 'G', a settlement at the foot of the mountains, we were always met by the slogan 'Glory the CPSU' which was inlaid with stones in capital letters on the slope of a cone-shaped hill. That is where the houses of miners and hotels for the testers are located. Of course, the living conditions were very primitive, but it seems to be a trifle when the preparations for an experiment are under way. Later on, after I had seen the inscription 'Hollywood', laid out on the mountain in Los Angeles in the USA, I always remembered that slogan in the 'G' settlement.

    Generally, reveille was at 6.00 a. m., then a modest breakfast in the soldiers' dining room, embussing for a one-hour ride through mountain passes to the adit, and return to the settlement at about 8.00 p. m. Sometimes certain groups of the testing personnel drove back to the settlement to have lunch there. Every group does its own work in the adit and on the site at the entrance of the adit where the mobile trailers with blast information recording equipment are positioned. People do not sit waiting for a job here; they are looking for it.

    As a rule, the operations group holds its meetings every other day at which all preparations for an underground explosion are coordinated. The State Commission for the Experiment Preparation and Performance meets less frequently to consider technical aspects and procedures as well as safety conditions in the broad sense. The State Commission is appointed anew for each individual test and it also comprises medical personnel and representatives of the Hydrometeorological Centre from Moscow as well as specialists of the test site.

    When nuclear warheads designed with my participation were to be tested, I was usually appointed the deputy chairman of the State Commission, bearing responsibility for a set of physical measurements or scientific problems. In rare cases, generally when very risky tests were to be carried out as, for example, the test with a multi-second interval between the explosions of several nuclear devices, I was appointed the chairman of the State Commission. This responsibility was never a burden for me; moreover, the understanding of the processes related to test preparations and conduct let me be absolutely sure of myself. Very frequently I had to consult with miners and geologists about the preservation of the recorded data and possible radioactive gas releases through tectonic fractures in the block of untouched rock or through high-frequency cables used for transmission of test pulse information from the adit to the data recorders, or through the stemming whose arrangement depends completely on the actual profile of mined adit. In short, there are always a lot of problems, and a good piece of advice is sometimes very important. All the works were, naturally, done in compliance with the plans and specifications under a rigorous with the plans and specifications under a rigorous supervision of the State Commission; however, the actual situation always introduced corrections into the design.

    A whole team of representatives of the design institution also worked continually on the Semipalatinsk Test Site, with whom we had to take decisions about and mandatorily document individual changes in the design. In practice, such changes in the design were quite numerous, and every time I came up against the arrogance and ambitions of the designers or formal references to an approved calculation technique: be it concrete and crushed granite stemming to prevent releases of radioactive products of nuclear explosion along the nuclear warhead emplacement hole, or the sealing of the bunch of several hundred cables used for transmitting explosion control commands and, during an explosion, for transmitting information from transducers converting penetrating radiation, strong shock wave movements, X-radiation and luminous radiation into electric analogues. There were a lot of painful talks with the representatives of the design institution. And of course, every such change in the design enhanced even further the sense of responsibility for an outcome of the test.

    Only after the explosion each time did the sense of satisfaction with such work come, and no malcontents could ruin that feeling. Every test is a short story of titanic efforts of miners, the erection gang and testing personnel.

    Any nuclear explosion in a borehole in the Balapan steppe was always an event requiring a meticulous preparation. On one side is an underground water table at a depth of 10-20 meters which fills the hole with brackish water - natural brine; on the other side, a layer about one hundred meters thick of sedimentary rock. Both aspects required that all elements placed in the hole, including the diagnostic components of measuring channels, should be sealed and that that particular area of the borehole soil, where leaks of radioactive products were possible, should be concreted thoroughly.

    Especially impressive is the day of the nuclear explosion. The command point, or CP for short, is usually located at a distance of 3-5 kilometres away from the well cap. One hour before the explosion a military helicopter flies around the explosion site within a radius of several kilometres and, having made sure that all participants of the final operations have left the cap of the emplacement hole and measuring trailers and that there are no outsiders, the crew gives permission to switch on the automatic controller of the nuclear device blasting system and explosion parameters recording system. And afterwards, the PA system announces: Ten seconds left, nine, eight, seven . . . zero. Everyone stands stock-still.

    The elevation of the soil is clearly seen in the steppe at such a distance and it seems that an abscess on the earth's body breaks open, and then, an instant later, you feel soft motions of the ground underneath and everything around becomes quiet. All observers stand still, deep in their own thoughts, and only a dozen or so seconds later comes a muffled earth's groan. It was like this in 1988 al the US-USSR Joint Experiment which aimed at mastering the techniques for verifying the yield of the underground explosion whose signal travelled around our planet as a signal of hope for a nuclear-free world. No, it was not an earth's groan. The shell of our planet, like the gentle and warm body of a loving mother, has warmed her children. The earth became transparent for such a signal.

    All earth seismic stations recorded this signal of hope. The seismic signal had travelled around the planet several rimes like a herald of the end of the cold war and the beginning of a new era on our planet. That experiment was called 'Chagan' after a small river which flows into the Irtysh River in the Balapan steppes.

    We used to call the boreholes simply by their serial numbers, whereas the Americans, in contrast to us, liked to give proper names to their underground explosions. Thus, the joint experiment which was carried out at the NTS the same year was named by the Americans 'Junction' after a small Indian locality where the test hole was drilled. Accordingly, we gave a proper name to our underground explosion which was conducted within the framework of the Joint Verification Experiment at the Semipalatinsk Test Site one month later.

    After the explosion, depending on the readings of the radiation monitoring equipment installed on concentric circumferences from the cap to the CP and on the forecast of wind direction and force at 'H' hour, i.e. the time of detonation, an advanced detachment of radiation supervisors move towards the cap of the blasted borehole. Having examined the site of explosion, they give permission to take instrumental readings in the measurement trailers which are positioned somewhere between the emplacement hole and the CP. The testing personnel, dressed in special protective suits, come by bus to the measurement trailer; sometimes they have a very limited rime for all their Information reading operations - from thirty to sixty minutes, at the most.

    After the memorable 'Chagan' explosion, we arrived together with the US specialists at the ground zero of the explosion, the nip of the borehole. The radiation environment allowed us to do that. Upheaved land and deep fissures in the earth's body appeared before our eyes. Looking at that picture, I heard a cry from my heart: 'Do not explode, do not explode.'

    However, to my memory also comes back other episodes when we had to abandon the CP as quickly as possible, using every available means, owing to the leaks of radioactive gases through the fissures or damaged cap of the emplacement hole. Generally, such situations cause panic in many people and turn them into a mob which seeks 'salvation', forgetting about everything else, and, if that is the case, these people do a lot of stupid things. Afterwards, when analyzing such situations, you cannot help laughing, though it was not really funny; in other words, you feel very much like saying: 'It was the work of the devil.'

    When the information has been taken, namely films, printouts and individual recorders, the testers and the entire State Commission return to the town of Kurchatov on the bank of the Irtysh River to process and analyze the results of the experiment. Only a group of military radiation supervisors stay at the borehole to monitor its 'breathing' day and night for several days. But once it happened that the patrol fell asleep and the leak of radioactive gases was detected only the next day, causing commotion in the Chagan settlement adjacent to the test site where the enhanced radiation fallout from the radioactive cloud was, in fact, detected. Schools, day nurseries and kindergartens in the settlement were closed urgently and decontamination of the premises was begun. In answer to an inquiry from the radiation monitoring service in Chagan settlement, a general from the test site stated that everything was OK there, and that there was no need to raise a panic. That incident was made public and I should say it gave impetus to the establishment of the public antinuclear movement 'Nevada-Semipalatinsk' in Kazakhstan.

    After another test all testers and I returned to the hotel on the 'Bank'. It was a nice two-storey apartment-type building, the site full of poplars, on the bank of the Irtysh River. I went up to the second floor and produced a key to the apartment in which I had been accommodated for two weeks, and then I saw a card fixed M'ith drawing-pins on the door with the superscription: 'V. N. Mikhailov and I.I. Pakhomov'. Before leaving for the 'Balapan' site I had, as usual, lived alone in that two-room apartment and there was no card on the door then. I opened the door, full of annoyance, because I so much wanted to be alone and to take a bath after the long and dusty road - no luck; I had a neighbour now. I catered the room and was met by an elderly and grizzled but still slender and good-looking man. We made each other's acquaintance, I said that I was very tired and would like to take a bath if it was vacant. Ivan Ivanovich, that was the name of my neighbour, answered that the bathroom was free and at my disposal. I enjoyed the hot and clean water for about half an hour, letting it get me away from it all. Then I dressed and left the bathroom because I was awfully hungry.

    It was already late evening and I had drunk only a glass of tea in the morning of that day 'H', so I went to the kitchen, intending to cook something from the canned foods which I had left there before leaving for the test site. When I entered the kitchen, which we shared now, I was struck by the view of a bounteous table. There were fresh vegetables and fresh fruits, a Kazakhstan watermelon, and roast beef with potatoes. In short, the table offered full comfort, and there stood Ivan Ivanovich, a smile on his lips. He said that he knew that I had had work to do that day (that is what we usually called the conducting of an underground nuclear test) and that 1 would come back hungry, so he had prepared supper for two persons. That's how I met Ivan Ivanovich Pakhomov, a retired rear admiral.

    Our supper and conversation continued till late at night. I learned a lot about the first days of the establishment of the nuclear test site on the islands of Novaya Zemlya where Ivan Ivanovich was one of the first commanders. In the Kazakhstan steppes fate had brought me together with this wonderful kind-hearted man, an experienced commander of the USSR Navy. And the marines, even retired marines, cherish wonderful sea traditions and love for their Motherland, and they also feature profound cordiality.

    There, at the Kazakhstan nuclear test site, fate brought me together with another remarkable man - Nikolai Ivanovich Logunov. He was a real Russian Apollo, body and soul. For more than fourteen years we worked hand in hand, sharing the burdens and the joys of life on nuclear test sites. He was the life and soul of any team, with equal ease getting into a contact with an admiral and a marine, an academician and an assembler or a miner. During the visits to the test sites he would hold the team together in difficult situations, while at leisure he was good at arranging entertainment and recreation. Even today I frequently turn to him in my thoughts, requesting only one thing: 'Kolya, make me strong and firm.' He is always with me in my heart. When I feel that I have exerted too much pressure on my colleagues and subordinates, I recall his words: 'Nikitich, loosen the garrotte, please.' In reply, I used to ask him: 'Shall I do that?' 'Yes,' was his usual answer. He was my most intimate friend in the Institute of Pulse Technology. May he rest in peace.

    I had wonderful and close colleagues in that galaxy of outstanding testers. Boris Predein, Lev Glasov, Valera Yaroslavski and Zhenya Ershov are among them. No, they have not died in their forties, they have burned away, devoting their lives and talents to this furious work and glorifying their people.

    Such testers one could live and work with under the most extreme conditions. And such were the conditions of one steppe winter in Kasakhstan. It happened in the seventies. As usual intensive preparations were under way for one of the tests in the Dagilen mountains in the Uzun-Bulak valley, on the opposite side of the mountains from the 'Gomy', the 'G', settlement. I headed a party of testers from the Institute of Impulse Technics. There were some forty members in that team, and my deputy was Nicolai Ivanovitch Logunov, then a splendid fellow of twenty-six.

    As a rule we would leave our Institute for tests, fully equipped with everything necessary to work with members of the scientific sections of the nuclear centres and the military personnel of the nuclear test site. Among other things we brought transportation vehicles with drivers, who normally drove us and our equipment from the 'G' settlement to the entrance of the adit. We also had a small group of local drivers on the test site, who constantly lived on the 'mainland' and who were mainly equipped with the GAZ-vehicles.

    It was December, and there was a thick snow layer in the steppe. Roads particularly got easily blocked with snow, so we often had to drive across the foothills of the Dagilen mountains. For work during the winter season we brought as a rule powerful SIL- or Ural-trucks with heated cabins and bodies. At the Institute our drivers possessed a large number of such vehicles and a small maintenance capacity. Our drivers and maintenance workers at the Institute formed a close and united team. Frequent journeys to military test sites and the dispatch and escorts of trailers with diagnostic devices to the mandators on the test sites made them accustomed to the mobile way of life and they got rapidly integrated into the teams of testers. Under the difficult conditions of the nuclear test sites, when roads were lacking, very much of the complicated work of the testers really depended upon their skills. So we loved and respected them.

    They prepared themselves for every trip to the nuclear test site thoroughly and well in advance. This implied not only technical preparation, but also gathering of solid nutrition reserves. They even adapted the heating system of their vehicles so it might boil water for tea or boil potatoes. Thus the men could live in their trucks, quite autonomous, for a whole week. They were all quite practical.

    Thus, active preparations for the December test in the Uzan-Bulak valley were under way. Early in the morning we left for the adit and returned to the hotel in the 'G'-settlement at approximately eight or nine p. m., when it was already dark. So it happened also that unfortunate evening - we came home at nine o'clock. One of the Ural-trucks however didn't return. Usually we went back altogether in a small convoy of three or four vehicles, our 'GAZ'-jeeps. As a rule the distance between the vehicles in the convoy grew larger during the journey because they had to cruise and to explore the depth of snow on the route and to choose smaller hills, which gathered less snow.

    When we had been waiting for about an hour for the truck to arrive we became worried about the two men who were driving the cargo in that vehicle. At approximately lip. m., I called Nicolai Ivanovitch and asked him to take a car, warm clothing and hot water and immediately start a search for the missing people. I spent all night sitting in my hotel room and waiting for them. It was already early morning, when they returned with the missing men. Satisfied and happy they came to my room and narrated how they had found the truck almost covered with snow lying in a ditch, where it had fallen on its way home in our convoy. This time we had a story with a happy ending.

    I came to the conclusion that one could put human fates into Nicolai Ivanovitch's hands and that he wouldn't fail and leave his comrades in the lurch. All the guys had great respect for him, and he put his heart and soul into any work. The frequent journeys to the test site tore us away from our homes for long periods. Nicolai Ivanovitch was often nostalgic about his home, and his son had problems at school. When he received a letter from home he withdrew from our company and stayed alone for a long while, reading their messages, and communicating thus with his relatives. That was the life of the testers. But coming back home always became everybody's feast.

    That snowy winter we once decided to go by our bus to the Semipalatinsk airport, from where we would take the direct Aeroflot flight to the Moscow Domodedovo airport. As usual we went to Semipalatinsk by train from the Konetchnaya railway station in the Kurtchatov town, which we called the 'Shore' town. The description of a railway station might apply to the Konetchnaya station purely conventionally. There was no station hall as at normal stations; they had only a military commandatura in a small bam, that was all - the railroad just ended there, and so the station got the name 'Konetchnaya' (lit. 'terminal station'). The train left daily early in the morning from the Konetchnaya station for Semipalatinsk. So we decided not to spend the last night at the boring hotel, but to take a bus and go in the evening to Semipalatinsk airport.

    There were some 150 kilometers to go by road: about three 30 hours to drive. There were about twenty of us who joyfully got into the bus and left the test site through a checkpoint singing songs. But it wasn't as easy as that. An hour later our bus went more and more slowly on the road, which was blocked with snow. We tried to drive off the road into the steppe. It got dark and several times we fell in holes filled with snow. The steppe is the steppe. Then we all got out of the bus and shovelled the snow from under the wheels. There was no possibility of going any further - we could miss the plane. We were quite sad as we turned and went back to the hotel late after midnight. We had about three hours of sleep and took the usual route by train to Semipalatinsk in the morning.

    Nevertheless there was so much to talk about, how we tried to get through the snow by bus, and we were singing songs besides. And on that occasion we recollected all the songs since the Civil War, songs of the period of World War II, songs of the postwar period and, naturally, songs of our youth.

    Youth is always wonderful because of its unique feelings of love and the joyful perception of the world. During one's youth, time seemed to flow with an almost painful slowness; one strived to grow faster to become adult and independent. But now time is running so rapidly that we can't even work out how we became grandfathers ourselves.

    With grief I recall Nicolai Ivanovitch to my memory. We all called him simply Kolya, and he will remain in our minds eternally young. May he rest peacefully! But then, during that snowy winter in Kasakhstan, we didn't yet know, that relatively soon this Kasakh steppe would divide between life and death in our midst.

    Our drivers also soon returned to Moscow. They nearly always came home with the convoy, which also brought back our diagnostic devices. There followed a short breather at home for data analysis and preparation of the next expedition.

    My readers may get the impression that the testers on the Semipalatinsk test site had not a minute of rest. Naturally it was different. We were mostly young, and we weren't lacking high spirits and joy. We filled our time with fun: singing, dancing, overnight fishing trips.

    Fishing at the artificial Balapan water reservoir made by a nuclear explosion was an especially memorable event. The diameter of the crater was some 500 meters, its depth 100 meters, and the altitude of the ring of the emitted soil, a kind of breastwork, was about forty meters. It had been the first nuclear explosion for peaceful purposes with a view to create a pool for sweet water reserves. The explosion was carried out in the bed of the small Chagan river that usually dried up in summer. They believed that in springtime, when the snow was melting actively, the crater would get filled with water, which would last for the whole dry summer season to water the cattle of the neighbouring sovkhoses (state farms). So it happened. In the spring of the following year the crater filled itself with water and a big lake emerged in front of the breastwork of the crater. It was one or two metres deep and flooded about two square kilometres of the steppe. But although that flood plain dried up later in summer, the artificial crater hasn't become a watering-place because of a relative high level of radiation there. And so this lake still exists striking fear into the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages. The Chagan river found itself a new river-bed and, as it has for hundreds and thousands of years, it is still flowing in springtime, now skirting that fabricated creation.

    And so we also came in the springtime of the year following that of the explosion to fish on the flood plain and, yes, to have a glance at that miracle of ours. Though the miracle-lake left a sinister impression - not because of its radiation, which still was very high at the breastwork of the lake, but because of the black darkness of the flat water surface of the lake and because of the inanimate and gloomy mass of soil around it, as if they were chunks of the earth's intestines which had been turned inside out. We camped at the flood plain, caught some tench with a dragnet, cooked some fish soup and stared for a long time at the Atom-Kul, the 'atomic lake'. No, it wasn't right, and if there is any peaceful application for nuclear explosions then it is not of such a kind in inhabited regions. Various tourists came frequently to that place however, but as for me, I didn't return to this lake again.

    Spending some days on the bank of Yenissey in Kurchatov town always graced our hard life at the 'G'-place. And if it happened, that we had to celebrate holidays while camping, we all assembled by any means and despite the fact that men usually were not especially talkative, everybody's voice was murmuring till the morning dawn. You wonder what we talked about - we spoke about life, about women, sometimes about forthcoming work. Everybody mainly aspired to tell something remarkable from his life. Then his soul opened itself, the narrator wishing us to experience with him the most happy and sweet moments of his life. We also listened to the music and songs, naturally, and joined in singing the chorus. The songs by Vladimir Vysotsky, songs of masculine friendship and love, were especially popular at the time.

    And the sporting contests and chess tournaments among the different groups of testers and the test site personnel always attracted dedicated fans.

    We often had heated political and economical debates about this or that international or domestic issue. Nevertheless the fact that we never had disputes on nuclear weapons was quite significant. All of us worked at the same cause, being clearly conscious of its extreme importance for the country. And so we endured all the hardships and deprivations far away from our nearest and dearest with great courage, as did our fathers and mothers during World War II. Yes, we lay in trenches at times of peace.

    We often had heated political and economical debates about this or that international or domestic issue. Nevertheless the fact that we never had disputes on nuclear weapons was quite significant. All of us worked at the same cause, being clearly conscious of its extreme importance for the country. And so we endured all the hardships and deprivations far away from our nearest and dearest with great courage, as did our fathers and mothers during World War II. Yes, we lay in trenches at times of peace.

    Several methods to measure different kinetic parameters of the nuclear explosion were applied to every experiment. According to the profile of the measurement methods, special groups to conduct the measurements were set up there. Each group had its own chief. As a rule it also possessed its own trailer with monitoring facilities and its own sensors for the registration of respective radiation or a respective factor of the nuclear explosion. The documentation for the project also defined strictly which high-frequency cables which conducted an electric analogue from the sensor to the registration and the visualisation of the information should be used for each of the methods. Every group was responsible for the whole measurement channel, including the sensor, the high-frequency cable and the registration device.

    The chiefs of all the groups for the different measurement methods were obliged to present reports at the meetings of the State commission in charge of the planning and organization of the test while in the process of preparation as well as dealing with the measurement results. The general report about the experiment would be made on the basis of those reports. It was quite natural that there were traces of competition and concurrence among the groups, especially with regard to the quality and the reliability of the eventual results. And in the process of the preparation of the experiment those groups formed the basis for all the competitions in sports as well as in leisure.

    The party and trade-union leaders were appointed anew for every expedition, which consisted of several measurement groups, each representing one of the enterprises to participate in the respective experiment. And these leaders initiated all the mass events in leisure time. They never tried to involve themselves or to give orders about technical matters. Those were issues, where everything was defined by the State commission in charge of the organization of the test and by the heads of the different groups. All the groups were subordinate to the chief of the expedition from an enterprise, who was a member too of the State commission in charge of the organization of the test.

    I must say, testers were always highly respected - in Kurtchatov town as well as at the 'G'-place. We were often invited to visit their families, and they also visited us travelling via Moscow and feeling astonished by the modesty of the tester's private life. The members of the military personnel and their families understood quite well that these guys wouldn't let anybody down, and that if something occurred they would be the first to combat the consequences of a nuclear explosion. And it was they who always showed an example of high qualification and technological discipline during the preparation and conduct of the experiment. They had no eight-hour working days, they only delivered professional work - night and day.

    Any time when these men went in their leisure hours to a movie-show, to a concert or to a dance-party in the house of the officers, the girls would cast pretty and tender glances at them from under their fashionable hair-styles. Naturally, they couldn't manage without love romances. Life is life. There were farewells with tears in eyes, but there was always hope to meet each other in the future.

    This was how we matured at the nuclear test sites parallel to the development of our branch. It was so hurtful in the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties to read that stream of mud directed towards the developers of nuclear arms. This unbridled campaign aimed at the collapse of our country ran in a broad flood from the tongues of the newly emerged 'Fatherland saviours'. But they surged forward onto speaker platforms not because they loved their people but because they were led by the desire to obtain warm armchairs in different offices. Today one may see it quite distinctly. But then the cry of my soul, the article 'Why should the Country's nuclear test sites remain silent?', gave an answer to that. It was my first contribution to a newspaper (Pravda 24 October 1990).